t the sweet vision; but, recalled by
his conscience, the blush of delight was at once mangled and slain. He
looked for a means of retreat. But the field was open, and a soldier was
a conspicuous object: there was no escaping her.

'It was kind of you to come,' she said, with an inviting smile.

'It was quite by accident,' he answered, with an indifferent laugh. 'I
thought you was at home.'

Anne blushed and said nothing, and they rambled on together. In the
middle of the field rose a fragment of stone wall in the form of a gable,
known as Faringdon Ruin; and when they had reached it John paused and
politely asked her if she were not a little tired with walking so far. No
particular reply was returned by the young lady, but they both stopped,
and Anne seated herself on a stone, which had fallen from the ruin to the
ground.

'A church once stood here,' observed John in a matter-of-fact tone.

'Yes, I have often shaped it out in my mind,' she returned. 'Here where
I sit must have been the altar.'

'True; this standing bit of wall was the chancel end.'

Anne had been adding up her little studies of the trumpet-major's
character, and was surprised to find how the brightness of that character
increased in her eyes with each examination. A kindly and gentle
sensation was again aroused in her. Here was a neglected heroic man,
who, loving her to distraction, deliberately doomed himself to pensive
shade to avoid even the appearance of standing in a brother's way.

'If the altar stood here, hundreds of people have been made man and wife
just there, in past times,' she said, with calm deliberateness, throwing
a little stone on a spot about a yard westward.

John annihilated another tender burst and replied, 'Yes, this field used
to be a village. My grandfather could call to mind when there were
houses here. But the squire pulled 'em down, because poor folk were an
eyesore to him.'

'Do you know, John, what you once asked me to do?' she continued, not
accepting the digression, and turning her eyes upon him.

'In what sort of way?'

'In the matter of my future life, and yours.'

'I am afraid I don't.'

'John Loveday!'

He turned his back upon her for a moment, that she might not see his
face. 'Ah--I do remember,' he said at last, in a dry, small, repressed
voice.

'Well--need I say more? Isn't it sufficient?'

'It would be sufficient,' answered the unhappy man. 'But--'

She looked up with a reproac