d stepped out, fastened the point
to a willow stump, and came towards her.

"What--is this the Squiress?"

She looked up and recognized him.

The man who came to her and addressed her was Mr. Markham, the
young barrister, who had been to the Punch-Bowl to obtain the
assistance of Jonas in wild-duck shooting.

She recalled his offensively familiar manner, and was troubled to
see him again. And yet she remembered his last remark on leaving,
when he had offered his services to help her to free herself from
her bondage to Jonas. The words might have been spoken in jest,
yet now, she caught at them.

He stood looking at her, and he saw both how pale she was, with a
hectic flame in her cheek, and a feverish glitter in her eye, and
also how beautiful she thus was.

"Why," said he, "what brings you here?"

"I have been to the silk mill in quest of work."

"Work! Broom-Squiress, one such as you should not work. You missed
your vocation altogether when you left the Ship. Jonas told me you
had been there."

"I was happy then."

"But are you not so in the Punch-Bowl?"

"No. I am very miserable. But I will not return there again."

"What! fallen out with the Squire?"

"He has made it impossible for me to go back."

"Then whither are you bound?"

"I do not know."

He looked at her intently.

"Now, see here," said he. "Sit down on that log again from which
you have risen and tell me all. I am a lawyer and can help you, I
daresay."

"I have not much to tell," she answered, and sank on the tree bole.
He seated himself beside her.

"There are things that have happened which have made me resolve to
go anywhere, do anything, rather than return to Jonas. I promised
what I could not keep when I said I would love, honor, and obey him."

Then she began to sob. It touched her that this young man should
express sympathy, offer his help.

"Now listen to me," said Mr. Markham; "I am a barrister. I know the
law, I have it at my ringers' ends, and I place myself, my knowledge
and my abilities at your disposal. I shall feel proud, flattered to
do so. Your beauty and your distress appeal to me irresistibly.
Has the Squire been beating you?"

"Oh, no, not that."

"Then what has he done?"

"There are things worse to bear than a stick."

"What! Oh, the gay Lothario! He has been casting his eye about and
has lost his leathery heart to some less well-favored wench than
yourself."

Mehetabel moved further from him on th