d and brisker manner now. She laid the spars
on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro
till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here.

This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business
hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware
merchant for whom Marty's father did work of this sort by the piece.
It formed one of the many rambling out-houses which surrounded his
dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, whose immense
chimneys could just be discerned even now. The four huge wagons under
the shed were built on those ancient lines whose proportions have been
ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and curving at the base
and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable
hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curiously
in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles,
another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had
placed her thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles.

She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment
which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing,
when she heard a woman's voice on the other side of the hedge say,
anxiously, "George!" In a moment the name was repeated, with "Do come
indoors! What are you doing there?"

The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw
enter the latter from the timber-merchant's back door an elderly woman
sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving
thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face. Its rays soon fell upon a man
whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the
speaker. He was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous
mouth and a face cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his
eyes bent on the ground. In the pair Marty South recognized her
employer Melbury and his wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the
first having died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant's only
child.

"'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came up to where
he was pacing restlessly about. "I can't sleep--I keep thinking of
things, and worrying about the girl, till I'm quite in a fever of
anxiety." He went on to say that he could not think why "she (Marty
knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his letter. She
must be ill--she must, certainly," he said.

"No,