times.

How tall she was, and how strong.

Again (he blushed at the recollection) he seemed to feel the clasp of
those muscular young hands in the worn tan-coloured gloves, gloves
loose at the wrists, that did not button but were drawn on. He had
noticed her leather gloves as she held out her hands to him, and knew
that in the language of the trade they were "rather costly to start
with, but lasted for ever."

They did not stock goods of that class in the particular branch of the
outfitting trade that he knew best. People wouldn't pay the price.
And he found himself saying over and over again, "wouldn't pay the
price," and it was of the girl he was thinking, not of her gloves.

How eager she had been that he should come and be brushed; "I've no
objection," Eloquent reflected, "to being under an obligation to her,
but I'm hanged if I'd be beholden to Ffolliot for anything." Somehow
it gave him infinite satisfaction to think of Mary's father in that
familiar fashion. He, to put up boards about trespassers in the woods!

Who was he?

Eloquent ignored the fact that they were the same boards that had been
there in old Mr Ffolliot's time, and badly needed repainting.

That little boy, too, who first appeared to suspect him of poaching,
and then expressed sorrow that he would not stay to tea. What an
extraordinary family they seemed to be!

The girl had actually owned to being constantly suspected of all sorts
of damage, and not always wrongfully either. He was devoured by
curiosity as to what forms her lawlessness could take.

"A bit of a gawk" her young brother had called her. How dared he?

"Goddess," thought Eloquent, was much more appropriate than gawk. He
had no very clear conception of a goddess, but vaguely pictured a woman
fair and simple and superb and young--not quite so young as Mary
Ffolliot. It was only during the last year or two that he had read any
poetry, and he was never quite sure whether he liked it or not. It was
upsetting stuff he considered, vaguely disquieting and suggestive. Yet
there were times when it came in useful. It said things for a chap
that he couldn't say for himself. It expressed the inexpressible . . .
in words. It synthesised and formulated fantastic and illusive
experiences.

His youthful facility in learning "bits" of prose by heart had not
deserted him, and he found verse even easier to remember; in fact,
sometimes certain stanzas would recur with irritating