pect she do.'

'Yes.'

They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage. It was
built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains
into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face
visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a
bone protruding through the skin.

She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf
laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with
her breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and
made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.
'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice
if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever
done housework, or are milker's hands like mine.'

The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing
that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed
chair.

CHAPTER II--THE YOUNG WIFE

The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there is
one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. Farmers homeward-
bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk
their horses up this short incline.

The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig, with
a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the
level highway at the heels of a powerful mare. The driver was a yeoman
in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned
to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer's
features when returning home after successful dealings in the town.
Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior--almost, indeed, a girl.
Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different
quality--soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.

Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long
white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one
small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the
figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually
looking behind him--the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if
not the reason of, his dilatoriness. When the bouncing gig-party slowed
at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a
few yards in front. Supporting the large bun