Chapter I: Betrothal

On a day in high summer the valley was full of light, and Auna River, her moorland journey ended, bowed under a plantation of pine and fir, then sparkled forth, to learn what welcome awaited her in the lower lands. Above the stream, easterly, a green hill towered against the sky; stunted thorns broke the sweep of the eagle fern, grey rock clitters spread and cloud shadows drifted over all, to cool the brightness.

A wood massed beneath in the mouth of the vale, and from this dusky retreat there leapt the river, in a succession of planes broken at each little fall by an apron of granite. Here the ripples flashed with foam; here the blue of the sky was caught in the gliding surface between, where Auna's tresses twined soberly, and fern, heather, woodrush cast their reflections into her tremorous mirror.

Two stone shelves presently barred the waterway and, leaping one, the river made a circular sweep above the second and eddied in a little backwater. The later ledge was gentle and its steps sloped to three feet above the stream. It was fringed with herbage and flowers, and here Auna loitered, making shadows for fingerling trout to play in. Through the limpid crystal there shone agate and amber tones of rock and pebble beneath; and these warm colours were repeated in the tunic, breeches and gaiters of a girl who sat above the pool.

Round her thronged a dozen lesser lives, that wove a restless, ruddy pattern about her feet, in her lap and upon her shoulders. Girl and puppies completed the harmony and made a splash of rich, auburn light beside the river. The Irish terriers kept on the move about their kennel-maid and seemed to flow over her, as the stream flowed over the stones. They nuzzled her cheeks, licked her fingers, thrust their noses into the black hair coiled up under her cap. She was a slim, brown girl with grey eyes, that seemed large for her small features, and a pretty, yielding mouth. She was tall and of maidenly slimness; her little breasts moved under the light garments that she wore; she laughed and played with the puppies; but a deeper joy than they could give lighted her face.

"Leave me alone, my chicks!" she said, and pushed them away from her with both hands. They scattered, tugging and tumbling; then, while the girl tidied her hair and stilled her laughter, the puppies set up their infant barking; and she knew that somebody must be upon the by-road that ran parallel with the stream.

She rose, jumped over the narrow neck of the pool and joined the man who was coming up the valley. The puppies already swarmed round his heels.

"Could you get it?" she asked, and the man held up a large tin.

"Just in time," he answered. "They were starting off with the cream to Brent, but Mr. Winter spared me a pound."

"Are they settling in pretty clever?"

"Yes; they're getting straight."

Jacob Bullstone stood half a foot taller than the girl and was fifteen years older. Now a great thing had happened to him, and, at thirty-five, one whom his neighbours declared would remain a bachelor was in love with his kennel-maid and engaged to be married. He owned varied possessions and, thanks to an industrious and prosperous father, inherited some fortune. Two farms were his property in the lap of Ugborough Beacon, at the foothills of the moor a few miles from his home; while here, beside the river behind the pine wood, he dwelt with his widowed mother and pursued the business dearest to his own heart.

Bullstone bred a famous strain of red Irish terriers and sustained the reputation that his father had won before him. He was a man of good education, great energy and high principle, and he lived a narrow life. He had never roamed, but found his intelligence and spirit of enquiry satisfied in his native environment of moor and vale, comfortable state and interesting occupation. He did not guess that his outlook was limited, for he had been educated at a grammar school and thought himself to possess clearer wits than most of his neighbours. The fact, together with his prosperity, made him satisfied with his own accomplishments and wits. His old mother did nothing to modify his self-judgment; but none ever found the man unfriendly or puffed up, for he was of a kindly, generous disposition, did good things and held it no fault in another to differ from his opinions.

Love, however, opened Jacob's mind to a lack in himself that he had not suspected. He still felt timid and distrustful before the depths of ignorance revealed by his new emotions.

In person Jacob Bullstone was large and heavily modelled, with broad shoulders and a clean-cut, swarthy face. His eyes were dark brown and of a sulky cast in repose, but the expression belied him. He had a low, wide forehead, a square jaw and heavy chin. He shaved clean and his mouth was large and well shaped. He kept his black hair so short that the lines of his skull were clearly seen. It sloped rather steeply backward from the brow and bulged a little above his small ears.

He was hatless and clad in tawny tweeds with black leggings and a dirty, red waistcoat. He walked with a long stride, that he was now taming to go with Margery Huxam's footsteps, and for adornment he wore his father's gold signet-ring on the little finger of his left hand and the silver mask of a fox in his green tie.

The lovers proceeded together deep in their own concerns, for they had been betrothed a week; the startling news was known at Margery's home in Brent, four miles away down the valley, and to-day her parents and her brother were coming to the kennels, that they might dine with Mr. Bullstone and his mother.

The cream from Shipley Farm was for them.

Margery Huxam had turned kennel-maid for love of the life and not because any reason existed that she should earn her own living. Barlow Huxam, her father, kept the post-office at Brent as an addition to his own prosperous drapery establishment. He had but two children living, and Margery, who adored dogs and understood them, came to Red House, Jacob Bullstone's home, that she might fill the vacancy until he should be suited with a new assistant.

The families were long acquainted and Mr. Huxam, little dreaming that such a great matter would spring from the incident, raised no objection to his daughter's wish.

She came for a fortnight in friendship, but liked the work so well that she presently proposed to stop on at a salary; and since she had proved herself skilled and had won the affection of old Mrs. Bullstone and Jacob's head kennel-man, he was glad to secure her.

Her parents, however, protested and, after six months, began to agitate for the return of their only daughter; but when Judith Huxam demanded that Margery should come home again, the dog-breeder had discovered that his future happiness depended upon her.

Their courting, at first almost unconscious, proceeded quickly towards the finish, for man and woman were of a mind, and though a gap of fifteen years separated them and made Bullstone fearful when he found the truth, circumstances combined to diminish this disparity, for the girl had been bred in a puritanical home under a strenuous mother, who regarded happiness at best as doubtful. Margery's experience of young men was exceedingly limited and, to her, Jacob's sobriety, steadfast outlook and fixed opinions were more attractive than the happy-go-lucky attitude of her own generation. She loved him very heartily before he had given a gleam that he also was in love; but her emotion had been of a gentle pattern and thrust away with secret blushes as something near akin to wickedness. She felt a gulf was fixed between such an important, well-to-do man and her young self. Indeed she did not even suffer, but rather laughed at herself for her moonshiney dreams. Then came the evidence from the other side and she was overwhelmed to find her power over one regarded as unyielding before women. He approached her with humility, declared genuine pride and satisfaction on the discovery of her love, rejoiced to learn that he seemed not too old to her and instantly acquainted her parents with the fact that she had consented to wed him.

Barlow Huxam declared gratification, but his wife was not so well pleased.

The match, while in every respect a brilliant one and beyond what they might have hoped for Margery, found her mother in some doubt. She suspected that fifteen years was too great a difference of age; and she professed uncertainty concerning the past life of a bachelor of thirty-five. She did not know anything against Bullstone, or his parents before him; she could not name the quality of her suspicions, yet she questioned Margery very closely and warned her of the step that she designed. But no permanent cloud appeared and Jacob conducted himself in a manner to disarm Mrs. Huxam; for his views of matrimony satisfied her and he proposed a settlement that could only be regarded as generous. In this matter, however, Barlow Huxam was not behind his future son-in-law.

Twice on Sundays the lover brought Margery to her family, and twice he worshipped with them at their tabernacle. His behaviour was agreeable to Mrs. Huxam and her doubts finally dwindled.

To-day, while Margery and Jacob walked side by side towards Red House, nestling under a shoulder of the hill behind the pine woods, the girl's parents and her brother were already upon their way, tramping through shady lanes upward through the valley to Shipley Bridge.

"I'd best change into a petticoat before they come," said Margery. "Mother little likes my breeches, and thanks God I shan't wear 'em much longer."

"I feel the same," said the man. "You know I'm at you to doff them once for all."

"I love 'em," she declared. "I'll miss them cruel. You courted me while I was in 'em, and I shall put them on now and again--for luck. Petticoats slow your going and be tame after breeches."

"'T was never heard that man and wife both wore 'em," he said.

They passed through the woods with the puppies galloping round about, and then they came to the stone-built home of the Bullstones--a granite house under red tiles, which covered the upper storey of the walls also. It basked under the hot sun in a hollow notch of Black Tor, while the river ran at its feet and a grass lawn spread before the windows. Above, on the hillside, were scooped terraces where grew cabbage and turnip, and beyond sprang the trees to the hill crest westerly. Laurel and rhododendron made the slope snug; the kennels extended behind the house, while Bullstone's property spread to the other side of the river also and there an acre or two had been cleared, where potatoes grew in the rich alluvial. Fowls and ducks flourished at stream side and the link between Red House and the outlying cultivation was a bridge of pine logs thrown across Auna, where her banks rose high.

Everything about the place was neat, trim and stern. The hedges were clipt, the ground clean; for Jacob Bullstone's mother was an old-fashioned woman and had lived with a husband inspired by the same ideas.

"The highest beauty be tidiness," Mrs. Bullstone never wearied of declaring, and her son was content to echo that opinion. His home and its surroundings proclaimed the distinction of use, but none other. There were no flower beds, no attempt to decorate house, garden, or river. Indeed Auna was chastened by stone-built banks, until she passed southerly away to the rocks and rapids and the deep mossy pools, where Red House ducks and geese spent their pleasantest hours. Nature strove with man, but man conquered for a little space.

Mrs. Bullstone was at the door and repeated her son's directions, as she took the cream from him.

"Get up to your chamber and doff them clothes, Margery. I well know your mother don't hold with 'em and I hope you won't wear 'em no more."

"I'm kennel-maid a little longer, mother," replied the girl. Then she entered and Jacob conducted the puppies to their quarters. Behind the house was a large exercise yard, with open compartments wired off round about it, a boiler house for the preparation of food, and various buildings on two sides of the square. The red mothers of the puppies welcomed them back and the little things knew their parents. Separated dogs barked to Jacob from enclosures and pressed their noses through the bars; but all were of the same breed and to an untrained eye exactly resembled each other. Jacob accosted a few, then turned to a man who was mixing food.

"The goats are gone up Shipley Tor," he said. For goats were a feature of the establishment. A little flock was kept, since goats' milk in Bullstone's opinion was the primest food for new born dogs.

Barton Gill, though bald and wrinkled, was not so old as he looked. As a lad he had worked for Jacob's father and was now little more than fifty, though he appeared to be nearer seventy. He was slow of voice and gesture, but still was strong and hearty behind his wrinkles and somewhat pessimistic view of life.

"They goats be the bane of my days," he said, "and a time's coming when I shan't be able to keep pace with the toads."

Jacob laughed shortly.

"Must be grizzling--and you only in your full manhood, as we all know."

A mile away walked slowly Barlow Huxam and his wife, while Jeremy, their son, a lad of fifteen, loitered behind them, to play and fling stones; but he kept his parents in sight. Mr. Huxam, a solid fair man of five and forty, mopped his brow and declared that he must rest and grow cooler before proceeding.

"We ought to have hired Mr. Catt's little chaise as I ordained to do," he said. "'Tis drouthy weather and a thunder-storm promising for certain."

His wife, however, did not agree with him.

"You don't take enough foot exercise, Barlow. If you was to walk more, it wouldn't pour out of you same as it does. There's no thunder in the air, else my head would know it. We'll rest by the bridge since we're a thought before time."

Judith Huxam--a daughter of the prosperous race of the Pulleyblanks---was the same age as her husband. A dark-haired, neat woman was she, who put folk in mind of a bantam hen. Always trim, alert and self-possessed, character marked her face, voice and opinions. She was pious, with the piety of a generation now vanishing away, and also very proud; but she had the instinct to hide much of herself from the world, being seldom in her neighbour's houses and restrained in the matter of criticism. She was stern and never forgot a wrong; but she accepted everything that happened, because she held it her duty to do so. She ruled her husband and her children as a matter of course, and Mr. Huxam pretended greater enthusiasm for her bleak religion and opinions than he felt; but he entertained the keenest admiration for her and, if he ever differed from her conclusions, it was only in his mind. He never crossed Judith, but supported her rule in the home, as he had long since fallen in with her conduct of the shop. Her face was strong and her natural expression attractive, for she had a frank gaze and regular features. But her grey eyes were hard, and while a pleasant, receptive expression marked her features, her lips were set closely together. She never laughed and rarely smiled, save conventionally upon customers. She dressed in puritanical fashion and eschewed finery. Her dark brown hair was parted in the middle and curled up closely behind in a plain roll. She wore a small bonnet and always dressed in grey. Her voice was rather low pitched and of agreeable quality, but she spoke little save to the purpose. Indeed she distrusted volubility.

The drapery establishment reflected Judith, and young people rarely patronised it save for necessities. The maidens of Brent held that if you wanted clothes that wouldn't show, Huxam's might be sought; but for adornments, fripperies and "fal-lals," one must seek elsewhere.

At Shipley Bridge the road crossed the river half a mile below Red House; and here Mr. Huxam stopped, where, shaded by oak trees, there spread inviting herbage.

"We'll sit here on the spine grass for ten minutes while I cool down," he said.

He subsided, opened his waistcoat and dabbed his face, hands and neck with a white handkerchief, while Mrs. Huxam called her son, tidied him, made him dust his boots with a frond of fern and walk beside her for the rest of the way.

She looked at a gold watch on a thin gold chain, then paced to a gate a few yards distant and regarded the roof of a farm that rose under the flank of Shipley Tor.

"I wonder how Miss Winter and Adam and Samuel are settling in," she said. "A bit lonesome after Five Elms, and a poor place, so the last man always declared."

"The last man would have made a poor place of any place," answered her husband. "He was always clever at picking the eyes out of a farm and then leaving it for a better than himself to build up again. And so it will be here; but Winter's got it at a very low rent, and he's a worker and may do well. His zany brother's a mighty worker also. The Lord denied wits, but gave him a strong body."

Mrs. Huxam continued to regard the roof of Shipley Farm without speaking.

"He's a man who'll come to Sunday meeting no matter how long the way," declared Barlow Huxam hopefully.

"And his sister too. One of the Chosen her, if ever a woman was chose," answered his wife.

Then Jeremy raised a shout and ran over the bridge.

"Here's Margery!" he cried.

The kennel-maid had put on a blue skirt, a straw hat with a white ribbon and a plain white blouse. Mr. Huxam rose, while his daughter, having kissed her brother, now greeted her parents.

"You're hot, you dear," she said to Mr. Huxam; but he declared that he was now cool again.

They set out, Margery walking between her mother and father, Jeremy playing with an adult terrier who had accompanied her.

"I hope," said Mrs. Huxam, "that they've made no great meal on our account."

"They have then. We've got a sucking-pig!"

"A waste, and it ain't the weather for it anyway," declared Judith.

"It's always the weather for sucking-pig," said Mr. Huxam, "though seldom enough nowadays do any man let himself go in that direction. A dish for kings, and of such a tender substance that I've never known the day was too hot to enjoy it. But it asks for mastery in the kitchen. If I'd known, I'd have let Mrs. Bullstone have a recipe from my old mother's cookery book. Full of vanished wisdom that book."

"Fuller of vanished greediness," asserted his wife. "People thought more of their stomachs in them days; at least you Huxam people did. The Pulleyblanks----"

She stopped and called to Jeremy.

"Don't run no more--quiet down and walk along with me, boy."

Her eyes softened when they rested on her son.

A cool and refreshing shadow embraced them as they entered the pine wood; then their destination glinted red through the tree stems and Jacob Bullstone appeared to welcome them.

"Punctual to the stroke," he said.

"Them as keep a post-office don't fail there," declared Mr. Huxam. "And how's yourself, Jacob? Still of a mind?"

"So much of a mind that I don't want you people to be gone till Margery's named the day," answered the lover.

"Plenty of time for that," replied Margery's mother. "There's a lot to be thought upon."

Her eyes were everywhere. She had a trick to bend her head a little when she was observing, and now, herself unmarked, Judith took in a thousand incidents, regarded with approval the spotless purity of the place, its thrifty details of contrivance and the somewhat brusque and stark lines of the outlying ground and little grass-covered garden patch.

She had never been here before, but Red House was familiar to her husband.

Mrs. Bullstone appeared at the door and in five minutes the party sat at dinner. The parlour was a plain room with a solid table, solid chairs and a solid and enormous sideboard bright with cups and trophies won by Bullstone terriers. A few dog portraits hung upon the walls, and the empty grate was heaped with red pine cones. Jacob sat at the head of the table and his mother at the foot, while Margery and her father were on Bullstone's left, Mrs. Huxam and Jeremy upon the right.

The master devoted himself to his future mother-in-law.

"Margery favours you, ma'am," he said, "and Master Jeremy's like his father."

Judith considered the suggestion.

"I wouldn't say that altogether," she answered. "My children's more Huxam than Pulleyblank; but Thomas, my eldest boy--who died so brave doing his duty two years ago--he was very like me."

"The daps of his mother was our dear Thomas," added Barlow. Then he sighed.

"Thomas was all Pulleyblank, same as I am," continued Mrs. Huxam. "A good young man."

"A sad loss for you," said Mrs. Bullstone.

"No; don't think that. I'm not one of those who say, 'What Thou doest we know not now.' That's too grudging to the Lord. I know where Thomas went, and faith is but an idle word if it can't help you to face the Divine Will. When God sends for a young man, his mother ought to be gay and proud to let him go."

"No doubt, no doubt," murmured Mrs. Bullstone.

"Faith is a fine thing carried to such a pitch," admitted Jacob.

"Yes," assented Barlow Huxam, "but, all the same, when you think on the details of that fatal catastrophe, you feel bound to say, 'What Thou doest we know not now.' For look at it. What happened? Our Thomas sees a runaway hoss with a trap behind it, and a man and woman in the trap. And like the chap he was, without a thought of self, he goes for the creature's head. But he was carried off his legs in an instant moment, and though he stopped the hoss and saved the man and woman alive by so doing, the shaft struck him under the ribs and he lived but three hours afore he went to his reward. And who did he save? He saved Squire Blake's son and a scarlet woman he was driving to Plymouth; and Marsden Philip Blake was drunk as a lord at the time, else the badly used hoss wouldn't have run away."

"All true," said Judith quietly, "and to the common eye it will always be matter for wonder that Providence worked like that. But no wonder to me. Marsden Blake's not forgot. He was saved for a deep reason, and before we die, we shall know it."

"He was up here with the otter hounds last week," said Jacob Bullstone.

"Wait and watch," answered Mrs. Huxam. "Time will show why my Thomas was called to save that man. It won't be hid from this generation."

Barlow guided the conversation into cheerfuller channels and praised the sucking-pig; but he declined the decanter of brown sherry.

"All water drinkers," he said.

"Same here," answered Jacob. "I only bought it on your account."

Mr. Huxam regarded the wine without condemnation.

"Very good to go with such a rare dish," he admitted, "but my family were never much addicted to it, and Pulleyblanks were famous teetotallers always--though great on tea."

"I don't remember that we were great on tea," said Judith. "Who was great on tea, Barlow?"

Mr. Huxam never argued with his wife.

"I'm mistook then," he answered. "I had a fancy your grandmother doted on it, but no doubt I'm wrong."

"She liked the old herby tea made of marjoram," answered Mrs. Huxam.

"And a very pretty drink too," chimed in Jacob's mother. "I'm old enough to remember it, and I've often had a mind to store marjoram; but I dare say now it would seem very weak after proper China tea."

"My mother loves tea; and I'm all for cider," said Bullstone, "but Margery won't touch even that."

"And never will," promised Mrs. Huxam. "Cider's too often the thin end of the wedge. I've known it happen so. No young man stops at cider."

Judith was quite silent for a considerable time after this remark, and their talk ranged over various subjects.

Jacob felt not sanguine for his new neighbour.

"Adam Winter's making a mistake," he said, "and hardly a man that can afford to make another by all accounts. A very honest chap they tell me, but too trustful. No good ever come out of Shipley Farm--else I dare say I'd have bought it before now; but my father always warned me against it. I shall lend Winter a hand if it lies in my power, however."

After dinner Mrs. Bullstone led the way to her little drawing-room and she and Margery's mother spent half an hour together. It was an apartment seldom used and impregnated with that faint smell common to chambers not much occupied. The furniture was ugly and solid--a suite upholstered in Cambridge blue. Adornments of coloured glass occupied the mantelshelf, a case of gaudy stuffed birds stood on a bracket, and another of waxen fruits filled the midst of a round and highly polished walnut table in the centre of the room. A few books were disposed round the central decoration, and upon a little "what-not" reposed tropical shells. Elsewhere, as the chief feature of a sideboard with a looking-glass back, a large and heavy book with gilt edges reposed upon a red wool mat, while a smaller book lay upon the big one.

Mrs. Huxam observed these two books and her eyes narrowed; but she said nothing.

They chatted concerning their betrothed children, and each implicitly indicated that the other mother might consider herself fortunate. Then, apparently conscious that this attitude was exhausted, Jacob's parent began to praise Margery and declared her to be a good and attractive girl, well suited by her nature to her future husband and by her nurture to the varied duties and obligations of married life.

Judith listened, but it was characteristic of her that when others echoed her opinion, she generally began to modify it, and now, even in the matter of her daughter, she put a period to the elder's praises.

"We mustn't be blind, however," she said. "I think with you that there's great virtues in Margery, and I've watched her grow up and done my best to build her character; but she's not perfect: there's a full share of Huxam. The Huxam qualities are there--good as well as bad. And the good you've noted very clever, and I hope the bad won't have any chance to display themselves. Yet that's a vain hope, too, because the Tempter always takes very good care that life shall strike at the roots of our weakness sooner or later, and touch the danger spots."

"And what might they be, Mrs. Huxam?"

"A tendency to take the line of least resistance. We're all prone to take it, but I hope your son doesn't. In my experience I find that nine times out of ten, when two courses of action offer, nature, which is our weakness, points one way; and religion, which is our strength, points another. And religion's way is almost certain to be the unpleasant one--so certain, in fact, that you may lay it down as a rule the right way is always the one you shrink from."

"Well, I much hope they won't have no difficult and painful puzzles to solve like that," said Mrs. Bullstone. "At any rate at first. If they get used to each other and face life in love and understanding, then troubles, when they come, will no doubt be met in a large, Christian spirit by both, with love to lessen 'em. But I don't fear. There was only one sort of woman I wouldn't much have liked for Jacob, and that's the light-minded sort--not the bad sort, but just the light-minded, pleasure-seeking kind of woman, who can't see that marriage is a serious subject, but flits after amusement where she may, and takes the whole solemn business of life and death as though it didn't matter to her, no more than it does to a butterfly without a soul to save."

"There are plenty such, I grant," said Judith; "and the men that hanker after that empty sort deserve what they get."

"Lord knows what anybody deserves," confessed Mrs. Bullstone. "The older you grow, the doubtfuller you be bound to get about rewards and punishments, for whatever bounds the young break nowadays, they must keep inside their characters; and to punish for wickedness they can't help be, in honesty, no fairer than to reward for goodness that comes natural. However, I know you won't see with me there, because, in your Persuasion, your text is 'Many be called, but few chosen.'"

"And don't life show the text to be true?" asked Mrs. Huxam. "Don't we see the many fail and the few succeed?"

"Leave that. I'm talking of Jacob and saying how glad I am that he never cared for the wenches who put their pleasure first. My son has had nothing to do with women, and you may say, till your Margery won his heart with her beauty and simple, fine nature and, of course, her worship of the dog kind--for dogs draw folk together in a way no other beasts can--till then, Jacob's been heart-whole and come to thirty-five without knowing the meaning of love. So it's all poured out for Margery; and that's why I'm telling you I feel it a great blessing she's one of the self-contained, sober sort--not a gadabout or hungry for admiration. For if she had been, my son wouldn't have liked it. His admiration she'll get and keep for ever; but, if I know anything, I should say he might be a jealous man and greedy as the grave in that direction."

"I don't quarrel with that," answered Margery's mother. "Jealousy--so to call it--ought to be there in reason. But no sane woman seeks to provoke it. He'll have no cause for that, and I hope my daughter won't neither."

They talked amicably and found themselves in agreement, allowing for the difference of their outlook and convictions. Judith perceived that Mrs. Bullstone was honestly and deeply attached to her daughter, and her study of Jacob led her to hope that he might furnish the strength and force of character she held Margery to lack. Yet, within this hour, a thing had much disquieted her. It was not very great in itself, but argued faults in a vital direction--so Judith feared.

The men called them out, and together all visited the kennels and listened to Jacob expatiate on the subject of his Irish terriers. Neither Barlow nor his wife liked dogs, but they were patient under the ordeal.

Presently they walked beside the river and, after an early tea, the Huxams started to return home. Mr. Bullstone offered to drive them, but Mrs. Huxam declined and held the exercise would do her husband good. Margery and Jacob accompanied them as far as Shipley Bridge; then they parted, and while the lovers loitered by the river, Margery's family proceeded homeward.

Judith preserved silence and her husband respected it. She had not spoken so much for a long time. They walked through the gracious evening light now roseal on the fields and hedges. The slow miles passed and still Mrs. Huxam spoke not.

Then Barlow lifted his voice as Brent appeared beneath them, stretched like a grey cobweb on the green vale.

"All gone off very nice and pleasant--eh? You've seen and heard nought that wasn't convenient, Judy?"

"I've heard nothing, allowing for the difference between our clear sight and the cloudy view of other Christians," she answered. "Nothing I've heard, but something I've seen that was very ill-convenient indeed, and I'm sorry I did see it."

"Dear me--I'm sorry, too, then," answered he. "Nothing as can't be righted, I hope?"

"The thing can be righted," she answered, "and for that matter I did right it with my own hand; but the fault that committed the thing goes far deeper. It was in the parlour, where I sat with Mrs. Bullstone. And a very nice room too. And on a shelf lay the family Bible and upon it somebody had set another book!"

"Dear, dear," replied Mr. Huxam, displaying more concern than, as a reasonable being, he felt. "That's bad! You never did ought to put any other printed word on a Bible, of course."

"It's hard to think of a live Christian doing so. But he'd laid down a dog book on God's Word; and it went through me like a knife."

"It would; it would," murmured Barlow.

"I took it off before the man's mother. I said no word, but just took it off and put it aside and looked at her. She didn't seem to understand. I'll tell Margery on Sunday."

"More thoughtlessness than wickedness, I'm sure," ventured Mr. Huxam; but she continued to take a serious view.

"A man of thirty-five has no excuse for thoughtlessness," she answered. "It was indifference, and that makes it a very serious thing."

Meantime Jacob and Margery wandered till the stars sent them homeward. They assured each other that all had gone very well, and the girl declared how she had never seen her mother so bright, cheerful, or talkative.