her reading.

'Please go on, Miss Anne,' he said, 'I am not going to speak a word.' He
withdrew to the mantelpiece and leaned against it at his ease.

'Go on, do ye, maidy Anne,' said Uncle Benjy, keeping down his tremblings
by a great effort to half their natural extent.

Anne's voice became much lower now that there were two listeners, and her
modesty shrank somewhat from exposing to Festus the appreciative
modulations which an intelligent interest in the subject drew from her
when unembarrassed. But she still went on that he might not suppose her
to be disconcerted, though the ensuing ten minutes was one of
disquietude. She knew that the bothering yeoman's eyes were travelling
over her from his position behind, creeping over her shoulders, up to her
head, and across her arms and hands. Old Benjy on his part knew the same
thing, and after sundry endeavours to peep at his nephew from the corner
of his eye, he could bear the situation no longer.

'Do ye want to say anything to me, nephew?' he quaked.

'No, uncle, thank ye,' said Festus heartily. 'I like to stay here,
thinking of you and looking at your back hair.'

The nervous old man writhed under this vivisection, and Anne read on;
till, to the relief of both, the gallant fellow grew tired of his
amusement and went out of the room. Anne soon finished her paragraph and
rose to go, determined never to come again as long as Festus haunted the
precincts. Her face grew warmer as she thought that he would be sure to
waylay her on her journey home to-day.

On this account, when she left the house, instead of going in the
customary direction, she bolted round to the further side, through the
bushes, along under the kitchen-garden wall, and through a door leading
into a rutted cart-track, which had been a pleasant gravelled drive when
the fine old hall was in its prosperity. Once out of sight of the
windows she ran with all her might till she had quitted the park by a
route directly opposite to that towards her home. Why she was so
seriously bent upon doing this she could hardly tell but the instinct to
run was irresistible.

It was necessary now to clamber over the down to the left of the camp,
and make a complete circuit round the latter--infantry, cavalry, sutlers,
and all--descending to her house on the other side. This tremendous walk
she performed at a rapid rate, never once turning her head, and avoiding
every beaten track to keep clear of the knots of