rine, but for all her ingenuities of
cross-examination she got nothing more. Afterward, when he and the
vicar were smoking together, he proposed to Mr. Thornburgh that they two
should go off for a couple of days on a walking tour to Ullswater.

'I want to go away,' he said, with a hand on the vicar's shoulder, '_and
I want to come back_.' The deliberation of the last words was not to
be mistaken. The vicar emitted a contented puff, looked the young man
straight in the eyes, and without another word began to plan a walk
to Patterdale via High Street, Martindale, and Howtown, and back by
Hawes-water.

To Mrs. Thornburgh, Robert announced that he must leave them on the
following Saturday, June 24.

'You have given me a good time, cousin Emma,' he said to her, with a
bright friendliness which dumfounded her. A good time, indeed! with
everything begun and nothing finished: with two households thrown into
perturbation for a delusion, and a desirable marriage spoilt, all for
want of a little common sense and plain speaking, which _one_ person
at least in the valley could have supplied them with, had she not been
ignored and browbeaten on all sides. She contained herself, however, in
his presence, but the vicar suffered proportionately in the privacy of
the connubial chamber. He had never seen his wife so exasperated. To
think what might have been--what she might have done for the race, but
for the whims of two stuck-up, superior, impracticable young persons,
that would neither manage their own affairs nor allow other people to
manage them for them! The vicar behaved gallantly, kept the secret of
Elsmere's remark to himself like a man, and allowed himself certain
counsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs. Thornburgh into
well-simulated slumber. However, in the morning he was vaguely conscious
that some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded of
him peremptorily, 'When do you get back, William?' To the best of his
memory, the vicar had sleepily murmured, 'Thursday;' and had then heard,
echoed through his dreams, a calculating whisper, 'He goes Saturday--one
clear day!'

The 'following morning was gloomy but fine, and after breakfast the
vicar and Elsmere started off. Robert turned back at the top of the
High Fell pass and stood leaning on his alpenstock, sending a passionate
farewell to the gray distant house, the upper window, the copper beech
in the garden, the bit of winding road, while the