olid faces,
stopping to stare about, after a morning's freak, consisting of four
hours' neglect of work, and the consumption of endless pots of beer and
pipes of tobacco in Chunt's tap-room; but they were soon off to their
work cutting the great drain through the peat, where the wind and horse
mills were busy pumping out the water.

"Some people's allus a' enjoying o' themselves, and having feasts,"
growled one peat-stained giant.

"Ah!" said another, taking his pipe out of his mouth to spit. "I should
just like to come back and spoil all their fun!" But half an hour
after, like the rest of his fellows, he was delving away, cutting the
soft peat in great bricks, and heaving them out of the cutting, as he
worked off his superabundant beer.

But there was misery at Merland Castle, and more than once Jane McCray,
sobbing, told her husband that she had thought it would have broken her
heart when she saw poor dejected, wounded, pale John Gurdon, and gave
him the money, and wished him a happy future, when he broke down, and
cried like a child at receiving treatment he said he had never deserved;
but it was nothing to this, seeing that poor wasted child waiting for
the hours to pass before she was condemned to what would be like a death
in life.

For half-hysterical at times, an impression seemed to have come upon Isa
Gernon that she would be fetched away, that even against her own will
she would be saved from the fate that awaited her, and she started up,
and listened, and looked from her window again and again for what did
not come. Dresses were tried on, trunks were packed, presents poured
in, bouquets, jewels, everything to give eclat to the proceedings; but
Isa seemed to see nothing but one upbraiding face ever before her,
reproaching her for her cruelty--a cruelty which she nerved herself by
saying was but duty.

Brace Norton knew all, even the time at which the wedding would take
place; but he uttered no complaint, only wandered about hour after hour,
telling himself that to-morrow all would be at an end, ending by
reproaching himself for his inaction. Towards afternoon, he strolled
out towards the marsh, and smiled bitterly a fierce, angry smile, as he
saw the men busily cutting their way with the great drain towards the
pit, from which he had saved the bride of the ensuing day.

"Would we had died there together," he said, bitterly; and then he
stooped, and picked a bunch of the forget-me-nots so abundant t