m. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so
he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.

III

Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which
resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn
back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same
direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl's way
of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men
were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half
contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely
because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities
of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense
of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course
it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a
business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether
stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.

The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn
her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man,
and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most
sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable
only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of
himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but
then Bertha was bound to find reasons.

Mainly, her mind was occupied in the reconstruction of her previous
belief about Lane Protheroe. He also, it would seem, had manly qualities
in him--could stand up to be beaten in the cause of the woman he loved.
The blows hurt her so, in the mere fancy of them, that she more than
once put up her hands to her face to guard it. By the time she had
accomplished her errand, and was on the way back to her father's
farmhouse, she was all tenderness and forgiveness and admiration for the
newly-revealed Lane, but then, as the fates would have it, just as she
began to think of her cruelty to him, and of the terribly low spirits
into which she must have thrown him, the familiar jocund whistle broke
upon her ears, and when she stood still in a dreary amaze at this, she
could hear the steps of the lover, who ought to have been altogether
love-lorn, marching along in something very like a dance in time to his
own music. What was one to think of such a man? She was