ir.

Just as I got out of bed, I heard footsteps and voices under my window.

The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had passed
the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from
below, to look out.

The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three
strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that
they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen
stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coarsely and insolently
enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night.

"Next time you go courting a young lady in secret," said Silas, "make
sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were
seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth
for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she
say 'Yes?'"

John Jago kept his temper.

"If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas," he said, quietly and firmly,
"be pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in
what you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me."

Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three
laborers.

"You hear him, boys? He can't tell the truth, try him as you may. He
wasn't making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He
has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on
his shoulders for the second time!"

Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal
and serious reply.

"You are quite right, sir," he said. "I have no intention of marrying
for the second time. What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn't matter to
you. It was not at all what you choose to suppose; it was something of
quite another kind, with which you have no concern. Be pleased to
understand once for all, Mr. Silas, that not so much as the thought of
making love to the young lady has ever entered my head. I respect her;
I admire her good qualities; but if she was the only woman left in the
world, and if I was a much younger man than I am, I should never think
of asking her to be my wife." He burst out suddenly into a harsh,
uneasy laugh. "No, no! not my style, Mr. Silas--not my style!"

Something in those words, or in his manner of speaking them, appeared
to exasperate Silas. He dropped his clumsy irony, and addressed himself
directly to John Jago in a tone of savage contempt.

"Not your style?" he repeated. "U