"Do I?"  The old man gave her in the old way certain details of his
health.  "But I'm betterin'.  Food's a blessin', however ye come
by it."

On a sudden, as she read his thought, the very tokens of health in his
face accused her . . . and, a moment since, she had been merely glad to
note them.

"Clothes too, ye'll say?  I don't set store by clothes, meself; but a
fine han'some quean they make of ye.  That's a mare, too!  Cost a
hundred guineas, I shouldn't wonder. . . . Well, an' how's the gentleman
keepin'?  Turned into a lord, you told us, in one o' your letters: that,
or something o' the sort."

"Then at any rate you have read my letters?"

"Why, to be sure.  My old eyes can't tackle 'em; but your mother reads
'em out, over an' over, an' I tell her what this an' that means, an' get
the sense into her head somehow."

"Take me to her."  Ruth signalled to the grooms, who came forward.
They were well-trained servants, recent imports from England, and Sir
Oliver had billeted them where they could hear no gossip of her history.
They had kept their distance with faces absolutely impassive while their
mistress kissed and chatted with this old man, and they merely touched
their hats, with a "Very good, miss," when she gave over the mare,
saying she would walk up to the cottage and rest for an hour.

"Oo-oof! the dear old smell!"  Ruth, before she turned, drew in a deep
breath of it.  There was no one near to observe and liken her, standing
there with blown tresses and wind-wrapt skirt on the edge of Ocean, to
the fairest among goddesses, the Sea-born.

She walked up the beach, the old man beside her.

"Ay: you reckernise the taste of it, I dessay.  But you'd not come back
to it, not you. . . . It must be nigh upon dinner: my belly still keeps
time like a clock.  M'ria shall cook us a few clams.  Snuffin' won't
bring it back like clams."  He chuckled, supposing he had made a joke.

Her mother had caught sight of them from the window where she sat as
usual watching the sea.  As they climbed the slope, picking their way
along loosely-piled wreckwood, she opened the door and stood at first
fastening a clean apron and then rubbing her palms up and down upon it,
as though they were sweaty and she would dry them before she shook
hands.

"That's so, M'ria!" the old man shouted cheerfully, as his eyes made out
the patch of white apron in the doorway.  "It's our Ruth, all right--
come to pay us a visit!"  He bawled it, at close quarters.  This was his
way of conveying intelligence to the crazed brain.

Mrs. Josselin, awed by her daughter's appearance--a little perhaps, by
her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine
dress (though this was simple enough--a riding suit of grey velvet, with
a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)--withdrew behind her back the
hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, smiling in a timid way.

It was horrible.  Ruth stretched out her arms lest in another moment her
mother should bob a curtsy.

"Mother--mother!"

She took the poor creature in her arms and held her, shivering a little
as she sought her lips; for Mrs. Josselin, albeit scrupulously clean,
had a trace of that strange wild smell that haunts the insane.  Ruth had
lived with it aforetime and ceased to notice it.  Now she recognised it,
and shivered.

"Surely, surely," said the mother as soon as the embrace released her.
"I always said you would come back, some day.  In wealth or in trouble,
I always told grandfather you would come back. . . . That hat, now--the
very latest I'll be bound. . . . And how is your good gentleman?"

"Mother!  Please do not call him that!"

"Why, you ha'n't quarrelled, ha' you?"

"Indeed, no."

"That's right." Mrs. Josselin nodded, looking extremely wise.
"Show a good face always, no matter what happens; and, with your looks
there's no saying what you can't persuade him to.  All the Pococks were
good-looking, though I say it who shouldn't: and as for the Josselins--"

"Sit down, mother," Ruth commanded.  She must get this over, and soon,
for it was straining at her heart.  "Sit down and listen to what I have
to tell.  Afterwards you shall get me something to eat; and while you
are dishing it--dear mother, you were always briskest about the
fireplace--we will talk in the old style."

"Surely, surely." Mrs. Josselin seated herself on the block-stool.

"You remember the promise?  In three years--and yesterday the three
years were up--I was to come back and report myself."

"Is it three years, now?  Time _do_ slip away!"

"The gel's right," corroborated old Josselin, pausing as he filled a
pipe.  "I remember it."

"This is what I have to report--Sir Oliver has asked me to marry him."

There was a pause.  "I dunno," said the old man sourly--and Ruth knew
that tone so well!  He always used it on hearing good news, lest he
should be mistaken for genial--"I dunno why you couldn' ha' told us that
straight off, without beatin' round the bush.  It's important enough."

"He has asked me to marry him, and I have said 'yes.'"

"What else _could_ ye say?"

"Of _course_ she said 'yes,' the darling!"  Mrs. Josselin clapped her
hands together, without noise.  "What did I ever say but that 'twas a
chance, if you used it?  But when is it to be?" she added, suspiciously.

"Very soon.  As soon as I please, in fact."

"You take my advice and pin him to it.  The sooner the better--eh,
darling?"

Ruth rose wearily.  "I see the pot boiling," she said with a glance at
the fireplace, "and I have been on horseback since seven o'clock.
Mother, won't you give me food, at least?  I am hungry as a hunter."

--But this was very nearly a fib.  She had been hungry enough, half an
hour ago.  Now her throat worked in disgust--not at the hovel and its
poverty; for these were dear--but at the thought that thus for three
years her dearest had been thinking of her.  It had been the home of
infinite mutual tolerance, of some affection--an affection not patent
perhaps--and for years it had been all she owned.  Now it lived on, but
was poisoned; the atmosphere of the humble place was poisoned, and
through her.

"Food?"--her mother rose.  "Food be sure, and a bed, deary: for you'll
be sleeping here, of course?"

"No.  I go on to Port Nassau; and thence in a few days to a lodging up
in the back country."

"Such a mare as she's ridin' too!" put in the old man.

"I wouldn' put up at Port Nassau, if I was you," said her mother pausing
as she made ready to lift the pot-handle.  "They won't know what you've
told us, and they'll cast up the old shame on you."

"M'ria ha'n't talked so sensible for days," said the old man.
"Joy must ha' steadied her. . . . Clams, is it?  Clams, I hope."


The meal over, Ruth took leave of them, reproaching herself for her
haste, though troubled to have delayed the grooms so long.

She mounted and rode forward thoughtfully.

The grooms did not wear the Vyell white and scarlet, but a sober livery
of dark blue.  Between more serious thoughts Ruth wondered if any one in
Port Nassau would recognise her.

The hostess of the Bowling Green did not, but came to the door and
dropped curtsies to her, as to a grand lady.  She startled Ruth,
however, by respectfully asking her name.

Ruth, who had forgotten to provide against this, had a happy
inspiration.

"I am Miss Ruth," she said.

The landlady desired to be informed how to spell it.  "For," said she,
"I keep a list of all the quality that honour the Bowling Green."

Ruth signed it boldly in the book presented, and ordered supper to be
brought to her room; also a fire to be lit.  She was given the same room
in which she had knelt to pull off Oliver Vyell's boots.

Whilst supper was preparing, in a panic lest she should be recognised
she tied her hair high and wound it with a rope of pearls--her lover's
first gift to her.  In her dress she could make little change.
The waggon following in her wake would be due to-morrow with her boxes;
but for to-night she must rely on the few necessaries of toilet the
grooms had brought, packed in small hold-alls at their saddle bows.

Her fears proved to be idle.  The meal was served by a small maid, upon
whom she once or twice looked curiously.  She wondered if the landlady
scolded her often.

After supper she sat a long while in thought over the fire, shielding
its heat from her with her hands.  They were exquisite hands, but once
or twice she turned them palms-uppermost, as though to make sure they
bore no scars.



Chapter III.


NESTING.


She spent a week in Port Nassau, recognised by none.  She walked its
streets, her features half hidden by a veil; and among the Port
Nassauers she passed for an English lady of quality who, by one of those
freaks from which the wealthy suffer, designed to rent or build herself
a house in the neighbourhood.  Her accent by this time was English; by
unconscious preference she had learnt it from her lover, translating and
adapting it to her own musical tones.  It deceived the Port Nassauers
completely.

She visited many stores, always with a manservant in attendance; and,
always paying down ready-money, bought of the best the little town could
afford (but chiefly small articles of furniture, with some salted
provisions and luxuries such as well-to-do skippers took to sea for
their private tables).  The waggon had arrived; it, too, contained a
quantity of wine and provisions, camp furniture, clothes, etc.

At the end of the week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two
men escorting her, the laden waggon following.  They climbed the hill
above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula,
travelling north and by west.  The road--a passably good one--led them
across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line
of forest trees topping its farther ridge.  This was the fringe of a
considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the
shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, with here
and there glimpses of a broad plain below, and of a broad-banded river
winding through it with many loops.

But these glimpses were rare, and a stranger could not guess the extent
of the plain until, stepping from the forest into broad day, he found
himself on the very skirts of it.

An ample plain it was; a grass ground of many thousand acres, where
fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers
laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring
launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and
wading-boots.  For in winter one sheet of water--or of ice, as it might
happen--covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many
brooks that threaded their way to her.  But at this season they ran low
between their banks and the eye easily traced their meanderings, while
the main stream itself rolled its waters in full view--in places three
hundred yards wide, and seldom narrower than one hundred.  Dwarf willows
fringed it: at some distance back from the shore, alders and reddening
maples dotted the meadows, with oaks here and there, and everywhere wild
cranberry bushes in great moss-like hummocks.

It ran sluggishly, and always--however long the curve--up to its near or
right bank the plain lay flat, or broken only by these hummocks.
But from the farther shore the ground rose at a moderate slope, and here
were farmhouses and haystacks planted above reach of the waters.
A high ridge of forest backed this inhabited terrace, and dense forest
filled the eastward gap through which the river passed down to these
levels from the cleft hills.

At one point on the farther shore the houses had drawn together in a
cluster, and towards this the road ran in a straight line on the raised
causeway that had suffered much erosion from bygone floods.  It cost the
travellers an hour to reach the river-bank, where a ferry plied to and
from the village.  It was a horse-boat, but not capable of conveying the
waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in
parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay.
Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and
rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her
lodging, some two miles up the stream.  The house stood beside a more
ancient ferry, now disused, to which it had formerly served as a tavern.
It rested on stout oaken piles driven deep into the river-mud; a notable
building, with a roof like the inverted hull of a galleon, pierced with
dormer windows and topped by a rusty vane.  Its tenants were a childless
couple--a Mr. and Mrs. Strongtharm: he a taciturn man of fifty, a born
naturalist and great shooter of wildfowl; she a douce woman, with eyes
like beads of jet, and an incurable propensity for mothering and
spoiling her neighbours' children.

The couple received her kindly, asking few questions.  Their dwelling
was by many sizes too large for them, and she might have taken her
choice among a dozen of the old guest-chambers.  But Sir Oliver
had come and gone a month before and selected the best for her.
Its roof-timbers, shaped like the ribs of a ship, curved outwards and
downwards from a veritable keelson; and it was reached by way of a
zig-zagging corridor, lit by port-holes, and adorned in every niche and
corner with cases of stuffed wildfowl.  Ruth supped well on game Mr.
Strongtharm's gun had provided, and slept soundly, lulled between her
dreams by the ripple of water swirling between the piles that supported,
far below her, the house's cellarage.

She awoke at daybreak to the humming of wind; and looked forth on a
leaden sky, on the river ruffled and clapping in small waves against a
shrill north-easter, and on countless birds in flocks rising from the
meadows and balancing their wings against it.  Before breakfast-time the
weather had turned to heavy rain.  But this mattered nothing; she had a
day's work indoors before her.

She spent the morning in unpacking the stores, which had arrived late
overnight from the ferry, and in putting a hundred small touches to her
bedroom and sitting-room, to make them more habitable.  By noon she had
finished the unpacking, and dismissed the two grooms to make their way
back to Boston and report that all was well with her.  It rained until
three in the afternoon; and then, the weather clearing, she saddled
Madcap with her own hands and rode to the edge of the forest.
Little light remained when she reached its outskirts, and she peered
curiously between the dim boles for a few minutes before turning for her
homeward ride.  She had brought a beautiful scheme in her head, and the
forest was concerned in it; but for the moment, in this twilight, the
forest daunted her.  She had--for she differed from most maidens--left
her lover to arrange all the business of the marriage ceremony,
stipulating only that it must be private.  But she had at the same time
bound him by a lover's oath that all details of the honeymoon must be
left to her; that he should neither know where and how it was to be
spent, nor seek to enquire.  She would meet him at the church porch in
the village below--in what garb, even, she would not promise; and after
the ceremony he must be ready to ride away with her--she would not
promise whither.

Her project had been to build a camp far in the woods; and to this end
she had made her many purchases in Port Nassau.  They included, besides
an array of provisions and cooking-pots, a hunter's tent such as the
backwoodsmen used in their expeditions after beaver and moose.
It weighed many pounds, and a part of her problem was how to convey it
to any depth of the forest unaided.

The easterly gale blew itself out.  The next morning broke with rifts of
blue, and steadied itself, after two hours, to clear sunshine.
She awoke in blithe spirits, and after breakfast went off without waste
of time to saddle Madcap.  By the stable door she found Mr. Strongtharm
seated and polishing his gun, and paused to catechise him on the forest
tracks, particularly on those leading up through Soldier's Gap--by which
name he called the gorge at the head of the plain.

"The best track beyond, you'll find, lies pretty close 'longside the
river," he said.  "But 'tis no road for the mare.  I doubt if a mule
could manage it after the third mile.  The river, you see, comes through
in a monstrous hurry--by the look of it here you'd never guess.
No, indeed, 'tisn't a river at all, properly speakin', but a whole heap
o' streams tumblin' down this-a-way, that-a-way, out o' the side
valleys; and what you may call the main river don't run in one body, but
breaks itself up considerable over waterfalls.  Rock for the most part,
an' pretty steep, with splashy ground below the falls.  I han't been
right up the Gap these dozen years; an' a man's job it is at the best--a
two days' journey.  The las' time I slept the night, goin' an' comin',
in Peter Vanders' lodge."

"A lodge?"

"That's what they call it.  He was a trapper, and a famous one, but
before my time; an' that was his headquarters--a sort o' cabin, pretty
stout, just by the head in the sixth fall, or maybe 'tis the seventh--
I forget.  He lived up there without wife or family--"  Mr. Strongtharm
would have launched into further particulars about the dead trapper,
whose skill and strange habits had passed into a legend in the valley.
But Ruth wished to hear more of the cabin.

"It's standin', no doubt, to this day.  Vanders was a Dutchman, an'
Dutchmen build strong by nature.  The man who built _this_ yer house was
a Dutchman, an' look at the piles of it--_an_ the ribs you may ha'
noticed.  Ay, the lodge will be there yet; but you'll never find it, not
unless I takes ye.  That fourth fall is a teaser."

Ruth saddled her mare, and rode off in the direction of the gap,
thoughtfully.  Mr. Strongtharm had given her a new notion. . . .


It was close upon nightfall when she returned.  She was muddy, but
cheerful; and she hummed a song to herself in her chamber as she slid
off her mired garments and attired herself for supper.

That song was her nesting song.  Away Boston-wards, her lover, too, was
building in his magnificent fashion; but Ruth had found a secret place,
such as birds love, and shyly, stealthily as a mating bird, she set
about planning and furnishing.  It is woman's instinct. . . . Every day,
as soon as breakfast was done, she saddled and rode towards the Gap, and
always with a parcel or two dangling from the saddle-bow or strapped
upon Madcap's back.

For the first time in her life she had money to handle; money furnished
by Sir Oliver to be spent at her own disposal on the honeymoon.
It seemed to her a prodigious sum, but she was none the less economical
with it.  I fear that sometimes she opened the bags and gloated over the
coins as over a hoard.  She was neither miser nor spendthrift; but
unlike many girls brought up in poverty, she brought good husbandry to
good fortune.

Yet "shopping"--to enter a store and choose among the goods for sale,
having money to pay, but weighing quality and price--was undeniably
pleasant.  Twice or thrice, bethinking her of some trifle overlooked at
Port Nassau, she enjoyed visiting the village store--it boasted but
one--and dallying with a purchase.

She was riding back from one of these visits--it had been (if the Muse
will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins--when, half-way
up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching.  An instant
later she recognised Mr. Trask.

There was really nothing strange in her meeting him here.  Mr. Trask
owned a herd of bullocks, and had ridden over from Port Nassau to
bargain for their winter fodder.  He had not aged a day.  His horse was
a tall grey, large-jointed, and ugly.

Ruth wore a veil, but it was wreathed just now above the brim of her
hat.  Her first impulse was to draw it over her face, and her hand went
up; but she desisted in pride, and rode by her old enemy with a calm
face.

They passed one another, and she believed that he had not recognised
her; but after a few paces she heard him check his horse.

"Hi, madam!"

She halted, and he came slowly back.

"You are Ruth Josselin," he said.

"I am, sir."

"And what are you doing here?"

She smiled at him a little scornfully.  "Do you ask as a magistrate,
sir, or in curiosity?"

He frowned, narrowing his eyes.  "You are marvellously changed.
You appear prosperous.  Has Vyell married you yet?"

"No, sir."

"Nor as yet cast you off, it would seem."

"No, sir."

"Ah, well, go your ways.  You are a beautiful thing, but evil; and I
would have saved ye from it.  I whipped ye, remember."

Her face burned, but she held her eyes steady on him.  "Mr. Trask," she
said, "do you believe in hell?"

"Eh?"  He was taken aback, but he could not frown away the question; for
she asked it with a certain authority, albeit very courteously.  "Eh?
To be sure I do."

"I am going to prove to you (and some day you may take comfort from it)
that, except on earth, there is no such place."

"Ye'd like to believe that, I daresay!"

"For you see," she went on, letting the sneer pass, "it is agreed that,
if there be a hell, none but the wicked go there."

"Well?"

"Why, then, hell must defeat itself.  For, where all are wicked
together, no punishment can degrade, because no shame is felt."

"There's the pain, madam."  He eyed her, and barked it in a short,
savage laugh.  "The torment--the worm that dies not, the fire that's not
quenched.  Won't these content ye, bating the shame?"

Her eyes answered his in scorn.  "No, sir.  Because I once suffered your
cruelty, you have less understanding than I; but you have more ingenuity
than the Almighty, being able, in your district, to make a hell of
earth."

"You blaspheme thus to me, that honestly tried to save your soul?"

"Did you? . . . Well, perhaps you did in your fashion, and you may take
this comfort for reward.  Believe me, who have tried, hell is
bottomless, but in its own way.  Should ever you attain to it--and there
may in another world be such a place for the cruel--go down boldly; and
it may be you will drop through into bliss."

"You, to talk of another world!" he snapped.

"And why not, Mr. Trask?  Once upon a time you killed me."

He turned his grey horse impatiently.  "I whipped ye," was his parting
shot.  "If 'twarn't too late, I'd take pleasure to whip ye again!"



Chapter IV.


THE BRIDEGROOM.


Mr. Trask had not concluded the bargain for his winter fodder.
Just a week later he rode over from Port Nassau, to clinch it, and had
almost reached the foot of the descent to the river meadows when a
better mounted rider overtook him.

"Ah!" said the stranger, checking his horse's stride as he passed.
"Good-morning, Mr. Trask!  But possibly you do not remember me?"

"I remember you perfectly," answered Mr. Trask.  "You are Sir Oliver
Vyell."

"Whom, once on a time, you sentenced to the stocks.  You recall our last
conversation?  Well, I bear you no malice; and, to prove it, will ask
leave to ride to the ferry with you.  You will oblige me?  I like
companionship, and my one fellow-traveller--a poor horseman--I have left
some way behind on the road."

"I have no wish to ride with you, Sir Oliver," said Mr. Trask stiffly.
"Forbye that I consider ye a son of Belial, I have a particular quarrel
with you.  At the time you condescend to mention, I took it upon me to
give you some honest advice--not wholly for your own sake.  You flouted
it, and 'that's nothing to me' you'll say; but every step we take
worsens that very sin against which I warned ye, and therefore I want
none of your company."

"Honest Mr. Trask," Sir Oliver answered with a laugh.  "I put it to you
that, having fallen in together thus agreeably, we shall make ourselves
but a pair of fools if one rides ahead of the other in dudgeon.  Add to
this that the ferry-man, spying us, will wait to tide us over together;
and add also, if you will, that I have the better mount and it lies in
my will that you shall neither lag behind nor outstrip me.  Moreover,
you are mistaken."

"I am not mistaken.  This day week I met Ruth Josselin and had speech
with her."

"Satisfactory, I hope?"

"It was not satisfactory; and if I must ride with you, Sir Oliver,
you'll understand it to be under protest.  You are a lewd man.  You have
taken this child--"

Here Mr. Trask choked upon speech.  Recovering, he said the most
unexpected thing in the world.

"I am not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in
me to pity her the more for her comeliness.  But as a matter of fact I
do."

Sir Oliver stared at him.  "_You_ to pity her!  _You_ to plead her
beauty to _me_, who took it out of the mud where you had flung her,
mauled by you and left to lie like a bloody clout!"

But the armour of Mr. Trask's self-righteousness was not pierced.
"I sentenced her," he replied calmly, "for her soul's welfare.
Who said--what right have you to assume--that she would have been left
to lie there?  Rather, did I not promise you in the market-square that,
her chastening over, my cart should fetch her?  Did I not keep my word?
And could you not read in the action some earnest that the girl would be
looked after?  Your atheism, sir, makes you dull in spiritual
understanding."

"I am glad that it does, sir."

"If your passion for Ruth Josselin held an ounce of honesty, you would
not be glad; for even in this world you have ruined her."

"Mr. Trask, I have not."

Mr. Trask glanced at him quickly.

"--Upon my honour as a gentleman I have not, neither do I desire
it . . . Sir, twice in this half-mile you have prompted me to ask,
What, here on this meadow, prevents my killing you?  Wait; I know your
answer.  You are a courageous man and would say that as a magistrate you
have schooled yourself to accept risks and to despise threats.  Yes,"
Sir Oliver admitted with a laugh, "you are an infernally hard nut to
crack, and somehow I cannot help liking you for it.  Are you spending
the night yonder, by-the-bye?"  He nodded towards the village.

"No, sir.  I propose returning this evening to Port Nassau."

"Then it is idle to invite you to my wedding.  I am to be married at
nine o'clock to-morrow."

Mr. Trask eyed him for a moment or two.  Then his gaze wandered ahead to
the river, where already the ferrymen had caught sight of them and were
pushing the horse-boat across with long sweeps; and beyond the river to
a small wooden-spired church, roofed with mossy shingles that even at
this distance showed green in the slant sunlight.

"Yonder?" he asked.

"Ay: you would have been welcome."

"I will attend," said Mr. Trask.  "A friend of mine--a farmer--will
lodge me for the night.  A hospitable man, who has made the offer a
score of times.  After so many refusals I am glad of an excuse for
accepting."

"I stipulate that you keep the excuse a secret from him.  It is to be
quite private.  That," said Sir Oliver, turning in saddle for a look
behind him, "is one of my reasons for outriding my fellow-traveller."

"The clergyman?"

"Ay . . . To-morrow, maybe, you'll admit to having misjudged us."

"Maybe," Mr. Trask conceded.  "I shall at any rate thank God,
provisionally.  He is merciful.  But I have difficulty in believing that
any good can come of it."



Chapter V.


RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.


She had left it all to him, receiving his instructions by letter.
It was to be quite private, as he had told Mr. Trask.  She would ride
down to the village in her customary grey habit, as though on an early
errand of shopping.  He would lodge overnight at the Ferry Inn, and be
awaiting her by the chancel step.  Afterwards--ah, that was her secret!
In this, their first stage in married life, he had promised--reversing
the marriage vow--to obey.

Happiness bubbled within her like a spring; overshadowed by a little
awe, but not to be held down.  Almost at the last moment she must take
Mrs. Strongtharm into her confidence.  She could not help it.

"Granny," she whispered.  (They were great friends.) "I am to be married
to-morrow."

"Sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Strongtharm, peering at her, misdoubting that
she jested.

But Ruth's face told its own tale.  "May I?" asked the elder woman, and
her arm went about the girl's waist.  "God bless ye, dear, and send ye a
long family!  Who's the gentleman?  Not him as came an' took the rooms
for ye?  He said you was a near relation o' his. . . . Well, never mind!
The trick's as old as Abram."

"Be down at the church at nine to-morrow, and you shall see him, whoever
he is.  But it is a secret, and you are not to tell Mr. Strongtharm."

"Oh!" said Mrs.  Strongtharm.  "_Him!_"


"But you ought to make _some_ difference," whispered the good woman next
morning, after breakfast, as she was preparing to slip away to the
village.  "Be it but a flower in your bodice.  But we've no garden, and
the season's late."

Ruth took her kiss of benediction.  She was scarcely listening; but the
words by a strange trick repeated themselves on her brain a few minutes
later, upstairs, as she went about her last preparations.

She leaned out at the lattice over the river.  A lusty creeper, rooted
in _terra firma_ at the back of the house, had pushed its embrace over
west side and front.  The leaves, green the summer through, were now