s I shall be miserable!"

Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a
postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and
with her head turned upward toward the trees, she made her way toward
the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclamation of pleasure, she drew
down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek.
She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of
chicken-coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the
breeze which came sweeping across the moorland from the other side of
the house.

Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against
which she rested for a moment, leaning her arms upon the topmost bar.
Before her was the little belt of plowed earth, the fresh, pungent odor
of which was a new thing to her; a little way to the right, the rolling
moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on
the other side of the gray stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The
sky--unusually blue it seemed to her, and dotted all over with little
masses of fleecy, white clouds--seemed somehow lower and nearer; or was
she, perhaps higher up?

She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her
brain and senses of what surely must be some newly kindled faculty of
appreciation. There was a beauty in the world which she had not felt
before.

She turned her head almost lazily at the sound of a man's voice. A team
of horses, straining at a plow, were coming round the bend of the
field, and by their side, talking to the laborer who guided them, was
John Strangewey. She watched him as he came into sight up the steep
rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the
size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was
bareheaded, and she noticed for the first time that his closely cropped
fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears.

He walked in step with the plowman by his side, but without any of the
laborer's mechanical plod--with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if
his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing
black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well-fitting;
breeches and gaiters; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He
was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the
instructions he was giving that he was almost opposite the gate before
he was aware of her pr