pany with two since him, and
mated with a fourth man altogether--quite a different sort, in the
commercial traveller line."

"Did he wear a seal weskit?"

"Well, he might have; but not to my knowledge. What makes you ask?"

"Because I used to know a Johnny Fortnight that wore one in these
parts; and I thought it might be he, belike."

"Jim had a greater gift o' speech than you can make pretence to," said
the woman abruptly. "I often wonder that of two twin-brothers one
should be so glib and t'other so mum-chance."

"'Tis the Lord's ways," the man answered, resting on his oars. "Will
you be dabblin' your feet as usual, Sarah?"

"Why not?"

He turned the boat's nose to a small landing-place cut in the solid
rock, where a straight pathway dived between hazel-bushes and appeared
again twenty feet above, winding inland around the knap of a green
hill. Here he helped her to disembark, and waited with his back to
the shore. The spinster behind the hazel screen pulled off shoes and
stockings, and paddled about for a minute in the dewy grass that
fringed the meadow's lower slope. Then, drawing a saucer from her
reticule, she wrung some dew into it and bathed her face. Ten minutes
later she re-appeared on the river's bank.

"A happy May, John!"

"A happy May to _you_, Sarah!"

John stepped out beside her, and making his boat fast, followed her
up the narrow path and around the shoulder of the steep meadow. They
overed a stile, then a second, and were among pink slopes of orchards
in bloom. Ahead of them a church tower rose out of soft billows of
apple-blossom, and above the tower a lark was singing. A child
came along the footpath from the village with two garlands mounted
cross-wise on a pole and looped together with strings of painted
birds' eggs. John gave him a penny for his show.

"Here's luck to your lass!" said the wise child.

Sarah was pleased, and added a second penny from her reticule. The boy
spat on it for luck, slipped it into his breeches pocket, and went on
his way skipping.

They stood still and looked after him for some moments, out of pure
pleasure in his good humour; then descended among the orchards to the
village. Half-way up the street stood the inn, the Flowing Source,
with whitewashed front and fuchsia-trees that reached to the
first-floor windows; and before it a well enclosed with a round stone
wall, over which the toadflax spread in a tangle. Around the well,
in the sunshine, were set