very satisfactory returns for his trouble in
such a prolific season as the present.

The back parts of the town were just now abounding with
apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose
heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything
was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the
walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel.
Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard
crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large
superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later
harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and
quivering in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates,
including the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards,
stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous
youth.

Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped
her. Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--when that
friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this
same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise
rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier
yet--days of childhood--when her mouth was somewhat more ready to
receive a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that
was over. She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to
him now.

She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not
know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn
that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway,
had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated
attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too,
who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler
that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which
news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very
audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press.

"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne, at
last.

"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've lost a
hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five hundred pound in
good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house that's big enough to
hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share of half a dozen good
wag