than she pays."

"It seems a nice cottage, with a field and orchard at the back."

"Yes. Mrs. Bawtrey pays L8 a year for it; but the shop can well afford
it."

Kenelm made no reply. They both walked on in silence, and had now
reached the centre of the village street when Jessie, looking up,
uttered an abrupt exclamation, gave an affrighted start, and then came
to a dead stop.

Kenelm's eye followed the direction of hers, and saw, a few yards
distant, at the other side of the way, a small red brick house, with
thatched sheds adjoining it, the whole standing in a wide yard, over
the gate of which leaned a man smoking a small cutty-pipe. "It is Tom
Bowles," whispered Jessie, and instinctively she twined her arm into
Kenelm's; then, as if on second thoughts, withdrew it, and said, still
in a whisper, "Go back now, sir; do."

"Not I. It is Tom Bowles whom I want to know. Hush!"

For here Tom Bowles had thrown down his pipe and was coming slowly
across the road towards them.

Kenelm eyed him with attention. A singularly powerful man, not so tall
as Kenelm by some inches, but still above the middle height, herculean
shoulders and chest, the lower limbs not in equal proportion,--a sort
of slouching, shambling gait. As he advanced the moonlight fell on his
face; it was a handsome one. He wore no hat, and his hair, of a
light brown, curled close. His face was fresh-coloured, with aquiline
features; his age apparently about six or seven and twenty. Coming
nearer and nearer, whatever favourable impression the first glance
at his physiognomy might have made on Kenelm was dispelled, for the
expression of his face changed and became fierce and lowering.

Kenelm was still walking on, Jessie by his side, when Bowles rudely
thrust himself between them, and seizing the girl's arm with one hand,
he turned his face full on Kenelm, with a menacing wave of the other
hand, and said in a deep burly voice,

"Who be you?"

"Let go that young woman before I tell you."

"If you weren't a stranger," answered Bowles, seeming as if he tried to
suppress a rising fit of wrath, "you'd be in the kennel for those words.
But I s'pose you don't know that I'm Tom Bowles, and I don't choose the
girl as I'm after to keep company with any other man. So you be off."

"And I don't choose any other man to lay violent hands on any girl
walking by my side without telling him that he's a brute; and that I
only wait till he has both his hands at liberty