"Only cousinly affection, I assure you, Poll. Rather more violent than
usual at finding myself back in Drumston. But entirely cousinly."

"Where have you been then, Tom?" she asked.

"Why, to London, to be sure. Give us ano--"

"You keep off, sir, or you'll catch it. What took you there?"

"Went to see Stockbridge and Hamlyn off."

"Then, they are gone?" she asked.

"Gone, sure enough. I was the last friend they'll see for many a long
year."

"How did Stockbridge look? Was he pretty brave?"

"Pretty well. Braver than I was. Mary, my girl, why didn't ye marry
him?"

"What--you are at me with the rest, are you?" she answered. "Why,
because he was a gaby, and you're another; and I wouldn't marry either
of you to save your lives--now then!"

"Do you mean to say you would not have me, if I asked you? Pooh! pooh!
I know better than that, you know." And again the shrubbery rang with
his laughter.

"Now, go in, Tom, and let me get out," said Mary. "I say Tom dear,
don't say you saw me. I am going out for a turn, and I don't want them
to know it."

Tom twisted up his great face into a mixture of mystery, admiration,
wonder, and acquiescence, and, having opened the gate for her, went in.

But Mary walked quickly down a deep narrow lane, overarched with oak,
and melodious with the full rich notes of the thrush, till she saw down
the long vista, growing now momentarily darker, the gleaming of a ford
where the road crossed a brook.

Not the brook where the Vicar and the Major went fishing. Quite a
different sort of stream, although they were scarcely half a mile
apart, and joined just below. Here all the soil was yellow clay, and,
being less fertile, was far more densely wooded than any of the red
country. The hills were very abrupt, and the fields but sparely
scattered among the forest land. The stream itself, where it crossed
the road, flowed murmuring over a bed of loose blue slate pebbles, but
both above and below this place forced its way, almost invisible,
through a dense oak wood, deeply tangled with undergrowth.

A stone foot-bridge spanned the stream, and having reached this, it
seemed as if she had come to her journey's end. For leaning on the rail
she began looking into the water below, though starting and looking
round at every sound.

She was waiting for some one. A pleasant place this to wait in. So
dark, so hemmed in with trees, and the road so little used; spring was
early here, and the boughs we