past, yet he cannot escape from it." . . . And her thoughts might have
travelled farther, but she had put the mare to a walk again and just
then her ears caught an unaccustomed sound, or confusion of sounds.

At the end of the alley she reined up, wide-eyed.

A narrow gateway here gave access to what had yesterday been a sloping
paddock where Miss Quiney grazed a couple of cows.  To-day the cows had
vanished and given way to a small army of labourers.  Broad strips of
turf had vanished also and the brown loam was moving downhill in scores
of wheel-barrows, to build up the slope to a level.

Sir Oliver marked her amazement and answered it with an easy laugh.

"The time is short, you see, and already we have wasted half an hour of
it unprofitably. . . . These fellows appear to be working well."

She gazed at the moving gangs as one who, having come by surprise upon a
hive of bees, stands still and cons the small creatures at work.

"But what is the meaning of it?"

"The meaning?  Why, that for this week I am your riding-master, and that
by to-morrow you will have a passable riding-school."



Chapter IX.


THE PROSPECT.


This happened on a Thursday.  On the following Wednesday, a while before
day-break, he met her on horseback by the gate of Sabines, and they rode
forth side by side, ahead of the coach wherein Miss Quiney sat piled
about with baggage, clutching in one hand a copy of Baxter's _Saint's
Everlasting Rest_ and with the other the ring of a canary-cage.  (It was
Dicky's canary, and his first love-offering.  Yesterday had been Ruth's
birthday--her eighteenth--and under conduct of Manasseh he had visited
Sabines to wish her "many happy returns" and to say good-bye.)

Sir Oliver would escort the travellers for twelve miles on their way, to
a point where the inland road broke into cart-tracks, and the tracks
diverged across a country newly disafforested and strewn with jagged
stumps among which the heavy vehicle could by no means be hauled.
Here Farmer Cordery was to be in waiting with his light tilt-covered
wagon.

They had started thus early because the season was hot and they desired
to traverse the open highway and the clearings and to reach the forest
before the sun's rays grew ardent.  Once past the elms of Sabines their
road lay broad before them, easy to discern; for the moon, well in her
third quarter, rode high, with no trace of cloud or mist.  So clear she
shone that in imagination one could reach up and run a finger along her
hard bright edge; and under moon and stars a land-breeze, virginally
cool, played on our two riders' cheeks.  Ungloving and stretching forth
a hand, Ruth felt the dew falling, as it had been falling ever since
sundown; and under that quiet lustration the world at her feet and
around her, unseen as yet, had been renewed, the bee-ravished flowers
replaced with blossoms ready to unfold, the turf revived, reclothed in
young green, the atmosphere bathed, cleansed of exhausted scents, made
ready for morning's "bridal of the earth and sky ":--

"_As a vesture shall he fold them up. . . . In them hath he set a
tabernacle for the sun; which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his
chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course_."

Darkling they rode, and in silence, as though by consent.  Ruth had
never travelled this high way before: it glimmered across a country of
which she knew nothing and could see nothing.  But no shadow of fear
crossed her spirit.  Her heart was hushed; yet it exulted, because her
lord rode beside her.

They had ridden thus without speech for three or four miles, when her
chestnut blundered, tripped, and was almost down.

"All right?" he asked, as she reined up and steadied the mare.

"Yes. . . . She gave me a small fright, though."

"What happened?  It looked to me as if she came precious near crossing
her feet.  If she repeats that trick by daylight I'll cast her--as I
would to-morrow, if I were sure."

"Is it so bad a trick?"

"It might break your neck.  It would certainly bring her down and break
her knees."

"Oh!" Ruth shivered.  "Do you mean that it would actually break them?"
she asked in her ignorance.

He laughed.  "Well, that's possible; but I meant the skin of the knee."

"That would heal, surely?"

He laughed again.  "A horse is like a woman--" he began, but checked
himself of a sudden.  She waited for him to continue, and he went on,
"It knocks everything off the price, you see.  Some won't own a horse
that has once been down; and any knowledgeable man can tell, at a
glance.  It is the first thing he looks for."

She considered for a moment.  "But if the mark had been a scratch only--
and the scratch had healed--might she not be as good a horse as ever?"

"It would damage her price, none the less."

"But you are not a horse-dealer.  Would _you_ value a horse by its
selling price?"

He laughed.  "I am afraid," he owned, "that I should be ruled by other
men's opinions.  Your connoisseur does not collect chipped chinaware.
. . . There's the chance, too, that the mare, having once fallen, will
throw herself again by the same trick."

"And women are like horses," thought Ruth as they rode on.  The night
was paling about them, and she watched the rolling champaign as little
by little it took shape, emerging from the morning mist and passing from
monochrome into faint colours: for albeit the upper sky was clear as
ever, mist filled the hollows of the hills and rolled up their sides
like a smoke.

"Look!" commanded Sir Oliver, reining up and turning in his saddle.

He pointed with his horse-whip.  Behind them, over a tree-clad hill, lay
a long purple cloud; and above it, while he pointed, the sun thrust its
edge as it were the rim of a golden paten.  Ruth wheeled her mare about,
to face the spectacle, and at that moment the cloud parted horizontally
as though a hand had ripped the veil across.  A flood of gold poured
through the rent, dazzling her eyes.

The sun mounted and swam free: the upper portion of the veil floated off
like a wisp and drifted down the wind.  Where the glory had shone, it
lingered through tint after tint--rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green--
and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of the heavens.

Sir Oliver withdrew his eyes and sought hers.  "When I find the need of
faith," he said, "I shall turn sun-worshipper."

"You have never found that need?" she asked slowly.

"Never," he confessed.  "And you?"

"Never as a need.  I mean," she explained, "that though I always
despised religion--yes, always, even before I came to hate it--I never
doubted that some wisdom must be at watch and at work all around me,
ordering the sun and stars, for instance, and separating right from
wrong.  I just cannot understand how any one can do without a faith of
that sort: it's as necessary as breath."

He shrugged his shoulders.  "To me one Jehovah's as good as another, as
unnecessary, and as incredible.  I find it easier to believe that chaos
hurtled around until it struck out some working balance; that the stars
learned their places pretty much as men and women are learning theirs
to-day.  A painful process, I'll grant you, and damnably tedious; but
they came to it in the end, and so in the end, maybe, will poor
imitative man.  But," he broke off, "this faith of yours must have
failed you, once."

She shivered.  "No; I made no claim on it, you see.  Perhaps"--with a
little smile--"I did not think myself important enough.  I only know
that, whatever was right, those men were horribly wrong: for it _must_
be wrong to be cruel.  Then I woke up, and you were beside me--"

She would have added, "How could I doubt, then?"  But her voice failed
her, and she wheeled about that he might not see her tears.

He, too, turned his horse.  They rode on for a few paces in silence.

"I wish," she said, recovering her voice--"I wish, for your sake, you
could have felt what I have been feeling since we left Sabines; the
_goodness_ all about us, watching us out of the night and the stars."

She looked up; but the stars were gone, faded out into daylight.  He
pushed his horse half a pace ahead, and glanced sideways at her face.
Tears shone yet in her eyes, and his own, as he quickly averted them,
fell on a tall mullein growing by the roadside.  Big drops of dew
adhered upon its woolly leaves and twinkled in the sunshine; and by
contrast he knew the colour of her eyes--that they were violet and of
the night--their dew distilled out of such violet darkness as had been
the quality of one or two Mediterranean nights that lingered among his
memories of the Grand Tour.  More and more this girl surprised him with
graces foreign to this colonial soil, graces supposed by him to be
classical and lost, the appanage of goddesses.

Like a goddess now she lifted an arm and pointed west, as he had pointed
east.  Ahead of them, to the right of the road, rose a tall hill, wooded
at the base, broken at the summit by craggy terraces.  Two large birds
wheeled and hovered above it, high in the blue, fronting the sunlight.

"Eagles, by Jove!" cried Sir Oliver.

Ruth drew a breath and watched them.  She had never before seen an
eagle.

"Will they have their nest in the cliffs?" she asked.

"Perhaps. . . . No, more likely they come from Wachusett; more likely
still, from the mountains beyond.  They are here seeking food."

"They do not appear to be seeking food," she said after a pause during
which she watched their ambits of flight circling and intersecting
"See the nearest one mounting, and the other lifting on a wider curve to
meet him above.  One would say they followed some pattern, like folks
dancing."

"Some act of homage to the sun," he suggested.  "They have come down to
the sea to meet him--they look over the Atlantic from aloft there--and
perform in his honour.  Who knows?"

Across Ruth's inner vision there flashed a memory of Mr. Hichens,
black-suited and bald, bending over his Hebrew Bible and expounding a
passage of Job: "_Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her
nest on high?  She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of
the rock, and the strong place_. . . ."

To herself she said: "If it be so, the eagle's faith is mine; my lord's
also, perchance, if he but knew it."

Aloud she asked, "Why are the noblest, birds and beasts, so few and
solitary?"

Sir Oliver laughed.  "You may include man.  The answer is the same, and
simple: the strong of the earth feed on the weak, and it takes all the
weaklings to make blood for the few."

She mused; but when she spoke again it was not to dispute with him.
"You say they look over the sea from aloft there.  Might we have sight
of it from the top of the hill?"

"Perhaps.  There is plenty of time to make sure before the coach
overtakes us--though I warn you it will be risky."

"I am not afraid."

They cantered off gaily, plunged into the woods and breasted the slope,
Sir Oliver leading and threading his way through the undergrowth.
By-and-by they came to the bed of a torrent and followed it up, the
horses picking their steps upon the flat boulders between which the
water trickled.  Some of these boulders were slimed and slippery, and
twice Sir Oliver reached out a hand and hauled the mare firmly on to her
quarters.

The belt of crags did not run completely around the hill.  At the back
of it, after a scramble out of the gully, they came on a slope of good
turf, and so cantered easily to the summit.

Ruth gave a little cry of delight, and followed it up with a yet smaller
one of disappointment.  The country lay spread at her feet like a vast
amphitheatre, ringed with wooded hills.  Across the plain they encircled
a river ran in loops, and from the crag at the edge of which she stood a
streamlet emerged and took a brave leap down the hill to join it.

"But where is the sea?"

"That small hill yonder must hide it.  You see it, with its line of
elms?  If those trees were down, we should see the Atlantic for a
certainty.  If you like the spot otherwise, I will have them removed."

He said it seriously; but of course she took it for granted that he
spoke in jest, albeit the jest puzzled her a little.  Indeed when she
glanced up at him he was smiling, with his eyes on the distant
landscape.

"The mountain too," he added, "if the trees will not suffice.  Though
not by faith, it shall be removed."



Chapter X.


THREE LADIES.


"You may smoke," said Dicky politely, setting down his glass.

"Thank you," answered Mr. Hanmer.  "But are you sure?  In my experience
of houses there's always some one that objects."

Dicky lifted his chin.  "We call this the nursery because it has always
been the nursery.  But I do what I like here."

Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashore
and help him to rig a model cutter--a birthday gift from his father; and
the pair had spent an afternoon upon it, seated upon the floor with the
toy between them and a litter of twine everywhere, Dicky deep in the
mysteries of knots and splices, the lieutenant whittling out miniature
blocks and belaying-pins with a knife that seemed capable of anything.

They had been interrupted by Manasseh, bearing a tray of refreshments--
bread and honey and cakes, with a jug of milk for the one; for the other
a decanter of brown sherry with a dish of ratafia biscuits.  The repast
was finished now, and Dicky, eager to fall to work again, feared that
his friend might make an excuse for departing.

Mr. Hanmer put a hand in his pocket and drew out his pipe.

"Your father would call it setting a bad example, I doubt?"

To this the boy, had he been less loyal, might have answered that his
father took no great stock in examples, bad or good.  He said:
"Papa smokes.  He says it is cleaner than taking snuff; and so it is, if
you have ever seen Mr. Silk's waistcoat."

So Mr. Hanmer filled and lit his pipe, doing wonders with a pocket
tinder-box.  Dicky watched the process gravely through every detail,
laying up hints for manhood.

"I ought to have asked you before," he said.  "Nobody comes here ever,
except Mr. Silk and the servants."

Hapless speech and bootless boast!  They had scarcely seated themselves
to work again, the lieutenant puffing vigorously, before they heard
footsteps in the corridor, with a rustle of silks, and a hand tapped on
the door.

It opened as Dicky jumped to his feet, calling "Come in!"--and on the
threshold appeared Mrs. Vyell, in walking dress.  Dicky liked "Mrs.
Harry," as he called her; but he stared in dismay at two magnificent
ladies in the doorway behind her, and more especially at the elder of
the twain, who, attired in puce-coloured silk, stiff as a board, walked
in lifting a high patrician nose and exclaiming,--

"Fah! What a detestable odour!"

Mr. Hanmer hurriedly hid his pipe and scrambled up, stammering an
apology.  Dicky showed more self-possession.  He gave a little bow to
the two strangers and turned to Mrs. Harry.

"I am sorry, Aunt Sarah.  But I didn't know, of course, that you were
coming and bringing visitors."

"To be sure you did not, child," said Mrs. Harry with a good-natured
smile.  She was a cheerful, commonsensical person, pleasant of face
rather than pretty, by no means wanting in wit, and radiant of
happiness, just now, as a young woman should be who has married the man
of her heart.  "But let me present you--to Lady Caroline Vyell and Miss
Diana."

Dicky bowed again.  "I am sorry, ma'am," he repeated, addressing Lady
Caroline.  "Mr. Hanmer has put out his pipe, you see, and the window is
open."

Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell.
Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny,
and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,--

"You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?"

Mrs. Harry laughed.  "It sounds better, you will admit, than
'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth.
Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky and
I are great friends.  In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say
'the best of friends.'"

Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer.  "Is this--er--
gentleman his tutor?" she asked.

The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, set
Mrs. Harry laughing again.  "In seamanship only.  Mr. Hanmer is my
husband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy."

"I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline.

"Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer.

The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again.  He, to avoid it,
glanced aside at Miss Diana.  He found Miss Diana less unpleasant than
her mother, but attractive only by contrast.  She was a tall woman,
handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishness
by its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented.  She had been
riding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did her
wide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and a
single ostrich feather.

"Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare,
"the child favours his mother."

"Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently.  "I never met her."

"Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe.  We must get him to show
it to us.  A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking--though
after a style I abominate."  She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained:
"One of your helpless clinging women.  In my experience that sort does
incomparably the worst mischief."

"Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs.  Harry.

But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts
aloud.  "Going to sea, is he?  Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't do
better.  The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and
at sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch your
name?"

"Hanmer, ma'am."

"Well, and isn't it so?"

"Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer.  "If ever your ladyship
had been in the Navy--"

"God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected.

"--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour,
ma'am."

"H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs.  Harry had done laughing.
"The child will not lack protection, of course.  Whether 'tis to their
credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience
for--er--obligations of this kind."


On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them,
Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing
the child off to sea.

"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it
appears, has no objection."

"She is not returning to Carolina by sea."

"No; but she can influence her husband.  I must have another talk with
her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife,
more than presentable.  One had hardly indeed looked to find such
natural good manners in this part of the world.  Her mother was a
Quakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I had
imagined to be against their principles.  She doesn't say 'thee' and
'thou' either."

"I heard her _tutoyer_ her husband."

"Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently,
"Harry is a lucky man.  When one thinks of the dreadful connections
these sailors are only too apt to form--though one cannot wholly blame
them, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I was
saying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child.
At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and
since he has this craze for salt water--curious he should resemble his
uncle in this rather than his father--one may almost call it
providential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have
shown a little more interest."

"In the child?  Why?"

"Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt
questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family,
remember.  He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself
out not a little--"

"I can believe _that_," said Diana brusquely.

"And it says much.  All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was very
far from being an exception.  I find the change in him significant of
much. . . . At the same time you have mixed enough in the world, dear,
to know that young men will be young men, and this sort of thing
happens, unfortunately."

"If, mamma, you suppose I bear Cousin Oliver any grudge because of this
child--"

"I am heartily glad to hear you say it.  There should be, with us women,
a Christian nicety in dealing with these--er--situations; in retrospect,
at all events.  A certain--disgust, shall we say?--is natural, proper,
even due to our sex: I should think the worse--very far the worse--of my
Diana did she not feel it.  But above all things, charity! . . . And let
me tell you, dear, what I could not have told at the time, but I think
you are now old enough to know that such an experience is often the best
cure for a man, who thereafter, should he be fortunate in finding the
right woman, anchors his affections and proves the most assiduous of
husbands.  This may sound paradoxical to you--"

"Dear mamma"--Diana hid a smile and a little yawn together--"believe me
it does not."

"Such a man, then," pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likely
to be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to--er--what I may
call the living consequence of his error."

"Why not say 'Dicky' at once, mamma, and have done with it."

"To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down the
general rule which Dicky illustrates.  A little gentle notice taken of
the child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, but
delicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned.
He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, _range_; but he is none
the less grateful for some assurance--"

Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to the
drawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question,
sudden and straight,--

"Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is _range_, as you call it?"

"My child, we have every reason to believe so."

"Then what do you make of this?"  The girl took up a small volume that
lay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother's
hands.

"Eh?  What?"  Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelled
out the title through her eyeglass.  "'Ovid'--he's Latin, is he not?
Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that--er--
tongue."

"I do not.  I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was next
to nothing.  But open the book, please, at the title-page."

"I see nothing.  It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature."
(Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books.  She looked upon them as
her lord's, and hers only in trust.)

"The title-page, I said.  You are staring at the flyleaf."

"Ah, to be sure--" Lady Caroline turned a leaf.  "Is this what you
mean?"  She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing.

"Read it."

The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned--in silence
and without well grasping its purport--the following effusion:--

Other maids make Love a foeman,
Lie in ambush to defeat him;
I alone will step to meet him
Valiant, his accepted woman.
Equal, consort in his car,
Ride I to his royal war.

Victims of his bow and targe,
Yet who toyed with lovers' quarrels,
Envy me my braver laurels!
Lord! thy shield of shadow large
Lift above me, shout the charge!

"Well?"

"I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline.  "It appears to be poetry
of a sort--probably some translation from the Latin author."

"You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?"

"H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed.

"Nothing else?"

"Dear, you speak in riddles."

"It _is_ a riddle," said Diana.  "Take the first letter of each line,
and read them down, in order."

"O, L, I, V, E, R  V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and lowered
her eyeglass.  "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence."

"_Did_ I say that?" asked Diana.

"But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps?
She was infatuated enough."

"It was not she," said Diana positively.

"_Somebody_ can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance."

"Ah, you too think of him?"

"As a clergyman--and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's--he
would be likely to know--"

"--And to tell?  You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him."



Chapter XI.


THE ESPIAL.


Ruth Josselin came down from the mountain to the stream-side, where, by
a hickory bush under a knoll, her mare Madcap stood at tether.
Slipping behind the bush--though no living soul was near to spy on her--
she slid off her short skirt and indued a longer one more suitable for
riding; rolled the discarded garment into a bundle which she strapped
behind the saddle; untethered the mare, and mounted.

At her feet the plain stretched for miles, carpeted for the most part
with short sweet turf and dotted in the distance with cattle, red in the
sunlight that overlooked the mountain's shoulder.  These were Farmer
Cordery's cattle, and they browsed within easy radius of a clump of elms
clustered about Sweetwater Farm.  Some four miles beyond, on the far
edge of the plain, a very similar clump of elms hid another farm,
Natchett by name, in like manner outposted with cattle; and these were
the only habitations of men within the ring of the horizon.

The afternoon sun cast the shadow of the mountain far across this plain,
almost to the confines of Sweetwater homestead.  A breeze descended from
the heights and played with Ruth's curls as she rested in saddle for a
moment, scanning the prospect; a gentle breeze, easily out-galloped.
Time, place, and the horse--all promised a perfect gallop; her own
spirits, too.  For she had spent the day's hot hours in clambering among
the slopes, battling with certain craggy doubts in her own mind; and
with the afternoon shadow had come peace at heart; and out of peace a
certain careless exultation.  She would test the mare's speed and enjoy
this hour before returning to Tatty's chit-chat, the evening lamp, and
the office of family prayer with which Farmer Cordery duly dismissed his
household for the night.

She pricked Madcap down the slope, and at the foot of it launched her on
the gallop.  Surely, unless it be that of sailing on a reach and in a
boat that fairly heels to the breeze, there is no such motion to catch
the soul on high.  The breeze met the wind of her flight and was beaten
by it, but still she carried the moment of encounter with her as a wave
on the crest of which she rode.  It swept, lifted, rapt her out of
herself--yet in no bodiless ecstasy; for her blood pulsed in the beat of
the mare's hoofs.  To surrender to it was luxury, yet her hand on the
rein held her own will ready at call; and twice, where Sweetwater brook
meandered, she braced herself for the water-jump, judging the pace and
the stride; and twice, with many feet to spare, Madcap sailed over the
silver-grey riband.

All the while, ahead of her, the mountain lengthened its shadow.
She overtook and passed it a couple of furlongs short of the homestead;
passed it--so clearly defined it lay across the pasture--with a firmer
hold on the rein, as though clearing an actual obstacle. . . . She was
in sunlight now.  Before her a wooden fence protected the elms and their
enclosure.  At the gate of it by rule she should have drawn rein.

She had never leapt a gate; had attempted a bank now and then, but
nothing serious.  Her success at the water-jumps tempted her; and the
mare, galloping with her second wind, seemed to feel the temptation
every whit as strongly.

In the instant of rising to it Ruth wondered what Farmer Cordery would