_.
See?"

A tender smile lingered in her eyes.

"I see!" and linking her arm through his again, she moved on with him
over the thyme-scented grass, her dress gently sweeping across the stray
clusters of golden cowslips that nodded here and there. "_I_ will work
for myself, _you_ will work for _me_, and old David will work for both
of us!"

They laughed joyously.

"Poor old David!" said Angus. "He's been wondering why I have not spoken
to you before,--he declared he couldn't understand it. But then I wasn't
quite sure whether you liked me at all----"

"Weren't you?" and her glance was eloquent.

"No--and I asked him to find out!"

She looked at him in a whimsical wonderment.

"You asked him to find out? And did he?"

"He seems to think so. At any rate, he gave me courage to speak."

Mary grew suddenly meditative.

"Do you know, Angus," she said, "I think old David was sent to me for a
special purpose. Some great and good influence guided him to me--I am
sure of it. You don't know all his history. Shall I tell it to you?"

"Yes--do tell me--but I think I know it. Was he not a former old friend
of your father's?"

"No--that's a story I had to invent to satisfy the curiosity of the
villagers. It would never have done to let them know that he was only an
old tramp whom I found ill and nearly dying out on the hills during a
great storm we had last summer. There had been heavy thunder and
lightning all the afternoon, and when the storm ceased I went to my door
to watch the clearing off of the clouds, and I heard a dog yelping
pitifully on the hill just above the coombe. I went out to see what was
the matter, and there I found an old man lying quite unconscious on the
wet grass, looking as if he were dead, and a little dog--you know
Charlie?--guarding him and barking as loudly as it could. Well, I
brought him back to life, and took him home and nursed him--and--that's
all. He told me his name was David--and that he had been 'on the tramp'
to Cornwall to find a friend. You know the rest."

"Then he is really quite a stranger to you, Mary?" said Angus
wonderingly.

"Quite. He never knew my father. But I am sure if Dad had been alive, he
would have rescued him just as I did, and then he _would_ have been his
'friend,'--he could not have helped himself. That's the way I argued it
out to my own heart and conscience."

Angus looked at her.

"You darling!" he said suddenly.

She laughed.

"That doesn't come