hunger.

He saw likenesses to her in everything, and even the call of the
moor-birds awakened some memory of an incident of childhood, when Mysie
and he had, with other children, played together on the moors. Even the
very words which she had spoken, or the way she had acted, or how she
had looked, in cheap cotton frock and pinafore, were recalled by a
familiar cry, or by the sudden discovery of a bog-flower in bloom.

It was a glorious afternoon in late July. The hum of insect life seemed
to flood the whole moor; the scent of mown hay and wild thyme, and late
hawthorn blossom from the trees on the edge of the moor, was heavy in
the air, and the sun was very hot, and still high in the heavens. The
hills that bordered the moor drowsed and brooded, like ancient gods,
clothed in a lordly radiance that was slowly consuming them as they
meditated upon their coming oblivion.

The heather gave promise, in the tiny purple buds that sprouted from the
strong, rough stems, of the blaze of purple glory that would carpet the
moors with magic in the coming days of autumn. Yet there was a vague
hint, in the too deep silence, and in the great clouds that were slowly
drifting along the sky, of pent-up force merely awaiting the time to be
set free to gallop across the moor in anger and destruction. The clouds,
too, were deeply red, with orange touches here and there, trailing into
dark inky ragged edges.

Far away, at the foot of the hills a crofter's cow lowed lazily, calling
forth a summons to be taken in and relieved of its burden of milk. The
sheep came nearer to the "bughts," and the lambs burrowed for
nourishment, with tails wagging, as they drew their sustenance, prodding
and punching the patient mothers in the operation of feeding. Robert,
noting all, with leisured enjoyment strolled lazily into the little
copse, and lay down beneath the cool, grateful shelter of the trees.

Drugged by the sweetness and the solitude, he fell asleep, and the sun
was low on the horizon when he awoke, the whole copse ringing with the
evening songs of merle and mavis, and other less musical birds, and, as
he looked down the glade, he saw, out on the moorland path, coming
straight for the grove, the form of Mysie--the form of which he had
dreamed, and for which he had longed so much.

The hot blood mounted to his face and raced through his frame, while
his heart thumped at the thought that now, in the quietness of the dell,
he would meet her an