tdoor labour, and weariness, and
good feeding. These indeed had some effect, and helped to pass a week or
two, with more pain of hand than heart to me.

[Illustration: 153.jpg Fields spread with growth]

But when the weather changed in earnest, and the frost was gone, and
the south-west wind blew softly, and the lambs were at play with the
daisies, it was more than I could do to keep from thought of Lorna.
For now the fields were spread with growth, and the waters clad with
sunshine, and light and shadow, step by step, wandered over the furzy
cleves. All the sides of the hilly wood were gathered in and out with
green, silver-grey, or russet points, according to the several manner of
the trees beginning. And if one stood beneath an elm, with any heart to
look at it, lo! all the ground was strewn with flakes (too small to know
their meaning), and all the sprays above were rasped and trembling with
a redness. And so I stopped beneath the tree, and carved L.D. upon it,
and wondered at the buds of thought that seemed to swell inside me.

The upshot of it all was this, that as no Lorna came to me, except in
dreams or fancy, and as my life was not worth living without constant
sign of her, forth I must again to find her, and say more than a man can
tell. Therefore, without waiting longer for the moving of the spring,
dressed I was in grand attire (so far as I had gotten it), and thinking
my appearance good, although with doubts about it (being forced to
dress in the hay-tallat), round the corner of the wood-stack went I very
knowingly--for Lizzie's eyes were wondrous sharp--and then I was sure of
meeting none who would care or dare to speak of me.

It lay upon my conscience often that I had not made dear Annie secret to
this history; although in all things I could trust her, and she loved me
like a lamb. Many and many a time I tried, and more than once began the
thing; but there came a dryness in my throat, and a knocking under the
roof of my mouth, and a longing to put it off again, as perhaps might be
the wisest. And then I would remember too that I had no right to speak
of Lorna as if she were common property.

This time I longed to take my gun, and was half resolved to do so;
because it seemed so hard a thing to be shot at and have no chance of
shooting; but when I came to remember the steepness and the slippery
nature of the waterslide, there seemed but little likelihood of keeping
dry the powder. Therefore I was arme