ambles lie across the track, with October's bronze and
purple-green leaves, still hale and hearty, making an exquisite
contrast with the young, brilliant, fan-folded shoots just springing at
their base.

I will find an opportunity to speak to Annie this very afternoon. She is
likely to be less busy to-day than at other times. I need not trouble
much as to how I shall tell her. She is sure to listen to me in a sweet,
bewildered silence. She will have no temptation to laugh at the most
beautiful and sacred of earthly themes. There is, to my mind, something
incurably frivolous about a woman who laughs when a man is in earnest. I
have tried over and over again to impress this upon Catherine, but it
never had any other effect but to increase her amusement. She is a young
woman entirely without the bump of veneration, and _this_, I should say,
far more than an elegant pronunciation, is the desideratum in a wife.

Sunday evening. I am in the mental condition of "Truthful James." I ask
myself: "Do I wake? Do I dream?" I inquire at set intervals whether the
Caucasian is played out? So far as I represent the race, I am compelled
to reply in the affirmative. This is what has happened. I was smoking my
post-prandial cigar in the terraced garden, lying back in a comfortable
basket-chair fetched out from the sitting-room, when a shadow fell upon
the grass, and Mrs. Anderson appeared in her walking things to know if
there was anything I was likely to want, as she and "Faaether" and the
little boys were just starting for _H_'Orton.

"Don't trouble about me," said I; "go and enjoy yourself. No one better
deserves it than you, Mrs. Anderson." And I add diplomatically: "Doesn't
Miss Annie also go with you?"

"Annie's over Fuller's Farm way," says the good woman smiling; and I
smile too, for no particular reason. "She mostly walks up there of a
Sunday afternoon."

I know Fuller's Farm. I have passed it in my rambles. You skirt the
copse, cross the sunny upland field, drop over the stile to the right,
and find yourself in Fuller's Lane. The farm is a little further on, a
comfortable homestead, smaller than Down End, but built of the same
grey, lichened stone, and with the same steep roof and dormer windows.

I gave the Andersons ten minutes start, then rose, unlatched the gate,
and followed Annie. I reached the upland field. It was dotted with
sheep: ewes and lambs; long shadows sloped across it; a girl stood at
the further gate. This