as moving downhill in scores
of wheel-barrows, to build up the slope to a level.

Sir Oliver marked her amazement and answered it with an easy laugh.

"The time is short, you see, and already we have wasted half an hour of
it unprofitably. . . . These fellows appear to be working well."

She gazed at the moving gangs as one who, having come by surprise upon a
hive of bees, stands still and cons the small creatures at work.

"But what is the meaning of it?"

"The meaning? Why, that for this week I am your riding-master, and that
by to-morrow you will have a passable riding-school."

Chapter IX.

THE PROSPECT.

This happened on a Thursday. On the following Wednesday, a while before
day-break, he met her on horseback by the gate of Sabines, and they rode
forth side by side, ahead of the coach wherein Miss Quiney sat piled
about with baggage, clutching in one hand a copy of Baxter's _Saint's
Everlasting Rest_ and with the other the ring of a canary-cage. (It was
Dicky's canary, and his first love-offering. Yesterday had been Ruth's
birthday--her eighteenth--and under conduct of Manasseh he had visited
Sabines to wish her "many happy returns" and to say good-bye.)

Sir Oliver would escort the travellers for twelve miles on their way, to
a point where the inland road broke into cart-tracks, and the tracks
diverged across a country newly disafforested and strewn with jagged
stumps among which the heavy vehicle could by no means be hauled.
Here Farmer Cordery was to be in waiting with his light tilt-covered
wagon.

They had started thus early because the season was hot and they desired
to traverse the open highway and the clearings and to reach the forest
before the sun's rays grew ardent. Once past the elms of Sabines their
road lay broad before them, easy to discern; for the moon, well in her
third quarter, rode high, with no trace of cloud or mist. So clear she
shone that in imagination one could reach up and run a finger along her
hard bright edge; and under moon and stars a land-breeze, virginally
cool, played on our two riders' cheeks. Ungloving and stretching forth
a hand, Ruth felt the dew falling, as it had been falling ever since
sundown; and under that quiet lustration the world at her feet and
around her, unseen as yet, had been renewed, the bee-ravished flowers
replaced with blossoms ready to unfold, the turf revived, reclothed in
young green, the atmosphere bathed, cleansed of exhausted s