sifting of evidence as to the season of the year during
which this particular miracle might be supposed to have taken place.
Again their eyes met for a moment, and she went out into the sunlight
with a faint smile upon her lips, for she was a woman who loved to feel
herself an influence, and she was swift to understand. To her it was an
episode of the morning's ride, almost forgotten at dinner-time. To him
it marked the boundary line between the old things and the new.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE BETROTHAL

The room had all the chilly discomfort of the farmhouse parlour, unused,
save on state occasions--a funereal gloom which no sunlight could
pierce, a mustiness which savoured almost of the grave. One by one they
obeyed the stern forefinger of Gideon Strong, and took their seats on
comfortless chairs and the horse-hair sofa. First came John Magee,
factor and agent to the Earl of Cumberland, a great man in the district,
deacon of the chapel, slow and ponderous in his movements. A man of few
words but much piety. After him, with some hesitation as became his
lowlier station, came William Bull, six days in the week his master's
shepherd and faithful servant, but on the seventh an elder of the
chapel, a person of consequence and dignity. Then followed Joan and
Cicely Strong together, sisters in the flesh, but as far apart in kin
and the spirit as the poles of humanity themselves. And lastly, Douglas
Guest. At the head of his shining mahogany table, with a huge Bible
before him on which rested the knuckle of one clenched hand, stood
Gideon Strong, the master of Feldwick Hall Farm. It was at his bidding
that these people had come together; they waited now for him to speak.
His was no common personality. Neat in his dress, precise though local,
with a curious mixture of dialects in his speech, he was feared by every
man in Feldwick, whether he stood over them labouring or prayed amongst
them in the little chapel, where every Sunday he took the principal
place. He was well set-up for all his unusual height and seventy years,
with a face as hard as the ancient rocks which jutted from the
Cumberland hillside, eyes as keen and grey and merciless as though every
scrap of humanity which might ever have lain behind them had long since
died out. Just he reckoned himself and just he may have been, but
neither man nor woman nor child had ever heard a kindly word fall from
his lips. Children ran indoors as he passed, women ceased thei