y this caused, that the young lady,
notwithstanding she was so fond of the handsome young farmer, who rode
so well and shot so straight, and could carry her in his arms as if she
were no more than a lamb, would never put her dainty foot, which looked
so little and pretty even in the rude shoes made for her by the village
cobbler, over the threshold of his house. She would never come in, she
said, except as a wife, while he on his part, anxious as he was to marry
her, could not, from affection for his mother, summon up courage to
bring her in, as it were, rough-shod over his mother's feelings.

Their meetings, therefore, as she would not come indoors, were always
held in the farmer's orchard, where was a seat in an arbour, a few yards
in front of which stood the ancient apple-tree in which Kapchack, who
was also very young in those days, had built his nest. At this arbour
they met every day, and often twice a day, and even once again in the
evening, and could there chat and make love as sweetly as they pleased,
because the orchard was enclosed by a high wall which quite shut out all
spying eyes, and had a gate with lock and key. The young lady had a
duplicate key, and came straight to the orchard from the cottage where
she lived by a footpath which crossed the lane along which Bevis had
been driven.

It happened that the footpath just by the lane, on coming near the
orchard, passed a moist place, which in rainy weather was liable to be
flooded, and as this was inconvenient for her, her lover had a
waggon-load of flints brought down from the hills where the hares held
their revels, and placed in the hollow so as to fill it up, and over
these he placed faggots of nut-tree wood, so that she could step across
perfectly clean and dry. In this orchard, then, they had their constant
rendezvous; they were there every day when the nightingale first began
to sing in the spring, and when the apple-trees were hidden with their
pink blossom, when the haymakers were at work in the meadow, when the
reapers cut the corn, and when the call of the first fieldfare sounded
overhead. The golden and rosy apples dropped at their feet, they laughed
and ate them, and taking out the brown pips she pressed them between
her thumb and finger to see how far they would shoot.

Though they had begun to talk about their affairs in the spring, and had
kept on all the summer and autumn, and though they kept on as often as
the weather was dry (when they