wo of them with his switch, returning to Anne breathless. 'I am ashamed
they should have insulted you so,' he said, blushing for her.

'They said no harm, poor boys,' she replied reproachfully.

Poor John was dumb with perception. The gentle hint upon which he would
have eagerly spoken only one short day ago was now like fire to his
wound.

They presently came to some stepping-stones across a brook. John crossed
first without turning his head, and Anne, just lifting the skirt of her
dress, crossed behind him. When they had reached the other side a
village girl and a young shepherd approached the brink to cross. Anne
stopped and watched them. The shepherd took a hand of the young girl in
each of his own, and walked backward over the stones, facing her, and
keeping her upright by his grasp, both of them laughing as they went.

'What are you staying for, Miss Garland?' asked John.

'I was only thinking how happy they are,' she said quietly; and
withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him,
not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a
suppressed groan from John.

When they reached the hill they found forty navvies at work removing the
dark sod so as to lay bare the chalk beneath. The equestrian figure that
their shovels were forming was scarcely intelligible to John and Anne now
they were close, and after pacing from the horse's head down his breast
to his hoof, back by way of the king's bridle-arm, past the bridge of his
nose, and into his cocked-hat, Anne said that she had had enough of it,
and stepped out of the chalk clearing upon the grass. The trumpet-major
had remained all the time in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of
his Majesty's right spur.

'My shoes are caked with chalk,' she said as they walked downwards again;
and she drew back her dress to look at them. 'How can I get some of it
cleared off?'

'If you was to wipe them in the long grass there,' said John, pointing to
a spot where the blades were rank and dense, 'some of it would come off.'
Having said this, he walked on with religious firmness.

Anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the
toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own. Panting
with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him.

'I hope it is right now?' he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder.

'No, indeed!' said she. 'I wanted some assistance--some one to st