the poor fellow
dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.

But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
to Mr. Dorriforth."

"They were making hellish noises all last night; I had no rest at all,"
Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'--that's what they call it, reverend
sir," he turned to the priest.

Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?

Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.

She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
now done."

"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea, love! And if they're going off
at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"

Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
in a child, so pardonable.

She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
wound about her soft dark hair--hair dressed high, turned back from her
forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
fashion, arranged in stiff curls.

The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a str