dge of the hill, when Rachel, out of breath, sat down on a fallen log to
rest a little. Below them stretched the hollow upland, with its
encircling woods and its white stubble fields. Far below lay the dark
square of the farm, with a light in one of its windows.

Rachel pointed to the grass road by which they had come.

"We haven't seen the ghost!"

He asked her for the story, and she told it. By now she had pieced it all
together; and it seemed to Ellesborough that it had a morbid fascination
for her.

"He dragged himself down this very path," she said. "They tracked him by
the blood stains; his wounds dripped all along it. And then he fell, just
under my cart-shed. It was a horrible, bitter night. Of course the silly
people here say they hear groans and dragging steps: That's all nonsense,
but I sometimes wish it hadn't happened at my farm."

He couldn't help laughing gently at her foolishness.

"Why, it's a great distinction to have a ghost!"

She disagreed--decidedly.

"Any one can have my ghost that wants. I'm awfully easily scared."

"Are you?" There was a deep note in his voice. "No, I don't believe that.
I'm sure you're a plucky woman. I know you are!"

She laughed out.

"How do you know?"

"Why, no one but a plucky woman could have taken this farm and be working
it as you're doing."

"That's not pluck," she said, half scornfully. "But if it is--well, I've
got plenty of pluck of that kind. But I am often scared, downright
scared, about nothing. It's just fear, that's what it is."

"Fear of what?"

"I don't know."

She spoke in a sombre, shrinking tone, which struck him uncomfortably.
But when he tried further to discover what she meant, she would say
nothing more. He noticed, indeed, that she would often seem to turn the
talk upon herself, only to cut it short again immediately. She offered
him openings, and then he could make nothing of them; so that when they
reached the outskirts of the farm on their return, he had given her all
the main outlines of his own history, and she had said almost nothing of
hers.

But all the same the walk had drawn them much nearer.

He stopped her at the little gate to say,--

"I'm going to ask you again--I want you to write to me when I'm in
France."

And this time she said almost eagerly,--

"Yes, I'll write; indeed I'll write! But you'll come over again before
you go?"

"Rather," he said joyously; "rather! Why, there's a month. You'll be
tired of m