again down the village--she to return to her nursing and
he on his way home. He led his horse by the bridle and walked by
her side down the street. She pointed to the Hawk's Lynch as they
walked along, and said, "You should ride up there; it is scarcely
out of your way. Mary and I used to walk there every day when she
was here, and she was so fond of it."

At the cottage they found Harry Winburn. He came out, and the two
young men shook hands, and looked one another over, and exchanged
a few shy sentences. Tom managed with difficulty to say the
little he had to say, but tried to make up for it by a hearty
manner. It was not the time or place for any unnecessary talk; so
in a few minutes he was mounted and riding up the slope towards
the heath. "I should say he must be half a stone lighter than I,"
he thought, "and not quite so tall; but he looks as hard as iron,
and tough as whipcord. What a No. 7 he'd make in a heavy crew!
Poor fellow, he seems dreadfully cut up. I hope I shall be able
to be of use to him. Now for this place which Katie showed me
from the village street."

He pressed his horse up the steep side of the Hawk's Lynch. The
exhilaration of the scramble, and the sense of power, and of some
slight risk, which he felt as he helped on the gallant beast with
hand and knee and heel, while the loose turf and stones flew from
his hoofs and rolled down the hill behind them, made Tom's eyes
kindle and his pulse beat quicker as he reached the top and
pulled up under the Scotch firs. "This was her favorite walk,
then. No wonder. What an air, and what a view!" He jumped off his
horse, slipped the bridle over his arm, and let him pick away at
the short grass and tufts of heath, as he himself first stood,
and then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so
often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he was
sitting on; she must have taken in the same expanse of wood and
meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill. Her presence
seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of new thoughts and
feelings swam through his brain and carried him, a willing piece
of drift man, along with them. He gave himself up to the stream
and revelled in them. His eye traced back the road along which he
had ridden in the morning, and rested on the Barton woods, just
visible in the distance, on this side of the point where all
outline except that of the horizon began to be lost. The
flickering July air seemed to beat