dark blot of naked woodlands
swallowed them up, and the voices grew faint and ceased. Only the
endless song of the river sounded, with a new note struck into it by the
world of snow.

For a few moments the valley was left empty, so empty that a fox, who
had been prowling unsuccessfully about Monks Barton since dusk, took the
opportunity to leave his hiding-place above the ducks' pool, cross the
meadows, and get him home to his earth two miles distant. He slunk with
pattering foot across the snow, marking his way by little regular
paw-pits and one straight line where his brush roughened the surface.
Steam puffed in jets from his muzzle, and his empty belly made him angry
with the world. At the edge of the woods he lifted his head, and the
moonlight touched his green eyes. Then he recorded a protest against
Providence in one eerie bark, and so vanished, before the weird sound
had died.

Phoebe Lyddon and her lover, having given the others some vantage of
ground, followed them to their destination--Mr. Lyddon's famous orchard
in Teign valley. The girl's dreary task of late had been to tell herself
that she would surely love John Grimbal presently--love him as such a
good man deserved to be loved. Only under the silence and in the
loneliness of long nights, only in the small hours of day, when sleep
would not come and pulses were weak, did Phoebe confess that contact
with him hurt her, that his kisses made her giddy to sickness, that all
his gifts put together were less to her than one treasure she was too
weak to destroy--the last letter Will had written. Once or twice, not to
her future husband, but to the miller, Phoebe had ventured faintly to
question still the promise of this great step; but Mr. Lyddon quickly
overruled all doubts, and assisted John Grimbal in his efforts to hasten
the ceremony. Upon this day, Old Christmas Eve, the wedding-day lay not
a month distant and, afterwards the husband designed to take his wife
abroad for a trip to South Africa. Thus he would combine business and
pleasure, and return in the spring to witness the completion of his
house. Chagford highly approved the match, congratulated Phoebe on her
fortune, and felt secretly gratified that a personage grown so important
as John Grimbal should have chosen his life's partner from among the
maidens of his native village.

Now the pair walked over the snow; and silent and stealthy as the
vanished fox, a grey figure followed after them. Dim a