coat and skirt of grey homespun, fashioned for country wear yet
faultless in cut, the skirt short enough to reveal a pair of trim ankles
cased in shooting-gaiters. Beneath her grey shooting-cap, also of
homespun, her hair falls in two broad bands over the brows, and is
gathered up at the back of the head in a plain Grecian knot. By the
brows, if you had remarked them in days gone by, when neither you nor
she gave a second thought to her looks, you might know her again; or
perhaps by the poise of the chin, and a touch of decision in the eyes.
In all else the child has vanished, and given place to this good-looking
girl, with a spring in her gait and a glow on her cheek that tell of
clean country nurture.

At the head of the path above the orchard grows an old ash tree, and so
leans that its boughs, now bursting into leaf, droop pendent almost as a
weeping willow. Between them you catch a glimpse of the Bristol
Channel, blue-grey beyond a notch of the distant hills. She pauses here
for a look. The moors that stretch for miles on all sides of
Culvercoombe are very silent this sunny morning. It is the season when
the sportsman pauses and takes breath for a while, and neither gun nor
horn is abroad. The birds are nesting; the stag more than a month since
has "hung his old head on the pale," and hides while his new antlers are
growing amid the young green bracken that would seem to imitate them in
its manner of growth; the hinds have dropped their calves, and fare with
them unmolested. It is the moors' halcyon time, and the weather to-day
well befits it.

Tilda's face is grave, however, as she stands there in the morning
sunshine. She is looking back upon the enclosure where the white stones
overtop the bluebells. They are headstones, and mark the cemetery where
Miss Sally, not ordinarily given to sentiment, has a fancy for interring
her favourite dogs.

You guess now why Tilda carries a spade, and what has happened, but may
care to know how it happened.

Sir Elphinstone is paying a visit just now to Culvercoombe.
He regards Tilda with mixed feelings, and Tilda knows it. The knowledge
nettles her a little and amuses her a good deal. Just now Miss Sally
and he are improving their appetites for breakfast by an early canter
over the moor, and no doubt are discussing her by the way.

Last night, with the express purpose of teasing him, Miss Sally had
asked Tilda to take up a book and read to her for a while. Th