ngs."

"She died when I was thirteen and Daniel three, and my father was very
unhappy."

"I didn't like your father a bit," Miriam said.

"He was a good man in his way, his uncomfortable way."

"Then I like them wickeder than that."

"It made him uncomfortable too, you know."

"If you're going to preach--"

He laughed. "I didn't mean to. I was only offering you the experience of
my maturity!"

"Well, I'm getting stiff and cold. Helen likes that kind of thing. Give
it to her while I get warm. Unless you'll lend me your shawl, Helen?"

"No, I won't."

"I must go too," said Zebedee, but he did not move and Helen did not
speak. His thoughts were on her while his eyes were on the dark line of
moor touching the sky; yet he thought less of her than of the strange
ways of life and the force which drew him to this woman whom he had
known a child so short a time ago. He wondered if what he felt were
real, if the night and the mystery of the moor had not bewitched him,
for she had come to him at night out of the darkness with the wind
whistling round her. It was so easy, as he knew, for a solitary being to
fasten eagerly on another, like a beaten boat to the safety of a buoy,
but while he thus admonished himself, he had no genuine doubt. He knew
that she was what he wanted: her youth, her wisdom, her smoothness, her
serenity, and the many things which made her, even the stubbornness
which underlay her calm.

Into these reflections her voice came loudly, calling him from the
heights.

"I do wish you wouldn't keep Eliza. She's a most unsuitable person to
look after you."

He laughed so heartily and so long that she sat up to look at him. "I
don't know what's amusing you," she said.

"It's so extraordinarily like you!"

"Oh!"

"And why don't you think her suitable?"

"From things Daniel has told me."

"Oh, Daniel is an old maid. She's ugly and disagreeable, but she
delivers messages accurately, and that's all I care about. Don't believe
all Daniel's stories."

"They worry me," she said.

"Do you worry about every one's affairs?" he asked, and feared she would
hear the jealousy in his voice.

"I know so few people, you see. Oughtn't I to?"

"I'm humbly thankful," he said with a light gravity.

"Then I'll go on. Aren't you lonely on Sundays in that house with only
the holly bush and the rowan and the apple-trees that bear no fruit? Why
don't you come up here?"

"May I?"

"You belong to the moor, too,