r window, which gleamed like a
dead eye in the moonlight. She stood for a moment, afraid to move, lest
she should startle him, and he should call out, for the slightest noise
about the place would bring Godfrey down. The next moment, however,
Tom, aware of her presence, sprang to his feet, and, turning, bounded
to her, and took her in his arms. Still possessed by the one terror of
making a noise, she did not object even by a contrary motion, and, when
he took her hand to lead her away out of sight of the house, she
yielded at once.

When they were safe in the field behind the hedge--

"Why did you make me come down, Tom?" she whispered, half choked with
fear, looking up in his face, which was radiant in the moonshine.

"Because I could not bear it one day longer," he answered. "All this
time I have been breaking my heart to get a word with you, and never
seeing you except at church, and there you would never even look at me.
It is cruel of you, Letty. I know you could manage it, if you liked,
well enough. Why should you try me so?"

"Do speak a little lower, Tom: sound goes so far at night!--I didn't
know you would want to see me like that," she answered, looking up in
his face with a pleased smile.

"Didn't know!" repeated Tom. "I want nothing else, think of nothing
else, dream of nothing else. Oh, the delight of having you here all
alone to myself at last! You darling Letty!"

"But I must go directly, Tom. I have no business to be out of the house
at this time of the night. If you hadn't made me think you were in some
trouble, I daredn't have come."

"And ain't I in trouble enough--trouble that nothing but your coming
could get me out of? To love your very shadow, and not be able to get a
peep even of that, except in church, where all the time of the service
I'm raging inside like a wild beast in a cage--ain't that trouble
enough to make you come to me?"

Letty's heart leaped up. He loved her, then! Love, real love, was what
it meant! It was paradise! Anything might come that would! She would be
afraid of nothing any more. They might say or do to her what they
pleased--she did not care a straw, if he loved her--really loved her!
And he did! he did! She was going to have him all to her own self, and
nobody was to have any right to meddle with her more!

"I didn't know you loved me, Tom!" she said, simply, with a little gasp.

"And I don't know yet whether you love me," returned Tom.

"Of course, if you lov