he kettle back upon the logs, found it emptied by
William's potations. Donning her stout shoes and pattens, and slipping
a shawl over her head, she reached down the lantern from its peg, lit
it, and went out to fill the kettle at the spring.

It was pitch-dark; the rain was still falling, and as she crossed the
yard the sodden straw squeaked beneath her tread. The yard had been
fashioned generations since, by levelling back from the house to the
natural rock of the hill-side, and connecting the two on the right by
cow-house and stable, with an upper storey for barn and granary, on the
left by a low wall, where, through a rough gate, the cart-track from the
valley found its entrance. Against the further end of this wall leant
an open cart-shed; and within three paces of it a perpetual spring of
water gushing down the rock was caught and arrested for a while in a
stone trough before it hurried out by a side gutter, and so down to join
the trout-stream in the valley below. The spring first came to light
half-way down the rock's face. Overhead its point of emergence was
curtained by a network of roots pushed out by the trees above and
sprawling over the lip in helpless search for soil.

'Lizabeth's lantern threw a flare of yellow on these and on the bubbling
water as she filled her kettle. She was turning to go when a sound
arrested her.

It was the sound of a suppressed sob, and seemed to issue from the
cart-shed. 'Lizabeth turned quickly and held up her lantern. Under the
shed, and barely four paces from her, sat a woman.

The woman was perched against the shaft of a hay-waggon, with her feet
resting on a mud-soiled carpet-bag. She made but a poor appealing
figure, tricked out in odds and ends of incongruous finery, with a
bonnet, once smart, hanging limply forward over a pair of
light-coloured eyes and a very lachrymose face. The ambition of the
stranger's toilet, which ran riot in cheap jewellery, formed so odd a
contrast with her sorry posture that 'Lizabeth, for all her wonder, felt
inclined to smile.

"What's your business here?"

"Oh, tell me," whimpered the woman, "what's he doing all this time?
Won't his father see me? He don't intend to leave me here all night,
surely, in this bitter cold, with nothing to eat, and my gown ruined!"

"He?" 'Lizabeth's attitude stiffened with suspicion of the truth.

"William, I mean; an' a sorry day it was I agreed to come."

"William?"

"My husband. I'm Mr