anddaughter Maisie's, because her presence there was so very much
appreciated. Her great-grandson also, whose charms were developing more
rapidly than is ever the case in after-life, was becoming a strong
attraction to her. Moreover, a very old friend of hers, Mrs. Naunton,
residing a short mile away, at Dessington, had just pulled through
rheumatic fever, and was getting well enough to be read to out of
"Pilgrim's Progress."

This afternoon, however, Mrs. Naunton did not prove well enough to keep
awake when read to, even for Mr. Greatheart to slay Giant Despair. In
fact, Mrs. Marrable caught her snoring, and read the rest to herself. It
was too good to lose. When the Giant was disposed of past all
recrudescence, she departed for her return journey instead of waiting
for her granddaughter's brother-in-law, a schoolboy with a holiday, to
come and see her home. She knew he would come by the short cut, across
the fields, so she took that way to intercept him, in spite of the
stiles. As a rule she preferred the highroad.

The fields were very lonely, but what did that matter? How little one
feels the loneliness of an old familiar pathway! No one ever _had_ been
murdered in these fields, and no one ever would be. Granny Marrable
walked on with confidence. Nevertheless, had she had her choice, she
would have preferred the loneliness unalloyed by the presence of the man
on the stile, at the end of Farmer Naunton's twelve-acre pasture, if
only because she anticipated having to ask him to let her pass. For he
seemed to have made up his mind to wait to be asked; if approached from
behind, at any rate. She could not see his face or hands, only his
outline against the cold, purple distance, with a red ball that had been
the sun all day. "Might I trouble you, master?" she said.

The man turned his head just as far as was necessary for his eyes, under
tension, to see the speaker; then got down, more deliberately than
courteously, on his own side of the stile. "Come along, missus," he
said. "Never mind legs. Yours ain't my sort. Over you go!"

Safe in the next field, Granny Marrable turned to thank him. But not
before she had put three or four yards between them. Not that she
anticipated violence, but from mere dislike of what she would have
called sauciness in a boy, but which was, in a man of his time of life,
sheer brutal rudeness. "Thank you very kindly, master!" said she. "Sorry
to disturb you!"

He ought to have said that s