ife than we have here?"

"Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of,
and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the
misery of those January days when I had got back to school, and left
you all here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear
it. And I was always a little despised by the other girls at school,
because they knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so
good a station as theirs."

Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and
intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he
should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have
helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according
to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of
those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a
severe tax upon his purse.

"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If you don't
like to go to her I don't wish to force you."

And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this
perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the
fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his
drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more
thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now
and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand.

CHAPTER XXXI.

As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of
the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to
have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the
timber-dealer's troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of
conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena,
at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons
concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people as
the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could
remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such
circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of
Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady.

Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this
case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which,
with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of
Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. Ther