-made, completed her unattractiveness. There was neither
blush nor tremor, nor any sign of softening in her cold eyes. Then
Douglas, in whom were already sown the seeds of a passionate discontent
with the narrowing lines of his unlovely life, who on the hillside and
in the sweet night solitudes had taken Shelley to his heart, had lived
with Keats and had felt his pulses beat thickly to the passionate love
music of Tennyson, stood silent and unresponsive. Child of charity he
might be, but the burden of his servitude was fast growing too heavy for
him. So he stood there whilst the old man's eyes flashed like steel,
and Joan's face, in her silent anger, seemed to grow into the likeness
of her father's.

"Dost hear, nephew Douglas? Take her hands in thine and thank thy God
who has sent thee, a pauper and a youth of ill-parentage, a daughter of
mine for wife."

Then the young man found words, though they sounded to him and to the
others faint and unimpressive.

"Uncle," he said, "there has been no word of this nor any thought of it
between Joan and myself. I am not old enough to marry nor have I the
inclination."

Terrible was the look flashed down upon him from those relentless
eyes-fierce, too, the words of his reply, measured and slow although
they were.

"There is no need for words between thee and Joan. Choose between my
bidding and the outside o' my doors this night and for ever."

Even then he might have won his freedom like a man. But the old dread
was too deeply engrafted. The chains of servitude which he and the
whole neighbourhood wore were too heavy to be thrown lightly aside. So
he held out his hand, and Joan's fingers, passive and cold, lay for a
moment in his. The old man watched without any outward sign of
satisfaction.

"Thou ha' chosen well, nephew Douglas," he said, with marvellous but
quite unconscious irony. "I reckon, too, that we ha' chosen well to
elect you our pastor. Thou wilt have two pounds a week and Bailiff
Morrison's cottage. Neighbour Magee, there is a sup o' ale and some tea
in the kitchen."

John Magee and William Bull betrayed the first signs of real interest
they had exhibited in the proceedings. One by one they all filed out of
the room save Douglas Guest and Joan. Cicely had flitted away with the
first. They two were alone. He wondered, with a grim sense of the
humour of the thing, whether she was expecting any love-making to follow
upon so strange an engagement. He looked cur