ew, though no prospective arrangement had been made. Week followed
week, and month followed month, and his heart grew bitter. He had almost
decided to end this waiting. The day would come when he could bear it
not longer, and then he would cut adrift.

An accidental circumstance was the cause of his irresolution. He used to
walk frequently on the moss where the Laird Fisher sunk his shaft. In
the beck that ran close to the disused headgear he would wade for an
hour early in the summer morning. One day he saw the old laird's
daughter washing linen at the beck-side. He remembered her as a pretty,
prattling thing of ten or eleven. She was now a girl of eighteen, with a
pure face, a timid manner, and an air that was neither that of a woman
nor of a child. Her mother was lately dead, her father spent most of his
days on the fell (some of his nights also when the charcoal was
burning), and she was much alone. Hugh Ritson liked her gentle replies
and her few simple questions. So it came about that he would look for
her in the mornings, and be disappointed if he did not catch sight of
her good young face. Himself a silent man, he liked to listen to the
girl's modest, unconnected talk. His stern eyes would soften at such
times to a sort of caressing expression. This went on for months, and in
that solitude no idle tongue was set to wag. At length Hugh Ritson
perceived that the girl's heart was touched. If he came late he found
her leaning over the gate, her eyes bent down among the mountain grasses
at her feet, and her cheeks colored by a red glow. It is unnecessary to
go further. The girl gave herself up to him with her whole heart and
soul, and he--well, he found the bulwarks with which he had surrounded
himself were ruined and down.

Then the awakening came, and Hugh learned too late that he had not loved
the simple child, by realizing that with all the ardor of his restrained
but passionate nature he loved another woman.

So much for the first complication in the tragedy of this man's life.

The second complication was new to his consciousness, and it was at this
moment conspiring with the first to lure him to consequences that are
now to be related. The story which Mr. Bonnithorne had told of the
legacy left by Greta's father to a son by one Grace Ormerod had come to
him at a time when, owing to disappointment and chagrin, he was
peculiarly liable to the temptation of any "honest trifle" that pointed
the way he wished to