e master, 'I'll try him once again. If he'd go out
quietly, nobody else has any claim upon the cottage; and I want to set to
work there quickly.'

So when Stephen entered the office with trembling limbs and a very pale
face under its dusky covering, it happened that he met with a very
different reception to what he expected. The master sat behind a small
counter, upon which lay Stephen's twelve shillings, the only little heap
of money left; and as he gathered them nervously into his hand, he
wondered if this would be the last time. But his master's face was not
more threatening than usual; and he muttered his 'Thank you, sir,' and
was turning away with a feeling of great relief, when Mr. Wyley's harsh
voice brought him back again, trembling more than ever.

'Have you thought any more of my offer, Fern?' he asked. 'I shouldn't
mind, as you are an orphan, and have two sisters depending upon you, if I
made the ten pounds into fifteen; and you may leave the money at interest
with me till you are older.'

'And I've been thinking, Stephen,' added Thomas Wyley, who sat at a high
desk checking the accounts, 'that, as you seem set against being
separated, instead of taking your grandfather into the House, I'd get him
two shillings a week allowed him out of it; and that would pay the rent
of a nice two-roomed cottage down in Botfield, close to your work. Come,
that would make all of you comfortable.'

'You should bear in mind, Stephen,' said the master, 'that the place does
not of right belong to you at all; and the lord of the manor is coming to
shoot over the estate in September; and then I shall have orders to
remove you by force. So you had better take our offer.'

'Please, sir,' said Stephen, bowing respectfully, 'don't be angered with
me, but I can't go from what I said afore. Father told me never to give
up Fern's Hollow; and maybe he'd hear tell of it in heaven if I broke my
word to him. I can't do it, sir.'

'Well, wilful will have his way,' said Mr. Thomas, nodding at the master;
and as neither of them addressed Stephen again, he left the office,
amazed to find that he was not forbidden to return to work on the
following Monday.

The Red Gravel Pit, where Miss Anne had promised to meet her scholars on
Sunday morning, was a quarry cut out of the side of one of the hills,
from which the stones were taken for making and mending the roads in the
neighbourhood. The quarry had been hollowed out into a kind of enclosed