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The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid........................................................................................................1

It was halfpast four o'clock (by the testimony of the landsurveyor, my authority for the particulars of this

story, a gentleman with the faintest curve of humour on his lips); it was halfpast four o'clock on a May

morning in the eighteen forties. A dense white fog hung over the Valley of the Exe, ending against the hills

But though nothing in the vale could be seen from higher ground, notes of differing kinds gave pretty clear

indications that bustling life was going on there. This audible presence and visual absence of an active scene

had a peculiar effect above the fog level. Nature had laid a white hand over the creatures ensconced within

The noises that ascended through the pallid coverlid were perturbed lowings, mingled with human voices in

sharps and flats, and the bark of a dog. These, followed by the slamming of a gate, explained as well as

eyesight could have done, to any inhabitant of the district, that Dairyman Tucker's undermilker was driving

the cows from the meads into the stalls. When a rougher accent joined in the vociferations of man and beast,

it would have been realized that the dairyfarmer himself had come out to meet the cows, pail in hand, and

white pinafore on; and when, moreover, some women's voices joined in the chorus, that the cows were stalled

A hush followed, the atmosphere being so stagnant that the milk could be heard buzzing into the pails,

'Don't ye bide about long upon the road, Margery. You can be back again by skimmingtime.'

The rough voice of Dairyman Tucker was the vehicle of this remark. The bartongate slammed again, and in

two or three minutes a something became visible, rising out of the fog in that quarter.

The shape revealed itself as that of a woman having a young and agile gait. The colours and other details of

her dress were then discloseda bright pink cotton frock (because winter was over); a small woollen shawl

of shepherd's plaid (because summer was not come); a white handkerchief tied over her headgear, because it

was so foggy, so damp, and so early; and a straw bonnet and ribbons peeping from under the handkerchief,

Her face was of the hereditary type among families down in these parts: sweet in expression, perfect in hue,

and somewhat irregular in feature. Her eyes were of a liquid brown. On her arm she carried a withy basket, in

which lay several butterrolls in a nest of wet cabbageleaves. She was the 'Margery' who had been told not

She went on her way across the fields, sometimes above the fog, sometimes below it, not much perplexed by

its presence except when the track was so indefinite that it ceased to be a guide to the next stile. The

dampness was such that innumerable earthworms lay in couples across the path till, startled even by her light

tread, they withdrew suddenly into their holes. She kept clear of all trees. Why was that? There was no

danger of lightning on such a morning as this. But though the roads were dry the fog had gathered in the

boughs, causing them to set up such a dripping as would go clean through the protecting handkerchief like

bullets, and spoil the ribbons beneath. The beech and ash were particularly shunned, for they dripped more

maliciously than any. It was an instance of woman's keen appreciativeness of nature's moods and

peculiarities: a man crossing those fields might hardly have perceived that the trees dripped at all.

In less than an hour she had traversed a distance of four miles, and arrived at a latticed cottage in a secluded

spot. An elderly woman, scarce awake, answered her knocking. Margery delivered up the butter, and said,

'How is granny this morning? I can't stay to go up to her, but tell her I have returned what we owed her.'

Her grandmother was no worse than usual: and receiving back the empty basket the girl proceeded to carry

out some intention which had not been included in her orders. Instead of returning to the light labours of

skimmingtime, she hastened on, her direction being towards a little neighbouring town. Before, however,

Margery had proceeded far, she met the postman, laden to the neck with letter bags, of which he had not yet

'O no,' replied that stooping pedestrian, not waiting to stand upright. 'They won't be open yet this hour, except

the saddler and ironmonger and little tackerhaired machineman for the farm folk. They downs their

shutters at halfpast six, then the baker's at half past seven, then the draper's at eight.'

The postman turned up a sidepath, and the young girl, as though deciding within herself that if she could not

go shopping at once she might as well get back for the skimming, retraced her steps.

The public road home from this point was easy but devious. By far the nearest way was by getting over a

fence, and crossing the private grounds of a picturesque old countryhouse, whose chimneys were just visible

through the trees. As the house had been shut up for many months, the girl decided to take the straight cut.

She pushed her way through the laurel bushes, sheltering her bonnet with the shawl as an additional

safeguard, scrambled over an inner boundary, went along through more shrubberies, and stood ready to

emerge upon the open lawn. Before doing so she looked around in the wary manner of a poacher. It was not

the first time that she had broken fence in her life; but somehow, and all of a sudden, she had felt herself too

near womanhood to indulge in such practices with freedom. However, she moved forth, and the housefront

It was a building of the medium size, and unpretending, the facade being of stone; and of the Italian elevation

made familiar by Inigo Jones and his school. There was a doorway to the lawn, standing at the head of a

flight of steps. The shutters of the house were closed, and the blinds of the bedrooms drawn down. Her

perception of the fact that no crusty caretaker could see her from the windows led her at once to slacken her

pace, and stroll through the flowerbeds coolly. A house unblinded is a possible spy, and must be treated

accordingly; a house with the shutters together is an insensate heap of stone and mortar, to be faced with

On the other side of the house the greensward rose to an eminence, whereon stood one of those curious

summer shelters sometimes erected on exposed points of view, called an alltheyearround. In the present

case it consisted of four walls radiating from a centre like the arms of a turnstile, with seats in each angle, so

that whencesoever the wind came, it was always possible to find a screened corner from which to observe the

The milkmaid's trackless course led her up the hill and past this erection. At ease as to being watched and

scolded as an intruder, her mind flew to other matters; till, at the moment when she was not a yard from the

shelter, she heard a foot or feet scraping on the gravel behind it. Some one was in the alltheyearround,

apparently occupying the seat on the other side; as was proved when, on turning, she saw an elbow, a man's

Now the young woman did not much like the idea of going down the hill under the eyes of this person, which

she would have to do if she went on, for as an intruder she was liable to be called back and questioned upon

her business there. Accordingly she crept softly up and sat in the seat behind, intending to remain there until

This he by no means seemed in a hurry to do. What could possibly have brought him there, what could detain

him there, at six o'clock on a morning of mist when there was nothing to be seen or enjoyed of the vale

beneath, puzzled her not a little. But he remained quite still, and Margery grew impatient. She discerned the

track of his feet in the dewy grass, forming a line from the house steps, which announced that he was an

A fineframed darkmustachioed gentleman, in dressinggown and slippers, was sitting there in the damp

without a hat on. With one hand he was tightly grasping his forehead, the other hung over his knee. The

attitude bespoke with sufficient clearness a mental condition of anguish. He was quite a different being from

any of the men to whom her eyes were accustomed. She had never seen mustachios before, for they were not

worn by civilians in Lower Wessex at this date. His hands and his face were whiteto her view deadly

white and he heeded nothing outside his own existence. There he remained as motionless as the bushes

Having imprudently advanced thus far, Margery's wish was to get back again in the same unseen manner; but

in moving her foot for the purpose it grated on the gravel. He started up with an air of bewilderment, and

slipped something into the pocket of his dressing gown. She was almost certain that it was a pistol. The pair

'My Gott, who are you?' he asked sternly, and with not altogether an English articulation. 'What do you do

Margery had already begun to be frightened at her boldness in invading the lawn and pleasureseat. The

house had a master, and she had not known of it. 'My name is Margaret Tucker, sir,' she said meekly. 'My

'Nothing. You had one hand on your forehead and the other on your knee. I do hope you are not ill, sir, or in

'What difference would it make to you if I were ill or in trouble? You don't know me.'

She returned no answer, feeling that she might have taken a liberty in expressing sympathy. But, looking

furtively up at him, she discerned to her surprise that he seemed affected by her humane wish, simply as it

had been expressed. She had scarcely conceived that such a tall dark man could know what gentle feelings

'Well, I am much obliged to you for caring how I am,' said he with a faint smile and an affected lightness of

manner which, even to her, only rendered more apparent the gloom beneath. 'I have not slept this past night. I

Margery laughed a little, and he glanced with interest at the comely picture she presented; her fresh face,

brown hair, candid eyes, unpractised manner, country dress, pink hands, empty wickerbasket, and the

'Well,' he said, after his scrutiny, 'I need hardly have asked such a question of one who is Nature's own image

. . . Ah, but my good little friend,' he added, recurring to his bitter tone and sitting wearily down, 'you don't

know what great clouds can hang over some people's lives, and what cowards some men are in face of them.

To escape themselves they travel, take picturesque houses, and engage in country sports. But here it is so

'Why, this is only the pride of the morning!' said Margery. 'Byand by it will be a beautiful day.'

She was going on her way forthwith; but he detained herdetained her with words, talking on every

innocent little subject he could think of. He had an object in keeping her there more serious than his words

While they still stood, the misty figure of the postman, whom Margery had left a quarter of an hour earlier to

follow his sinuous course, crossed the grounds below them on his way to the house. Signifying to Margery by

a wave of his hand that she was to step back out of sight, in the hinder angle of the shelter, the gentleman

beckoned to the postman to bring the bag to where he stood. The man did so, and again resumed his journey.

The stranger unlocked the bag and threw it on the seat, having taken one letter from within. This he read

The change was almost phantasmagorial, as if the sun had burst through the fog upon that face: it became

clear, bright, almost radiant. Yet it was but a change that may take place in the commonest human being,

provided his countenance be not too wooden, or his artifice have not grown to second nature. He turned to

Margery, who was again edging off, and, seizing her hand, appeared as though he were about to embrace her.

Checking his impulse, he said, 'My guardian childmy good friendyou have saved me!'

She thought of the weapon, and guessed that the letter he had just received had effected this change in his

mood, but made no observation till he went on to say, 'What did you tell me was your name, dear girl?'

'Margaret Tucker.' He stooped, and pressed her hand. 'Sit down for a momentone moment,' he said,

pointing to the end of the seat, and taking the extremest further end for himself, not to discompose her. She

'It is to ask a question,' he went on, 'and there must be confidence between us. You have saved me from an act

'But there must be some service I can render, some kindness, some votive offering which I could make, and

He shook his head. 'Some things are best left unspoken. Now think. What would you like to have best in the

Margery made a pretence of reflectingthen fell to reflecting seriously; but the negative was ultimately as

undisturbed as ever: she could not decide on anything she would like best in the world; it was too difficult,

'Very welldon't hurry yourself. Think it over all day. I ride this afternoon. You livewhere?'

'I will ride that way homeward this evening. Do you consider by eight o'clock what little article, what little

'I will, sir,' said Margery, now warming up to the idea. 'Where shall I meet you? Or will you call at the house,

'Ahno. I should not wish the circumstances known out of which our acquaintance rose. It would be more

Margery, too, seemed rather anxious that he should not call. 'I could come out, sir,' she said. 'My father is

It was agreed that she should look over a stile at the top of her father's garden, and that he should ride along a

bridlepath outside, to receive her answer. 'Margery,' said the gentleman in conclusion, 'now that you have

discovered me under ghastly conditions, are you going to reveal them, and make me an object for the gossip

'It is sufficient,' he answered. 'You mean what you say, my dear maiden. Now you want to leave me.

She descended the hill, walking with some awkwardness; for she felt the stranger's eyes were upon her till the

fog had enveloped her from his gaze. She took no notice now of the dripping from the trees; she was lost in

thought on other things. Had she saved this handsome, melancholy, sleepless, foreign gentleman who had had

a trouble on his mind till the letter came? What had he been going to do? Margery could guess that he had

meditated death at his own hand. Strange as the incident had been in itself; to her it had seemed stranger even

than it was. Contrasting colours heighten each other by being juxtaposed; it is the same with contrasting lives.

Reaching the opposite side of the park there appeared before her for the third time that little old man, the

footpost. As the turnpike road ran, the postman's beat was twelve miles a day; six miles out from the town,

and six miles back at night. But what with zigzags, devious ways, offsets to country seats, curves to farms,

looped courses, and triangles to outlying hamlets, the ground actually covered by him was nearer

oneandtwenty miles. Hence it was that Margery, who had come straight, was still abreast of him, despite

The weighty sense that she was mixed up in a tragical secret with an unknown and handsome stranger

prevented her joining very readily in chat with the postman for some time. But a keen interest in her

adventure caused her to respond at once when the bowed man of mails said, 'You hit athwart the grounds of

Mount Lodge, Miss Margery, or you wouldn't ha' met me here. Well, somebody hey took the old place at

In acknowledging her route Margery brought herself to ask who the new gentleman might be.

'Guide the girl's heart! What! don't she know? And yet how should yehe's only just acome.Well,

nominal, he's a fishing gentleman, come for the summer only. But, more to the subject, he's a foreign noble

that's lived in England so long as to be without any true country: some of his letters call him Baron, some

Squire, so that 'a must be born to something that can't be earned by elbowgrease and Christian conduct. He

was out this morning awatching the fog. "Postman," 'a said, "goodmorning: give me the bag." O, yes, 'a's a

'That's what they say, and as it can be for nothing else I suppose it's true. But, in final, his health's not good, 'a

b'lieve; he's been living too rithe. The London smoke got into his wyndpipe, till 'a couldn't eat. However, I

'Ahthere you have me! 'Tis a name no man's tongue can tell, or even woman's, except by penandink and

good scholarship. It begins with X, and who, without the machinery of a clock in's inside, can speak that? But

here 'tisfrom his letters.' The postman with his walkingstick wrote upon the ground,

The day, as she had prognosticated, turned out fine; for weather wisdom was imbibed with their milksops

by the children of the Exe Vale. The impending meeting excited Margery, and she performed her duties in

Milking, skimming, cheesemaking were done. Her father was asleep in the settle, the milkmen and maids

were gone home to their cottages, and the clock showed a quarter to eight. She dressed herself with care,

went to the top of the garden, and looked over the stile. The view was eastward, and a great moon hung

before her in a sky which had not a cloud. Nothing was moving except on the minutest scale, and she

remained leaning over, the nighthawk sounding his croud from the bough of an isolated tree on the open hill

Here Margery waited till the appointed time had passed by three quarters of an hour; but no Baron came.

She had been full of an idea, and her heart sank with disappointment. Then at last the pacing of a horse

became audible on the soft path without, leading up from the watermeads, simultaneously with which she

The moonlight so flooded her face as to make her very conspicuous in the gardengap. 'Ah my

maidenwhat is your nameMargery!' he said. 'How came you here? But of course I rememberwe were

'Yes, sir. You said this morning that I was to think what I would like best in the world, and I have made up

'I did say soto be sure I did,' he replied, collecting his thoughts. 'I remember to have had good reason for

gratitude to you.' He placed his hand to his brow, and in a minute alighted, and came up to her with the bridle

in his hand. 'I was to give you a treat or present, and you could not think of one. Now you have done so. Let

'The Yeomanry BallYeomanry Ball?' he murmured, as if, of all requests in the world, this was what he had

'Ah, yes, or a treat,' he echoed, with the air of one who finds himself in a slight fix. 'But with whom would

Margery looked at the moon. 'No one who can dance,' she said; adding, with hesitation, 'I was thinking that

'But, my dear Margery,' he said, stopping her, as if he halfdivined what her simple dream of a cavalier had

been; 'it is very odd that you can think of nothing else than going to a Yeomanry Ball. Think again. You are

'Quite sure, sir,' she decisively answered. At first nobody would have noticed in that pretty young face any

sign of decision; yet it was discoverable. The mouth, though soft, was firm in line; the eyebrows were

distinct, and extended near to each other. 'I have thought of it all day,' she continued, sadly. 'Still, sir, if you

'Sorry?Certainly not, Margery,' be said, rather nettled. 'I'll show you that whatever hopes I have raised in

your breast I am honourable enough to gratify. If it lies in my power,' he added with sudden firmness, 'you

'Ah, well; you must go, since you wish it; and if there is no other way of getting over the difficulty of having

nobody to take you, I'll take you myself. Would you like me to do so? I can dance.'

'O, yes, sir; I know that, and I thought you might offer to do it. But would you bring me back again?'

'Reels, and jigs, and countrydances like the NewRiggedShip, and FollowmyLover, and

HastetotheWedding, and the College Hornpipe, and the Favourite Quickstep, and Captain White's dance.'

'A very good lista very good! but unluckily I fear they don't dance any of those now. But if you have the

She stood out into the gardenpath, the stile being still between them, and seizing a side of her skirt with each

hand, performed the movements which are even yet far from uncommon in the dances of the villagers of

merry England. But her motions, though graceful, were not precisely those which appear in the figures of a

'Well, my good friend, it is a very pretty sight,' he said, warming up to the proceedings. 'But you dance too

wellyou dance all over your personand that's too thorough a way for the present day. I should say it was

exactly how they danced in the time of your poet Chaucer; but as people don't dance like it now, we must

consider. First I must inquire more about this ball, and then I must see you again.'

The Baron mentioned an evening and an hour when he would be passing that way again; then mounted his

On the next occasion, which was just when the sun was changing places with the moon as an illuminator of

Silverthorn Dairy, she found him at the spot before her, and unencumbered by a horse. The melancholy that

had so weighed him down at their first interview, and had been perceptible at their second, had quite

'My good maiden, Gott bless you!' said he warmly. 'I cannot help thinking of that morning! I was too much

overshadowed at first to take in the whole force of it. You do not know all; but your presence was a

miraculous intervention. Now to more cheerful matters. I have a great deal to tellthat is, if your wish about

'Never think of my objecting. What I have found out is something which simplifies matters amazingly. In

addition to your Yeomanry Ball at Exonbury, there is also to be one in the next county about the same time.

This ball is not to be held at the Town Hall of the countytown as usual, but at Lord Toneborough's, who is

colonel of the regiment, and who, I suppose, wishes to please the yeomen because his brother is going to

stand for the county. Now I find I could take you there very well, and the great advantage of that ball over the

Yeomanry Ball in this county is, that there you would be absolutely unknown, and I also. But do you prefer

'O no, sir. It is a ball I long to seeI don't know what it is like; it does not matter where.'

'Good. Then I shall be able to make much more of you there, where there is no possibility of recognition.

That being settled, the next thing is the dancing. Now reels and such things do not do. For think of

thisthere is a new dance at Almack's and everywhere else, over which the world has gone crazy.'

'Ahbut that is a mere expressiongone mad. It is really an ancient Scythian dance; but, such is the power

of fashion, that, having once been adopted by Society, this dance has made the tour of the Continent in one

'The polka. Young people, who always dance, are ecstatic about it, and old people, who have not danced for

years, have begun to dance again, on its account. All share the excitement. It arrived in London only some

few months agoit is now all over the country. Now this is your opportunity, my good Margery. To learn

this one dance will be enough. They will dance scarce anything else at that ball. While, to crown all, it is the

easiest dance in the world, and as I know it quite well I can practise you in the step. Suppose we try?'

Margery showed some hesitation before crossing the stile: it was a Rubicon in more ways than one. But the

curious reverence which was stealing over her for all that this stranger said and did was too much for

Withdrawing with her to a nook where two high hedges met, and where the grass was elastic and dry, he

lightly rested his arm on her waist, and practised with her the new step of fascination. Instead of music he

whispered numbers, and she, as may be supposed, showed no slight aptness in following his instructions.

Thus they moved round together, the moonshadows from the twigs racing over their forms as they turned.

The interview lasted about half an hour. Then he somewhat abruptly handed her over the stile and stood

'Well,' he murmured, 'what has come to pass is strange! My whole business after this will be to recover my

Margery always declared that there seemed to be some power in the stranger that was more than human,

something magical and compulsory, when he seized her and gently trotted her round. But lingering emotions

may have led her memory to play pranks with the scene, and her vivid imagination at that youthful age must

be taken into account in believing her. However, there is no doubt that the stranger, whoever he might be, and

whatever his powers, taught her the elements of modern dancing at a certain interview by moonlight at the

top of her father's garden, as was proved by her possession of knowledge on the subject that could have been

His was of the first rank of commanding figures, she was one of the most agile of milkmaids, and to casual

view it would have seemed all of a piece with Nature's doings that things should go on thus. But there was

another side to the case; and whether the strange gentleman were a wild olive tree, or not, it was questionable

if the acquaintance would lead to happiness. 'A fleeting romance and a possible calamity;' thus it might have

Margery was in Paradise; and yet she was not at this date distinctly in love with the stranger. What she felt

was something more mysterious, more of the nature of veneration. As he looked at her across the stile she

'No doubt of it. I won't do things by halves for my best friend. I have thought of the balldress, and of other

'Quitequite.' He paused, lapsed into thought, and looked at her. 'Margery,' he said, 'do you trust yourself

'O yes, sir,' she replied brightly; 'if I am not too much trouble: if I am good enough to be seen in your society.'

The Baron laughed in a peculiar way. 'Really, I think you may assume as much as that.However, to

business. The ball is on the twenty fifth, that is next Thursday week; and the only difficulty about the dress

is the size. Suppose you lend me this?' And he touched her on the shoulder to signify a tight little jacket she

Margery was all obedience. She took it off and handed it to him. The Baron rolled and compressed it with all

his force till it was about as large as an appledumpling, and put it into his pocket.

'The next thing,' he said, 'is about getting the consent of your friends to your going. Have you thought of this?'

'There is only my father. I can tell him I am invited to a party, and I don't think he'll mind. Though I would

'But it strikes me that you must inform him something of what you intend. I would strongly advise you to do

so.' He spoke as if rather perplexed as to the probable custom of the English peasantry in such matters, and

added, 'However, it is for you to decide. I know nothing of the circumstances. As to getting to the ball, the

plan I have arranged is this. The direction to Lord Toneborough's being the other way from my house, you

must meet me at ThreeWalks Endin Chillington Wood, two miles or more from here. You know the

place? Good. By meeting there we shall save five or six miles of journeya consideration, as it is a long

way. Now, for the last time: are you still firm in your wish for this particular treat and no other? It is not too

late to give it up. Cannot you think of something elsesomething bettersome useful household articles

Margery's countenance, which before had been beaming with expectation, lost its brightness: her lips became

'No, no, no,' he said, patting her cheek. 'We will not think of anything else. You shall go.'

But whether the Baron, in naming such a distant spot for the rendezvous, was in hope she might fail him, and

so relieve him after all of his undertaking, cannot be said; though it might have been strongly suspected from

But he little knew the firmness of the young woman he had to deal with. She was one of those soft natures

whose power of adhesiveness to an acquired idea seems to be one of the special attributes of that softness. To

go to a ball with this mysterious personage of romance was her ardent desire and aim; and none the less in

that she trembled with fear and excitement at her position in so aiming. She felt the deepest awe, tenderness,

and humility towards the Baron of the strange name; and yet she was prepared to stick to her point.

Thus it was that the afternoon of the eventful day found Margery trudging her way up the slopes from the

vale to the place of appointment. She walked to the music of innumerable birds, which increased as she drew

She had overcome all difficulties. After thinking out the question of telling or not telling her father, she had

decided that to tell him was to be forbidden to go. Her contrivance therefore was this: to leave home this

evening on a visit to her invalid grandmother, who lived not far from the Baron's house; but not to arrive at

her grandmother's till breakfasttime next morning. Who would suspect an intercalated experience of twelve

hours with the Baron at a ball? That this piece of deception was indefensible she afterwards owned readily

It was sunset within Chillington Wood by the time she reached Three WalksEndthe converging point of

radiating trackways, now floored with a carpet of matted grass, which had never known other scythes than the

teeth of rabbits and hares. The twitter overhead had ceased, except from a few braver and larger birds,

including the cuckoo, who did not fear night at this pleasant time of year. Nobody seemed to be on the spot

when she first drew near, but no sooner did Margery stand at the intersection of the roads than a slight

crashing became audible, and her patron appeared. He was so transfigured in dress that she scarcely knew

him. Under a light greatcoat, which was flung open, instead of his ordinary clothes he wore a suit of thin

black cloth, an open waistcoat with a frill all down his shirt front, a white tie, shining boots, no thicker than

a glove, a coat that made him look like a bird, and a hat that seemed as if it would open and shut like an

'I am dressed for the ballnothing worse,' he said, drily smiling. 'So will you be soon.'

'Why did you choose this place for our meeting, sir?' she asked, looking around and acquiring confidence.

'Why did I choose it? Well, because in riding past one day I observed a large hollow tree close by here, and it

occurred to me when I was last with you that this would be useful for our purpose. Have you told your

She briefly related her plan, on which he made no comment, but, taking her by the hand as if she were a little

child, he led her through the undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and standing at wider

distances. Among them was the tree he had spoken ofan elm; huge, hollow, distorted, and headless, with a

'Now go inside,' he said, 'before it gets any darker. You will find there everything you want. At any rate, if

you do not you must do without it. I'll keep watch; and don't be longer than you can help to be.'

'Go inside, and you will see. When you are ready wave your handkerchief at that hole.'

She stooped into the opening. The cavity within the tree formed a lofty circular apartment, four or five feet in

diameter, to which daylight entered at the top, and also through a round hole about six feet from the ground,

marking the spot at which a limb had been amputated in the tree's prime. The decayed wood of

cinnamonbrown, forming the inner surface of the tree, and the warm evening glow, reflected in at the top,

But Margery had hardly given herself time to heed these things. Her eye had been caught by objects of quite

another quality. A large white oblong paper box lay against the inside of the tree; over it, on a splinter, hung a

Margery seized the idea in a moment. She pressed through the rift into the tree, lifted the cover of the box,

and, behold, there was disclosed within a lovely white apparition in a somewhat flattened state. It was the

This marvel of art was, briefly, a sort of heavenly cobweb. It was a gossamer texture of precious

Margery lifted it, and could hardly refrain from kissing it. Had any one told her before this moment that such

a dress could exist, she would have said, 'No; it's impossible!' She drew back, went forward, flushed, laughed,

raised her hands. To say that the maker of that dress had been an individual of talent was simply

understatement: he was a genius, and she sunned herself in the rays of his creation.

She then remembered that her friend without had told her to make haste, and she spasmodically proceeded to

array herself. In removing the dress she found satin slippers, gloves, a handkerchief nearly all lace, a fan, and

even flowers for the hair. 'O, how could he think of it!' she said, clasping her hands and almost crying with

Everything was so well prepared, that to clothe herself in these garments was a matter of ease. In a quarter of

an hour she was ready, even to shoes and gloves. But what led her more than anything else into admiration of

the Baron's foresight was the discovery that there were halfadozen pairs each of shoes and gloves, of

Margery glanced at herself in the mirror, or at as much as she could see of herself: the image presented was

superb. Then she hastily rolled up her old dress, put it in the box, and thrust the latter on a ledge as high as

she could reach. Standing on tiptoe, she waved the handkerchief through the upper aperture, and bent to the

But what a trouble stared her in the face. The dress was so airy, so fantastical, and so extensive, that to get out

in her new clothes by the rift which had admitted her in her old ones was an impossibility. She heard the

He came round to the opening, stooped, and looked in. 'It is obvious that you cannot,' he said, taking in her

compass at a glance; and adding to himself; 'Charming! who would have thought that clothes could do so

With all his might he kicked at the sides of the rift, and by that means broke away several pieces of the rotten

touchwood. But, being thinly armed about the feet, he abandoned that process, and went for a fallen branch

which lay near. By using the large end as a lever, he tore away pieces of the wooden shell which enshrouded

Margery and all her loveliness, till the aperture was large enough for her to pass without tearing her dress.

She breathed her relief: the silly girl had begun to fear that she would not get to the ball after all.

He carefully wrapped round her a cloak he had brought with him: it was hooded, and of a length which

'The carriage is waiting down the other path,' he said, and gave her his arm. A short trudge over the soft dry

There stood the brougham, the horses, the coachman, all as still as if they were growing on the spot, like the

'You need not mind him,' said the Baron. 'He is a foreigner, and heeds nothing.'

In the space of a short minute she was handed inside; the Baron buttoned up his overcoat, and surprised her

by mounting with the coachman. The carriage moved off silently over the long grass of the vista, the shadows

deepening to black as they proceeded. Darker and darker grew the night as they rolled on; the neighbourhood

familiar to Margery was soon left behind, and she had not the remotest idea of the direction they were taking.

In the course of an hour and a half they arrived at a small town, where they pulled up at the chief inn, and

changed horses; all being done so readily that their advent had plainly been expected. The journey was

resumed immediately. Her companion never descended to speak to her; whenever she looked out there he sat

upright on his perch, with the mien of a person who had a difficult duty to perform, and who meant to

perform it properly at all costs. But Margery could not help feeling a certain dread at her situationalmost,

indeed, a wish that she had not come. Once or twice she thought, 'Suppose he is a wicked man, who is taking

But her characteristic persistence in an original idea sustained her against these misgivings except at odd

moments. One incident in particular had given her confidence in her escort: she had seen a tear in his eye

when she expressed her sorrow for his troubles. He may have divined that her thoughts would take an uneasy

turn, for when they stopped for a moment in ascending a hill he came to the window. 'Are you tired,

'We are almost there,' he answered. 'And now, Margery,' he said in a lower tone, 'I must tell you a secret. I

have obtained this invitation in a peculiar way. I thought it best for your sake not to come in my own name,

and this is how I have managed. A man in this county, for whom I have lately done a service, one whom I can

trust, and who is personally as unknown here as you and I, has (privately) transferred his card of invitation to

me. So that we go under his name. I explain this that you may not say anything imprudent by accident. Keep

your ears open and be cautious.' Having said this the Baron retreated again to his place.

'Then he is a wicked man after all!' she said to herself; 'for he is going under a false name.' But she soon had

the temerity not to mind it: wickedness of that sort was the one ingredient required just now to finish him off

They descended a hill, passed a lodge, then up an avenue; and presently there beamed upon them the light

from other carriages, drawn up in a file, which moved on by degrees; and at last they halted before a large

'We are among the latest arrivals, on account of the distance,' said the Baron, reappearing. 'But never mind;

The steps were promptly flung down, and they alighted. The steam from the flanks of their swarthy steeds, as

they seemed to her, ascended to the parapet of the porch, and from their nostrils the hot breath jetted forth

The bewildered Margery was led by the Baron up the steps to the interior of the house, whence the sounds of

music and dancing were already proceeding. The tones were strange. At every fourth beat a deep and mighty

note throbbed through the air, reaching Margery's soul with all the force of a blow.

'The Drum Polka,' answered the Baron. 'The strange dance I spoke of and that we practisedintroduced from

Her surprise was not lessened when, at the entrance to the ballroom, she heard the names of her conductor

However, nobody seemed to take any notice of the announcement, the room beyond being in a perfect

turmoil of gaiety, and Margery's consternation at sailing under false colours subsided. At the same moment

she observed awaiting them a handsome, darkhaired, rather petite lady in creamcoloured satin. 'Who is

'She is the lady of the mansion,' he whispered. 'She is the wife of a peer of the realm, the daughter of a

marquis, has five Christian names; and hardly ever speaks to commoners, except for political purposes.'

'How divinewhat joy to be here!' murmured Margery, as she contemplated the diamonds that flashed from

the head of her ladyship, who was just inside the ballroom door, in front of a little gilded chair, upon which

she sat in the intervals between one arrival and another. She had come down from London at great

As Mr. and Miss Brown expressed absolutely no meaning to Lady Toneborough (for there were three Browns

already present in this rather mixed assembly), and as there was possibly a slight awkwardness in poor

Margery's manner, Lady Toneborough touched their hands lightly with the tips of her long gloves, said, 'How

'Ah, if she only knew we were a rich Baron and his friend, and not Mr. and Miss Brown at all, she wouldn't

'Indeed, she wouldn't!' drily said the Baron. 'Now let us drop into the dance at once; some of the people here,

Almost before she was aware she had obeyed his mysterious influence, by giving him one hand, placing the

other upon his shoulder, and swinging with him round the room to the steps she had learnt on the sward.

At the first gaze the apartment had seemed to her to be floored with black ice; the figures of the dancers

appearing upon it upside down. At last she realized that it was highlypolished oak, but she was none the less

'Lean on me; you will soon get used to it,' he replied. 'You have no nails in your shoes now, dear.'

His words, like all his words to her, were quite true. She found it amazingly easy in a brief space of time. The

floor, far from hindering her, was a positive assistance to one of her natural agility and litheness. Moreover,

her marvellous dress of twelve flounces inspired her as nothing else could have done. Externally a new

creature, she was prompted to new deeds. To feel as welldressed as the other women around her is to set any

woman at her ease, whencesoever she may have come: to feel much better dressed is to add radiance to that

Her prophet's statement on the popularity of the polka at this juncture was amply borne out. It was among the

first seasons of its general adoption in country houses; the enthusiasm it excited to night was beyond

description, and scarcely credible to the youth of the present day. A new motive power had been introduced

into the world of poesythe polka, as a counterpoise to the new motive power that had been introduced into

Twenty finished musicians sat in the music gallery at the end, with romantic mopheads of raven hair, under

The nature and object of the ball had led to its being very inclusive. Every rank was there, from the peer to

the smallest yeoman, and Margery got on exceedingly well, particularly when the recuperative powers of

Sometimes she heard people saying, 'Who are they?brother and sisterfather and daughter? And never

When not dancing the watchful Baron took her through the drawing rooms and picturegalleries adjoining,

which tonight were thrown open like the rest of the house; and there, ensconcing her in some curtained

nook, he drew her attention to scrapbooks, prints, and albums, and left her to amuse herself with turning

them over till the dance in which she was practised should again be called. Margery would much have

preferred to roam about during these intervals; but the words of the Baron were law, and as he commanded so

she acted. In such alternations the evening winged away; till at last came the gloomy words, 'Margery, our

'One moreonly one!' she coaxed, for the longer they stayed the more freely and gaily moved the dance.

This entreaty he granted; but on her asking for yet another, he was inexorable. 'No,' he said. 'We have a long

Then she bade adieu to the wondrous scene, looking over her shoulder as they withdrew from the hall; and in

a few minutes she was cloaked and in the carriage. The Baron mounted to his seat on the box, where she saw

him light a cigar; they plunged under the trees, and she leant back, and gave herself up to contemplate the

She did not awake till they stopped to change horses; when she saw against the stars the Baron sitting as erect

as ever. 'He watches like the Angel Gabriel, when all the world is asleep!' she thought.

With the resumption of motion she slept again, and knew no more till he touched her hand and said, 'Our

It was almost daylight. Margery scarcely knew herself to be awake till she was out of the carriage and

standing beside the Baron, who, having told the coachman to drive on to a certain point indicated, turned to

'Now,' he said, smiling, 'run across to the hollow tree; you know where it is. I'll wait as before, while you

perform the reverse operation to that you did last night.' She took no heed of the path now, nor regarded

whether her pretty slippers became scratched by the brambles or no. A walk of a few steps brought her to the

particular tree which she had left about nine hours earlier. It was still gloomy at this spot, the morning not

She entered the trunk, dislodged the box containing her old clothing, pulled off the satin shoes, and gloves,

Baron was not far off. 'Now you look the milkmaid again,' he said, coming towards her. 'Where is the finery?'

'Packed in the box, sir, as I found it.' She spoke with more humility now. The difference between them was

He went back to the tree, Margery following at a little distance. Bringing forth the box, he pulled out the

dress as carelessly as if it had been rags. But this was not all. He gathered a few dry sticks, crushed the lovely

garment into a loose billowy heap, threw the gloves, fan, and shoes on the top, then struck a light and

Margery was agonized. She ran forward; she implored and entreated. 'Please, sirdo spare itdo! My

'But spare a bit of itone little piece, sira scrap of the lace one bow of the ribbonthe lovely

But he was as immoveable as Rhadamanthus. 'No,' he said, with a stern gaze of his aristocratic eye. 'It is of no

use for you to speak like that. The things are my property. I undertook to gratify you in what you might desire

because you had saved my life. To go to a ball, you said. You might much more wisely have said anything

else, but no; you said, to go to a ball. Very wellI have taken you to a ball. I have brought you back. The

clothes were only the means, and I dispose of them my own way. Have I not a right to?'

He gave the fire a stir, and lace and ribbons, and the twelve flounces, and the embroidery, and all the rest

crackled and disappeared. He then put in her hands the butter basket she had brought to take on to her

grandmother's, and accompanied her to the edge of the wood, where it merged in the undulating open country

'Now, Margery,' he said, 'here we part. I have performed my contractat some awkwardness, if I was

'That long nap refreshed you, eh? Now you must make me a promise. That if I require your presence at any

time, you will come to me . . . I am a man of more than one mood,' he went on with sudden solemnity; 'and I

may have desperate need of you again, to deliver me from that darkness as of Death which sometimes

encompasses me. Promise it, Margerypromise it; that, no matter what stands in the way, you will come to

'Indeed, then, I will promise, sir,' she said from her heart. 'Wherever I am, if I have bodily strength I will

He pressed her hand. 'It is a solemn promise,' he replied. 'Now I must go, for you know your way.'

'I shall hardly believe that it has not been all a dream!' she said, with a childish instinct to cry at his

withdrawal. 'There will be nothing left of last nightnothing of my dress, nothing of my pleasure, nothing of

'You shall remember it in this way,' said he. 'We'll cut our initials on this tree as a memorial, so that whenever

Then with a knife he inscribed on the smooth bark of a beech tree the letters M.T., and underneath a large X.

'Yes, but I don't use it. Now, goodbye, my little friend.What will you do with yourself today, when you

'OhI shall go to my granny's,' she replied with some gloom; 'and have breakfast, and dinner, and tea with

her, I suppose; and in the evening I shall go home to Silverthorn Dairy, and perhaps Jim will come to meet

'Engaged to a master limeburner, and not a word of this to me! Margery, Margery! when shall a

straightforward one of your sex be found! Subtle even in your simplicity! What mischief have you caused me

to do, through not telling me this? I wouldn't have so endangered anybody's happiness for a thousand pounds.

'But don't you see and understand that if you are already the property of a young man, and he were to find out

this night's excursion, he may be angry with you and part from you for ever? With him already in the field I

had no right to take you at all; he undoubtedly ought to have taken you; which really might have been

Margery's face wore that aspect of woe which comes from the repentant consciousness of having been guilty

of an enormity. 'But he wasn't good enough to take me, sir!' she said, almost crying; 'and he isn't absolutely

'That's a subject I cannot go into. However, we must alter our tactics. Instead of advising you, as I did at first,

to tell of this experience to your friends, I must now impress on you that it will be best to keep a silent tongue

on the matterperhaps for ever and ever. It may come right some day, and you may be able to say "All's

well that ends well." Now, good morning, my friend. Think of Jim, and forget me.'

'Ah, perhaps I can't do that,' she said, with a tear in her eye, and a full throat.

Between six and seven o'clock in the evening of the same day a young man descended the hills into the valley

of the Exe, at a point about midway between Silverthorn and the residence of Margery's grandmother, four

He was a thoroughbred son of the country, as far removed from what is known as the provincial, as the latter

is from the outandout gentleman of culture. His trousers and waistcoat were of fustian, almost white, but

he wore a jacket of oldfashioned blue Westof England cloth, so well preserved that evidently the article

was relegated to a box whenever its owner engaged in such active occupations as he usually pursued. His

A novel attraction about this young man, which a glancing stranger would know nothing of, was a rare and

curious freshness of atmosphere that appertained to him, to his clothes, to all his belongings, even to the room

in which he had been sitting. It might almost have been said that by adding him and his implements to an

overcrowded apartment you made it healthful. This resulted from his trade. He was a limeburner; he

handled lime daily; and in return the lime rendered him an incarnation of salubrity. His hair was dry, fair, and

frizzled, the latter possibly by the operation of the same caustic agent. He carried as a walkingstick a green

sapling, whose growth had been contorted to a corkscrew pattern by a twining honeysuckle.

As he descended to the level ground of the watermeadows he cast his glance westward, with a frequency

that revealed him to be in search of some object in the distance. It was rather difficult to do this, the low

sunlight dazzling his eyes by glancing from the river away there, and from the 'carriers' (as they were called)

in his path narrow artificial brooks for conducting the water over the grass. His course was something of a

zigzag from the necessity of finding points in these carriers convenient for jumping. Thus peering and leaping

A moving spot became visible to him in the direction of his scrutiny, mixed up with the rays of the same

river. The spot got nearer, and revealed itself to be a slight thing of pink cotton and shepherd's plaid, which

pursued a path on the brink of the stream. The young man so shaped his trackless course as to impinge on the

path a little ahead of this coloured form, and when he drew near her he smiled and reddened. The girl smiled

back to him; but her smile had not the life in it that the young man's had shown.

'My dear Margeryhere I am!' he said gladly in an undertone, as with a last leap he crossed the last

'You've come all the way from the kiln, on purpose to meet me, and you shouldn't have done it,' she

'We finished there at four, so it was no trouble; and if it had been why, I should ha' come.'

'What, you are not even so glad to see me as you would be to see your dog or cat?' he continued. 'Come,

Mis'ess Margery, this is rather hard. But, by George, how tired you dew look! Why, if you'd been up all night

your eyes couldn't be more like teasaucers. You've walked tew far, that's what it is. The weather is getting

warm now, and the air of these lowlying meads is not strengthening in summer. I wish you lived up on

higher ground with me, beside the kiln. You'd get as strong as a hoss! Well, there; all that will come in time.'

'What? Who's been putting that into your head? Your grumpy granny, I suppose. However, how is she?

Margery, I have been thinking to dayin fact, I was thinking it yesterday and all the weekthat really we

'This summer?' she repeated, with some dismay. 'But the partnership? Remember it was not to be till after

'There I have you!' said he, taking the liberty to pat her shoulder, and the further liberty of advancing his hand

behind it to the other. 'The partnership is settled. 'Tis "Vine and Hayward, limeburners," now, and "Richard

Vine" no longer. Yes, Cousin Richard has settled it so, for a time at least, and 'tis to be painted on the carts

this weekblue lettersyaller ground. I'll boss one of 'em, and drive en round to your door as soon as the

'Oh, I am sure you needn't take that trouble, Jim; I can see it quite well enough in my mind,' replied the young

'Hullo,' said Jim, taking her by the shoulders, and looking at her hard. 'What dew that bit of incivility mean?

Now, Margery, let's sit down here, and have this cleared.' He rapped with his stick upon the rail of a little

'Fidgets. Sit down, there's a dear. I want a straightforward answer, if you please. In what month, and on what

'O, Jim,' she said, sitting gingerly on the edge, 'that's too plain spoken for you yet. Before I look at it in that

'But your father has settled it long ago, and you said it should be as soon as I became a partner. So, dear, you

She did not reply at once. What thoughts were passing through her brain during the interval? Not images

raised by his words, but whirling figures of men and women in red and white and blue, reflected from a

glassy floor, in movements timed by the thrilling beats of the Drum Polka. At last she said slowly, 'Jim, you

'But I can make you comfortable. I am in lodgings as yet, but I can have a house for the asking; and as to

'The best! Far are you from knowing what that is!' said the little woman. 'There be ornaments such as you

never dream of; worktables that would set you in amaze; silver candlesticks, tea and coffee pots that would

dazzle your eyes; teacups, and saucers, gilded all over with guineagold; heavy velvet curtains, gold clocks,

pictures, and lookingglasses beyond your very dreams. So don't say I shall have the best.'

'H'm!' said Jim gloomily; and fell into reflection. 'Where did you get those high notions from, Margery?' he

presently inquired. 'I'll swear you hadn't got 'em a week ago.' She did not answer, and he added, 'YEW don't

'I was not exactly speaking of what I wanted,' she said severely. 'I said, things a woman COULD want. And

since you wish to know what I CAN want to quite satisfy me, I assure you I can want those!'

'You are a pinkandwhite conundrum, Margery,' he said; 'and I give you up for tonight. Anybody would

think the devil had showed you all the kingdoms of the world since I saw you last!'

She reddened. 'Perhaps he has!' she murmured; then arose, he following her; and they soon reached Margery's

home, approaching it from the lower or meadow sidethe opposite to that of the garden top, where she had

Jim thoughtfully retraced his steps. He was a village character, and he had a villager's simplicity: that is, the

simplicity which comes from the lack of a complicated experience. But simple by nature he certainly was not.

Among the rank and file of rustics he was quite a Talleyrand, or rather had been one, till he lost a good deal

Now, however, that the charming object of his distraction was out of sight he could deliberate, and measure,

and weigh things with some approach to keenness. The substance of his queries was, What change had come

Ponder as he would he could evolve no answer save one, which, eminently unsatisfactory as it was, he felt it

would be unreasonable not to accept: that she was simply skittish and ambitious by nature, and would not be

Jim retrod the miles to the kiln, and looked to the fires. The kiln stood in a peculiar, interesting, even

impressive spot. It was at the end of a short ravine in a limestone formation, and all around was an open hilly

down. The nearest house was that of Jim's cousin and partner, which stood on the outskirts of the down

beside the turnpikeroad. From this house a little lane wound between the steep escarpments of the ravine till

it reached the kiln, which faced down the miniature valley, commanding it as a fort might command a defile.

The idea of a fort in this association owed little to imagination. For on the nibbled green steep above the kiln

stood a byegone, worn out specimen of such an erection, huge, impressive, and difficult to scale even now

in its decay. It was a British castle or entrenchment, with triple rings of defence, rising roll behind roll, their

outlines cutting sharply against the sky, and Jim's kiln nearly undermining their base. When the limekiln

flared up in the night, which it often did, its fires lit up the front of these ramparts to a great majesty. They

were old friends of his, and while keeping up the heat through the long darkness, as it was sometimes his duty

to do, he would imagine the dancing lights and shades about the stupendous earthwork to be the forms of

those giants who (he supposed) had heaped it up. Often he clambered upon it, and walked about the summit,

thinking out the problems connected with his business, his partner, his future, his Margery.

It was what he did this evening, continuing the meditation on the young girl's manner that he had begun upon

While thus engaged he observed a man coming up the ravine to the kiln. Business messages were almost

invariably left at the house below, and Jim watched the man with the interest excited by a belief that he had

come on a personal matter. On nearer approach Jim recognized him as the gardener at Mount Lodge some

miles away. If this meant business, the Baron (of whose arrival Jim had vaguely heard) was a new and

It meant nothing else, apparently. The man's errand was simply to inform Jim that the Baron required a load

'You might have saved yourself trouble by leaving word at Mr. Vine's,' said Jim.

'I was to see you personally,' said the gardener, 'and to say that the Baron would like to inquire of you about

'He said I was to tell you that,' replied the gardener; 'and it wasn't for me to interfere.'

No motive other than the ostensible one could possibly be conjectured by Jim Hayward at this time; and the

next morning he started with great pleasure, in his best business suit of clothes. By eleven o'clock he and his

horse and cart had arrived on the Baron's premises, and the lime was deposited where directed; an exceptional

Baron von Xanten, pale and melancholy, was sauntering in the sun on the slope between the house and the

alltheyearround. He looked across to where Jim and the gardener were standing, and the identity of

Hayward being established by what he brought, the Baron came down, and the gardener withdrew.

The Baron's first inquiries were, as Jim had been led to suppose they would be, on the exterminating effects

of lime upon slugs and snails in its different conditions of slaked and unslaked, ground and in the lump. He

appeared to be much interested by Jim's explanations, and eyed the young man closely whenever he had an

'Very, my noble lord,' replied Jim, who, in his uncertainty on the proper method of address, wisely concluded

that it was better to err by giving too much honour than by giving too little. 'In short, trade is looking so well

'Well, my lord; I am hardly settled, even now. For I've got to finish itI mean, to get married.'

'Now a man might think so, my baron,' said Jim, getting more confidential. 'But the real truth is, 'tis the

'It don't,' said Jim. 'It don't at all just at present. In short, I can't for the life o' me think what's come over the

Though Jim did not observe it, the Baron's brow became shadowed with selfreproach as he heard those

'Since yesterday, my noble lord.' Jim spoke meditatively. He was resolving upon a bold stroke. Why not

make a confidant of this kind gentleman, instead of the parson, as he had intended? The thought was no

sooner conceived than acted on. 'My lord,' he resumed, 'I have heard that you are a nobleman of great scope

and talent, who has seen more strange countries and characters than I have ever heard of, and know the

insides of men well. Therefore I would fain put a question to your noble lordship, if I may so trouble you, and

'It is this, my baron. What can I do to bring down a young woman's ambition that's got to such a towering

height there's no reaching it or compassing it: how get her to be pleased with me and my station as she used

'Silver candlesticks, worktables, lookingglasses, gold teathings, silver teapots, gold clocks, curtains,

pictures, and I don't know what allthings I shall never get if I live to be a hundrednot so much that I

couldn't raise the money to buy 'em, as that to put it to other uses, or save it for a rainy day.'

Jim in some astonishment did as commanded, and elevating his pocket book against the gardenwall,

'Pair of silver candlesticks: inlaid worktable and workbox: one large mirror: two small ditto: one gilt china

tea and coffee service: one silver teapot, coffeepot, sugarbasin, jug, and dozen spoons: French clock: pair

'Now,' said the Baron, 'tear out that leaf and give it to me. Keep a close tongue about this; go home, and don't

'Never mind what I am going to do. Only keep your own counsel. I perceive that, though a plain countryman,

you are by no means deficient in tact and understanding. If sending these things to you gives me pleasure,

why should you object? The fact is, Hayward, I occasionally take an interest in people, and like to do a little

for them. I take an interest in you. Now go home, and a week hence invite Margthe young woman and her

A question often put to Jim in after times was why it had not occurred to him at once that the Baron's liberal

conduct must have been dictated by something more personal than sudden spontaneous generosity to him, a

stranger. To which Jim always answered that, admitting the existence of such generosity, there had appeared

nothing remarkable in the Baron selecting himself as its object. The Baron had told him that he took an

interest in him; and selfesteem, even with the most modest, is usually sufficient to override any little

difficulty that might occur to an outsider in accounting for a preference. He moreover considered that foreign

noblemen, rich and eccentric, might have habits of acting which were quite at variance with those of their

So he drove off homeward with a lighter heart than he had known for several days. To have a foreign

gentleman take a fancy to himwhat a triumph to a plain sort of fellow, who had scarcely expected the

Baron to look in his face. It would be a fine story to tell Margery when the Baron gave him liberty to speak

Jim lodged at the house of his cousin and partner, Richard Vine, a widower of fifty odd years. Having failed

in the development of a household of direct descendants this tradesman had been glad to let his chambers to

his much younger relative, when the latter entered on the business of lime manufacture; and their intimacy

had led to a partnership. Jim lived upstairs; his partner lived down, and the furniture of all the rooms was so

plain and old fashioned as to excite the special dislike of Miss Margery Tucker, and even to prejudice her

against Jim for tolerating it. Not only were the chairs and tables queer, but, with due regard to the principle

that a man's surroundings should bear the impress of that man's life and occupation, the chief ornaments of

the dwelling were a curious collection of calcinations, that had been discovered from time to time in the

limekilnmisshapen ingots of strange substance, some of them like Pompeian remains.

The head of the firm was a quietliving, narrowminded, though friendly, man of fifty; and he took a serious

interest in Jim's love suit, frequently inquiring how it progressed, and assuring Jim that if he chose to marry

he might have all the upper floor at a low rent, he, Mr. Vine, contenting himself entirely with the ground

level. It had been so convenient for discussing business matters to have Jim in the same house, that he did not

wish any change to be made in consequence of a change in Jim's domestic estate. Margery knew of this wish,

About four days after the young man's interview with the Baron, there drew up in front of Jim's house at noon

a waggon laden with cases and packages, large and small. They were all addressed to 'Mr. Hayward,' and they

Threequarters of an hour were occupied in getting the cases to Jim's rooms. The wary Jim did not show the

amazement he felt at his patron's munificence; and presently the senior partner came into the passage, and

Mr. Vine, with some astonishment at the number of cases, shortly after went away to the kiln; whereupon Jim

shut himself into his rooms, and there he might have been heard ripping up and opening boxes with a

cautious hand, afterwards appearing outside the door with them empty, and carrying them off to the outhouse.

A triumphant look lit up his face when, a little later in the afternoon, he sent into the vale to the dairy, and

She was not unsociable that day, and, her father expressing a hard and fast acceptance of the invitation, she

perforce agreed to go with him. Meanwhile at home, Jim made himself as mysteriously busy as before in

those rooms of his, and when his partner returned he too was asked to join in the supper.

At dusk Hayward went to the door, where he stood till he heard the voices of his guests from the direction of

the low grounds, now covered with their frequent fleece of fog. The voices grew more distinct, and then on

the white surface of the fog there appeared two trunkless heads, from which bodies and a horse and cart

When they had entered Jim pressed Margery's hand and conducted her up to his rooms, her father waiting

'Bless me,' said Jim to her, on entering the sittingroom; 'I quite forgot to get a light beforehand; but I'll have

Margery stood in the middle of the dark room, while Jim struck a match; and then the young girl's eyes were

conscious of a burst of light, and the rise into being of a pair of handsome silver candlesticks containing two

'Whywhereyou have candlesticks like that?' said Margery. Her eyes flew round the room as the growing

candleflames showed other articles. 'Pictures tooand lovely chinawhy I knew nothing of this, I

'And a great gold clock under a glass, and a cupid swinging for a pendulum; and O what a lovely

worktablewoods of every colourand a workbox to match. May I look inside that workbox,

'O yes; look at it, of course. It is a poor enough thing, but 'tis mine; and it will belong to the woman I marry,

'And the curtains and the lookingglasses: why I declare I can see myself in a hundred places.'

'That teaset,' said Jim, placidly pointing to a gorgeous china service and a large silver teapot on the side

table, 'I don't use at present, being a bachelorman; but, says I to myself, "whoever I marry will want some

such things for giving her parties; or I can sell em"but I haven't took steps for't yet'

'Sell 'emno, I should think not,' said Margery with earnest reproach. 'Why, I hope you wouldn't be so

foolish! Why, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of when I told you of the things women could

wantof course not meaning myself particularly. I had no idea that you had such valuable'

Margery was unable to speak coherently, so much was she amazed at the wealth of Jim's possessions.

At this moment her father and the limeburner came upstairs; and to appear womanly and proper to Mr.

As for the two elderly worthies, it was not till they entered the room and sat down that their slower eyes

discerned anything brilliant in the appointments. Then one of them stole a glance at some article, and the

other at another; but each being unwilling to express his wonder in the presence of his neighbours, they

received the objects before them with quite an accustomed air; the limeburner inwardly trying to conjecture

what all this meant, and the dairyman musing that if Jim's business allowed him to accumulate at this rate, the

sooner Margery became his wife the better. Margery retreated to the worktable, workbox, and teaservice,

An entertainment thus surprisingly begun could not fail to progress well. Whenever Margery's crusty old

father felt the need of a civil sentence, the flash of Jim's fancy articles inspired him to one; while the

limeburner, having reasoned away his first ominous thought that all this had come out of the firm, also felt

Jim accompanied his dairy friends part of the way home before they mounted. Her father, finding that Jim

wanted to speak to her privately, and that she exhibited some elusiveness, turned to Margery and said; 'Come,

come, my lady; no more of this nonsense. You just step behind with that young man, and I and the cart will

Margery, a little scared at her father's peremptoriness, obeyed. It was plain that Jim had won the old man by

'I know what you are going to say, Jim,' she began, less ardently now, for she was no longer under the novel

influence of the shining silver and glass. 'Well, as you desire it, and as my father desires it, and as I suppose it

will be the best course for me, I will fix the daynot this evening, but as soon as I can think it over.'

Notwithstanding a press of business, Jim went and did his duty in thanking the Baron. The latter saw him in

his fishingtackle room, an apartment littered with every appliance that a votary of the rod could require.

'And when is the weddingday to be, Hayward?' the Baron asked, after Jim had told him that matters were

'It is not quite certain yet, my noble lord,' said Jim cheerfully. 'But I hope 'twill not be long after the time

'St. Swithin'sthe middle of July. 'Tis to be some time in that month, she tells me.'

When Jim was gone the Baron seemed meditative. He went out, ascended the mount, and entered the

weatherscreen, where he looked at the seats, as though reenacting in his fancy the scene of that memorable

morning of fog. He turned his eyes to the angle of the shelter, round which Margery had suddenly appeared

like a vision, and it was plain that he would not have minded her appearing there then. The juncture had

indeed been such an impressive and critical one that she must have seemed rather a heavenly messenger than

a passing milkmaid, more especially to a man like the Baron, who, despite the mystery of his origin and life,

revealed himself to be a melancholy, emotional characterthe Jacques of this forest and stream.

Behind the mount the ground rose yet higher, ascending to a plantation which sheltered the house. The Baron

strolled up here, and bent his gaze over the distance. The valley of the Exe lay before him, with its shining

river, the brooks that fed it, and the trickling springs that fed the brooks. The situation of Margery's house

was visible, though not the house itself; and the Baron gazed that way for an infinitely long time, till,

Instead of returning to the house he went along the ridge till he arrived at the verge of Chillington Wood, and

in the same desultory manner roamed under the trees, not pausing till he had come to Three WalksEnd,

and the hollow elm hard by. He peeped in at the rift. In the soft dry layer of touchwood that floored the

hollow Margery's tracks were still visible, as she had made them there when dressing for the ball.

In a moment he thought better of this mood, and turned to go home. But behold, a form stood behind

She was in utter confusion. 'IIdid not know you were here, sir!' she began. 'I was out for a little walk.'

She could get no further; her eyes filled with tears. That spice of wilfulness, even hardness, which

characterized her in Jim's company, magically disappeared in the presence of the Baron.

'Never mind, never mind,' said he, masking under a severe manner whatever he felt. 'The meeting is

awkward, and ought not to have occurred, especially if as I suppose, you are shortly to be married to James

Hayward. But it cannot be helped now. You had no idea I was here, of course. Neither had I of seeing you.

Remember you cannot be too careful,' continued the Baron, in the same grave tone; 'and I strongly request

you as a friend to do your utmost to avoid meetings like this. When you saw me before I turned, why did you

'I did not see you, sir. I did not think of seeing you. I was walking this way, and I only looked in to see the

'That shows you have been thinking of things you should not think of,' returned the Baron. 'Good morning.'

Margery could answer nothing. A browbeaten glance, almost of misery, was all she gave him. He took a slow

step away from her; then turned suddenly back and, stooping, impulsively kissed her cheek, taking her as

Immediately after he went off with a flushed face and rapid strides, which he did not check till he was within

The haymaking season now set in vigorously, and the weirhatches were all drawn in the meads to drain off

the water. The streams ran themselves dry, and there was no longer any difficulty in walking about among

them. The Baron could very well witness from the elevations about his house the activity which followed

these preliminaries. The white shirtsleeves of the mowers glistened in the sun, the scythes flashed, voices

echoed, snatches of song floated about, and there were glimpses of red waggonwheels, purple gowns, and

The Baron had been told that the haymaking was to be followed by the wedding, and had he gone down the

vale to the dairy he would have had evidence to that effect. Dairyman Tucker's house was in a whirlpool of

bustle, and among other difficulties was that of turning the cheeseroom into a genteel apartment for the time

being, and hiding the awkwardness of having to pass through the milkhouse to get to the parlour door.

These household contrivances appeared to interest Margery much more than the great question of dressing for

the ceremony and the ceremony itself. In all relating to that she showed an indescribable backwardness,

'If it were only somebody else, and I was one of the bridesmaids, I really think I should like it better!' she

It is said that about this time the Baron seemed to feel the effects of solitude strongly. Solitude revives the

simple instincts of primitive man, and lonely country nooks afford rich soil for wayward emotions. Moreover,

idleness waters those unconsidered impulses which a short season of turmoil would stamp out. It is difficult

to speak with any exactness of the bearing of such conditions on the mind of the Barona man of whom so

little was ever truly knownbut there is no doubt that his mind ran much on Margery as an individual,

without reference to her rank or quality, or to the question whether she would marry Jim Hayward that

summer. She was the single lovely human thing within his present horizon, for he lived in absolute seclusion;

One Saturday evening, two or three weeks after his accidental meeting with her in the wood, he wrote the

You must not suppose that, because I spoke somewhat severely to you at our chance encounter by the hollow

tree, I have any feeling against you. Far from it. Now, as ever, I have the most grateful sense of your

You solemnly promised to come and see me whenever I should send for you. Can you call for five minutes as

soon as possible, and disperse those plaguy glooms from which I am so unfortunate as to suffer? If you refuse

I shall be in the summer shelter of the mount tomorrow morning at halfpast ten. If you come I shall be

In keeping with the tenor of this epistle the desponding, self oppressed Baron ascended the mount on

Sunday morning and sat down. There was nothing here to signify exactly the hour, but before the church bells

had begun he heard somebody approaching at the back. The light footstep moved timidly, first to one recess,

and then to another; then to the third, where he sat in the shade. Poor Margery stood before him.

She looked worn and weary, and her little shoes and the skirts of her dress were covered with dust. The

weather was sultry, the sun being already high and powerful, and rain had not fallen for weeks. The Baron,

who walked little, had thought nothing of the effects of this heat and drought in inducing fatigue. A distance

which had been but a reasonable exercise on a foggy morning was a drag for Margery now. She was out of

He rose to his feet, and took her hand. He was vexed with himself at sight of her. 'My dear little girl!' he said.

'You sent for me, sir; and I was afraid you were ill; and my promise to you was sacred.'

He bent over her, looking upon her downcast face, and still holding her hand; then he dropped it, and took a

'It was a whim, nothing more,' he said, sadly. 'I wanted to see my little friend, to express good wishesand

to present her with this.' He held forward a small morocco case, and showed her how to open it, disclosing a

pretty locket, set with pearls. 'It is intended as a wedding present,' he continued. 'To be returned to me again if

'It was, sir,' she said with agitation. 'But it is so no longer. And, therefore, I cannot take this.'

'We fixed Sunday not to hinder much time at this busy season of the year,' replied she.

'You sent for me, and I have come,' she answered humbly, like an obedient familiar in the employ of some

great enchanter. Indeed, the Baron's power over this innocent girl was curiously like enchantment, or

mesmeric influence. It was so masterful that the sexual element was almost eliminated. It was that of

Prospero over the gentle Ariel. And yet it was probably only that of the cosmopolite over the recluse, of the

'You have comeon your weddingday!O Margery, this is a mistake. Of course, you should not have

obeyed me, since, though I thought your wedding would be soon, I did not know it was today.'

'I promised you, sir; and I would rather keep my promise to you than be married to Jim.'

'That must not bethe feeling is wrong!' he murmured, looking at the distant hills. 'There seems to be a fate

in all this; I get out of the fryingpan into the fire. What a recompense to you for your goodness! The fact is,

I was out of health and out of spirits, so I but no more of that. Now instantly to repair this tremendous

After a pause, he went on hurriedly, 'Walk down the hill; get into the road. By that time I shall be there with a

phaeton. We may get back in time. What time is it now? If not, no doubt the wedding can be tomorrow; so

all will come right again. Don't cry, my dear girl. Keep the locket, of courseyou'll marry Jim.'

He hastened down towards the stables, and she went on as directed. It seemed as if he must have put in the

horse himself, so quickly did he reappear with the phaeton on the open road. Margery silently took her seat,

and the Baron seemed cut to the quick with selfreproach as he noticed the listless indifference with which

she acted. There was no doubt that in her heart she had preferred obeying the apparently important mandate

that morning to becoming Jim's wife; but there was no less doubt that had the Baron left her alone she would

He drove along furiously, in a cloud of dust. There was much to contemplate in that peaceful Sunday

morningthe windless trees and fields, the shaking sunlight, the pause in human stir. Yet neither of them

heeded, and thus they drew near to the dairy. His first expressed intention had been to go indoors with her,

'You may be soon enough,' he said, springing down, and helping her to follow. 'Tell the truth: say you were

sent for to receive a wedding presentthat it was a mistake on my parta mistake on yours; and I think

they'll forgive . . . And, Margery, my last request to you is this: that if I send for you again, you do not come.

Her lips moved, but the promise was not articulated. 'O, sir, I cannot promise it!' she said at last.

'But you must; your salvation may depend on it!' he insisted almost sternly. 'You don't know what I am.'

'Then, sir, I promise,' she replied. 'Now leave me to myself, please, and I'll go indoors and manage matters.'

He turned the horse and drove away, but only for a little distance. Out of sight he pulled rein suddenly. 'Only

He stood up in the phaeton, and by this means he could see over the hedge. Margery still sat listlessly in the

same place; there was not a lovelier flower in the field. 'No,' he said; 'no, nonever!' He reseated himself,

Meanwhile Margery had not moved. If the Baron could dissimulate on the side of severity she could

dissimulate on the side of calm. He did not know what had been veiled by the quiet promise to manage

matters indoors. Rising at length she first turned away from the house; and, byandby, having apparently

forgotten till then that she carried it in her hand, she opened the case, and looked at the locket. This seemed to

give her courage. She turned, set her face towards the dairy in good earnest, and though her heart faltered

On the threshold she stood listening. The house was silent. Decorations were visible in the passage, and also

the carefully swept and sanded path to the gate, which she was to have trodden as a bride; but the sparrows

hopped over it as if it were abandoned; and all appeared to have been checked at its climacteric, like a clock

stopped on the strike. Till this moment of confronting the suspended animation of the scene she had not

realized the full shock of the convulsion which her disappearance must have caused. It is quite certainapart

from her own repeated assurances to that effect in later yearsthat in hastening off that morning to her

sudden engagement, Margery had not counted the cost of such an enterprise; while a dim notion that she

might get back again in time for the ceremony, if the message meant nothing serious, should also be

mentioned in her favour. But, upon the whole, she had obeyed the call with an unreasoning obedience worthy

of a disciple in primitive times. A conviction that the Baron's life might depend upon her presencefor she

had by this time divined the tragical event she had interrupted on the foggy morningtook from her all will

to judge and consider calmly. The simple affairs of her and hers seemed nothing beside the possibility of

A wellknown step moved on the sanded floor within, and she went forward. That she saw her father's face

before her, just within the door, can hardly be said: it was rather Reproach and Rage in a human mask.

'What! ye have dared to come back alive, hussy, to look upon the dupery you have practised on honest

people! You've mortified us all; I don't want to see 'ee; I don't want to hear 'ee; I don't want to know

anything!' He walked up and down the room, unable to command himself. 'Nothing but being dead could

have excused 'ee for not meeting and marrying that man this morning; and yet you have the brazen

'I've come back to marry Jim, if he wants me to,' she said faintly. 'And if notperhaps so much the better. I

was sent for this morning early. I thought.' She halted. To say that she had thought a man's death might

happen by his own hand if she did not go to him, would never do. 'I was obliged to go,' she said. 'I had given

'Why didn't you tell us then, so that the wedding could be put off, without making fools o' us?'

She was silent; till she said, 'I will tell Jim all, and why it was; and if he's any friend of mine he'll excuse me.'

'Not Jimhe's no such fool. Jim had put all ready for you, Jim had called at your house, adressed up in his

new wedding clothes, and a smiling like the sun; Jim had told the parson, had got the ringers in tow, and the

clerk awaiting; and thenyou was GONE! Then Jim turned as pale as rendlewood, and busted out, "If she

don't marry me to day," 'a said, "she don't marry me at all! No; let her look elsewhere for a husband. For tew

years I've put up with her haughty tricks and her takings," 'a said. "I've droudged and I've traipsed, I've

bought and I've sold, all wi' an eye to her; I've suffered horseflesh," he saysyes, them was his noble

words"but I'll suffer it no longer. She shall go!" "Jim," says I, "you be a man. If she's alive, I commend 'ee;

if she's dead, pity my old age." "She isn't dead," says he; "for I've just heard she was seen walking off across

the fields this morning, looking all of a scornful triumph." He turned round and went, and the rest o' the

'He was too hasty,' murmured Margery. 'For now he's said this I can't marry him tomorrow, as I might ha'

'You can be so calm about it, can ye? Be my arrangements nothing, then, that you should break 'em up, and

say off hand what wasn't done today might ha' been done tomorrow, and such flickflack? Out o' my

He turned and stamped his way into the cheeseroom. Margery went upstairs. She too was excited now, and

instead of fortifying herself in her bedroom till her father's rage had blown over, as she had often done on

lesser occasions, she packed up a bundle of articles, crept down again, and went out of the house. She had a

place of refuge in these cases of necessity, and her father knew it, and was less alarmed at seeing her depart

than he might otherwise have been. This place was Rook's Gate, the house of her grandmother, who always

The devious way she pursued, to avoid the vicinity of Mount Lodge, was tedious, and she was already weary.

But the cottage was a restful place to arrive at, for she was her own mistress thereher grandmother never

coming down stairsand Edy, the woman who lived with and attended her, being a cipher except in muscle

and voice. The approach was by a straight open road, bordered by thin lank trees, all sloping away from the

southwest windquarter, and the scene bore a strange resemblance to certain bits of Dutch landscape which

Having explained to her granny that the wedding was put off; and that she had come to stay, one of Margery's

first acts was carefully to pack up the locket and case, her wedding present from the Baron. The conditions of

the gift were unfulfilled, and she wished it to go back instantly. Perhaps, in the intricacies of her bosom, there

lurked a greater satisfaction with the reason for returning the present than she would have felt just then with a

To send the article was difficult. In the evening she wrapped herself up, searched and found a gauze veil that

had been used by her grandmother in past years for hiving swarms of bees, buried her face in it, and sallied

forth with a palpitating heart till she drew near the tabernacle of her demigod the Baron. She ventured only

to the backdoor, where she handed in the parcel addressed to him, and quickly came away.

Now it seems that during the day the Baron had been unable to learn the result of his attempt to return

Margery in time for the event he had interrupted. Wishing, for obvious reasons, to avoid direct inquiry by

messenger, and being too unwell to go far himself, he could learn no particulars. He was sitting in thought

after a lonely dinner when the parcel intimating failure as brought in. The footman, whose curiosity had been

excited by the mode of its arrival, peeped through the keyhole after closing the door, to learn what the packet

meant. Directly the Baron had opened it he thrust out his feet vehemently from his chair, and began cursing

his ruinous conduct in bringing about such a disaster, for the return of the locket denoted not only no wedding

'I have done that innocent woman a great wrong!' he murmured. 'Deprived her of, perhaps, her only

Nothing tended to dissipate the obscurity which veiled the life of the Baron. The position he occupied in the

minds of the countryfolk around was one which combined the mysteriousness of a legendary character with

the unobtrusive deeds of a modern gentleman. To this day whoever takes the trouble to go down to

Silverthorn in Lower Wessex and make inquiries will find existing there almost a superstitious feeling for the

Whence he came, whither he was going, were alike unknown. It was said that his mother had been an English

lady of noble family who had married a foreigner not unheard of in circles where men pile up 'the cankered

heaps of strangeachieved gold'that he had been born and educated in England, taken abroad, and so on.

But the facts of a life in such cases are of little account beside the aspect of a life; and hence, though

doubtless the years of his existence contained their share of trite and homely circumstance, the curtain which

masked all this was never lifted to gratify such a theatre of spectators as those at Silverthorn. Therein lay his

charm. His life was a vignette, of which the central strokes only were drawn with any distinctness, the

He might have been said to resemble that solitary bird the heron. The still, lonely stream was his frequent

haunt: on its banks he would stand for hours with his rod, looking into the water, beholding the tawny

inhabitants with the eye of a philosopher, and seeming to say, 'Bite or don't biteit's all the same to me.' He

was often mistaken for a ghost by children; and for a pollard willow by men, when, on their way home in the

dusk, they saw him motionless by some rushy bank, unobservant of the decline of day.

Why did he come to fish near Silverthorn? That was never explained. As far as was known he had no

relatives near; the fishing there was not exceptionally good; the society thereabout was decidedly meagre.

That he had committed some folly or hasty act, that he had been wrongfully accused of some crime, thus

rendering his seclusion from the world desirable for a while, squared very well with his frequent melancholy.

But such as he was there he lived, well supplied with fishingtackle, and tenant of a furnished house, just

Margery's father, having privately ascertained that she was living with her grandmother, and getting into no

harm, refrained from communicating with her, in the hope of seeing her contrite at his door. It had, of course,

become known about Silverthorn that at the last moment Margery refused to wed Hayward, by absenting

herself from the house. Jim was pitied, yet not pitied much, for it was said that he ought not to have been so

And where was Jim himself? It must not be supposed that that tactician had all this while withdrawn from

mortal eye to tear his hair in silent indignation and despair. He had, in truth, merely retired up the lonesome

defile between the downs to his smouldering kiln, and the ancient ramparts above it; and there, after his first

hours of natural discomposure, he quietly waited for overtures from the possibly repentant Margery. But no

overtures arrived, and then he meditated anew on the absorbing problem of her skittishness, and how to set

about another campaign for her conquest, notwithstanding his late disastrous failure. Why had he failed? To

He had made no advance in solving the riddle when, one morning, a stranger appeared on the down above

him, looking as if he had lost his way. The man had a good deal of black hair below his felt hat, and carried

under his arm a case containing a musical instrument. Descending to where Jim stood, he asked if there were

'Oh, yes,' replied the musician. 'I wish to intercept the carrier on the highway.'

The nearest way was precisely in the direction of Rook's Gate, where Margery, as Jim knew, was staying.

Having some time to spare, Jim was strongly impelled to make a kind act to the lost musician a pretext for

taking observations in that neighbourhood, and telling his acquaintance that he was going the same way, he

They skirted the long length of meads, and in due time arrived at the back of Rook's Gate, where the path

joined the high road. A hedge divided the public way from the cottage garden. Jim drew up at this point and

But the musician was standing fixed, as if in great perplexity. Thrusting his hand into his forest of black hair,

Jim, following the direction of his neighbour's eyes, found them to be fixed on a figure till that moment

hidden from himselfMargery Tuckerwho was crossing the garden to an opposite gate with a little cheese

'Two months ago I formed one of the band at the Yeomanry Ball given by Lord Toneborough in the next

county. I saw that young lady dancing the polka there in robes of gauze and lace. Now I see her carry a

Jim ridiculed the idea; the bandsman protested, and was about to lose his temper, when Jim gave in with the

goodnature of a person who can afford to despise opinions; and the musician went his way.

As he dwindled out of sight Jim began to think more carefully over what he had said. The young man's

thoughts grew quite to an excitement, for there came into his mind the Baron's extraordinary kindness in

regard to furniture, hitherto accounted for by the assumption that the nobleman had taken a fancy to him.

Could it be, among all the amazing things of life, that the Baron was at the bottom of this mischief; and that

Doubts and suspicions which distract some lovers to imbecility only served to bring out Jim's great qualities.

Where he trusted he was the most trusting fellow in the world; where he doubted he could be guilty of the

slyest strategy. Once suspicious, he became one of those subtle, watchful characters who, without integrity,

make good thieves; with a little, good jobbers; with a little more, good diplomatists. Jim was honest, and he

Retracing his steps, he peeped again. She had gone in; but she would soon reappear, for it could be seen that

she was carrying little new cheeses one by one to a springcart and horse tethered outside the gateher

grandmother, though not a regular dairywoman, still managing a few cows by means of a man and maid.

With the lightness of a cat Jim crept round to the gate, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and wrote upon

the boarding 'The Baron.' Then he retreated to the other side of the garden where he had just watched

In due time she emerged with another little cheese, came on to the gardendoor, and glanced upon the

chalked words which confronted her. She started; the cheese rolled from her arms to the ground, and broke

She looked fearfully round, her face burning like sunset, and, seeing nobody, stooped to pick up the flaccid

lumps. Jim, with a pale face, departed as invisibly as he had come. He had proved the bandsman's tale to be

true. On his way back he formed a resolution. It was to beard the lion in his dento call on the Baron.

Meanwhile Margery had recovered her equanimity, and gathered up the broken cheese. But she could by no

means account for the handwriting. Jim was just the sort of fellow to play her such a trick at ordinary times,

but she imagined him to be far too incensed against her to do it now; and she suddenly wondered if it were

Of him she had lately heard nothing. If ever monotony pervaded a life it pervaded hers at Rook's Gate; and

she had begun to despair of any happy change. But it is precisely when the social atmosphere seems stagnant

that great events are brewing. Margery's quiet was broken first, as we have seen, by a slight start, only

She was inside the same garden one day when she heard two watermen talking without. The conversation

was to the effect that the strange gentleman who had taken Mount Lodge for the season was seriously ill.

'How ill?' cried Margery through the hedge, which screened her from recognition.

Margery could gather no more. An ideal admiration rather than any positive passion existed in her breast for

the Baron: she had of late seen too little of him to allow any incipient views of him as a lover to grow to

formidable dimensions. It was an extremely romantic feeling, delicate as an aroma, capable of quickening to

This news of his illness, coupled with the mysterious chalking on the gate, troubled her, and revived his

image much. She took to walking up and down the gardenpaths, looking into the hearts of flowers, and not

thinking what they were. His last request had been that she was not to go to him if be should send for her; and

now she asked herself, was the name on the gate a hint to enable her to go without infringing the letter of her

Ten days passed. All she could hear of the Baron were the same words, 'Bad abed,' till one afternoon, after a

gallop of the physician to the Lodge, the tidings spread like lightning that the Baron was dying.

Margery distressed herself with the question whether she might be permitted to visit him and say her prayers

at his bedside; but she feared to venture; and thus eightandforty hours slipped away, and the Baron still

lived. Despite her shyness and awe of him she had almost made up her mind to call when, just at dusk on that

She could see the messenger's head against the low new moon. He was a manservant. He said he had been

all the way to her father's, and had been sent thence to her here. He simply brought a note, and, delivering it

DEAR MARGERY TUCKER (ran the note)They say I am not likely to live, so I want to see you. Be here

at eight o'clock this evening. Come quite alone to the sidedoor, and tap four times softly. My trusty man will

admit you. The occasion is an important one. Prepare yourself for a solemn ceremony, which I wish to have

Margery's face flushed up, and her neck and arms glowed in sympathy. The quickness of youthful

imagination, and the assumptiveness of woman's reason, sent her straight as an arrow this thought: 'He wants

She had heard of similar strange proceedings, in which the orange flower and the sad cypress were

intertwined. People sometimes wished on their deathbeds, from motives of esteem, to form a legal tie which

For a few minutes Margery could hardly be called excited; she was excitement itself. Between surprise and

modesty she blushed and trembled by turns. She became grave, sat down in the solitary room, and looked

into the fire. At seven o'clock she rose resolved, and went quite tranquilly upstairs, where she speedily began

In making this hasty toilet ninetenths of her care were given to her hands. The summer had left them slightly

brown, and she held them up and looked at them with some misgiving, the fourth finger of her left hand more

especially. Hot washings and cold washings, certain products from bee and flower known only to country

girls, everything she could think of, were used upon those little sunburnt hands, till she persuaded herself that

they were really as white as could be wished by a husband with a hundred titles. Her dressing completed, she

left word with Edy that she was going for a long walk, and set out in the direction of Mount Lodge.

She no longer tripped like a girl, but walked like a woman. While crossing the park she murmured 'Baroness

von Xanten' in a pronunciation of her own. The sound of that title caused her such agitation that she was

The house was so closely neighboured by shrubberies on three of its sides that it was not till she had gone

nearly round it that she found the little door. The resolution she had been an hour in forming failed her when

she stood at the portal. While pausing for courage to tap, a carriage drove up to the front entrance a little way

off, and peeping round the corner she saw alight a clergyman, and a gentleman in whom Margery fancied that

she recognized a wellknown solicitor from the neighbouring town. She had no longer any doubt of the

nature of the ceremony proposed. 'It is sudden but I must obey him!' she murmured: and tapped four times.

The door was opened so quickly that the servant must have been standing immediately inside. She thought

him the man who had driven them to the ballthe silent man who could be trusted. Without a word he

conducted her up the back staircase, and through a door at the top, into a wide corridor. She was asked to wait

in a little dressingroom, where there was a fire, and an old metalframed lookingglass over the

mantelpiece, in which she caught sight of herself. A red spot burnt in each of her cheeks; the rest of her face

Before she had been seated many minutes the man came back noiselessly, and she followed him to a door

covered by a red and black curtain, which he lifted, and ushered her into a large chamber. A screened light

stood on a table before her, and on her left the hangings of a tall dark fourpost bedstead obstructed her view

of the centre of the room. Everything here seemed of such a magnificent type to her eyes that she felt

confused, diminished to half her height, half her strength, half her prettiness. The man who had conducted her

retired at once, and some one came softly round the angle of the bedcurtains. He held out his hand

kindlyrather patronisingly: it was the solicitor whom she knew by sight. This gentleman led her forward,

as if she had been a lamb rather than a woman, till the occupant of the bed was revealed.

The Baron's eyes were closed, and her entry had been so noiseless that he did not open them. The pallor of

his face nearly matched the white bedlinen, and his dark hair and heavy black moustache were like dashes

of ink on a clean page. Near him sat the parson and another gentleman, whom she afterwards learnt to be a

London physician; and on the parson whispering a few words the Baron opened his eyes. As soon as he saw

Margery would have wept for him, if she had not been too overawed and palpitating to do anything. She quite

forgot what she had come for, shook hands with him mechanically, and could hardly return an answer to his

In preparing for marriage she had not calculated on such a scene as this. Her affection for the Baron had too

much of the vague in it to afford her trustfulness now. She wished she had not come. On a sign from the

Baron the lawyer brought her a chair, and the oppressive silence was broken by the Baron's words.

'I am pulled down to death's door, Margery,' he said; 'and I suppose I soon shall pass through . . . My peace

has been much disturbed in this illness, for just before it attacked me I receivedthat present you returned,

from which, and in other ways, I learnt that you had lost your chance of marriage . . . Now it was I who did

the harm, and you can imagine how the news has affected me. It has worried me all the illness through, and I

cannot dismiss my error from my mind . . . I want to right the wrong I have done you before I die. Margery,

you have always obeyed me, and, strange as the request may be, will you obey me now?'

'Well, then,' said the Baron, 'these three gentlemen are here for a special purpose: one helps the bodyhe's

called a physician; another helps the soulhe's a parson; the other helps the understandinghe's a lawyer.

The speaker then made a sign to the lawyer, who went out of the door. He came back almost instantly, but not

alone. Behind him, dressed up in his best clothes, with a flower in his buttonhole and a bridegroom's air,

Margery could hardly repress a scream. As for flushing and blushing, she had turned hot and turned pale so

many times already during the evening, that there was really now nothing of that sort left for her to do; and

she remained in complexion much as before. O, the mockery of it! That secret dreamthat sweet word

'Baroness!'which had sustained her all the way along. Instead of a Baron there stood Jim,

whitewaistcoated, demure, every hair in place, and, if she mistook not, even a deedy spark in his eye.

Jim's surprising presence on the scene may be briefly accounted for. His resolve to seek an explanation with

the Baron at all risks had proved unexpectedly easy: the interview had at once been granted, and then, seeing

the crisis at which matters stood, the Baron had generously revealed to Jim the whole of his indebtedness to

and knowledge of Margery. The truth of the Baron's statement, the innocent nature as yet of the

acquaintanceship, his sorrow for the rupture he had produced, was so evident that, far from having any

further doubts of his patron, Jim frankly asked his advice on the next step to be pursued. At this stage the

Baron fell ill, and, desiring much to see the two young people united before his death, he had sent anew

Hayward, and proposed the plan which they were to now about to attempta marriage at the bedside of the

sick man by special licence. The influence at Lambeth of some friends of the Baron's, and the charitable

bequests of his late mother to several deserving Church funds, were generally supposed to be among the

This, however, is of small consequence. The Baron probably knew, in proposing this method of celebrating

the marriage, that his enormous power over her would outweigh any sentimental obstacles which she might

set upinward objections that, without his presence and firmness, might prove too much for her

acquiescence. Doubtless he foresaw, too, the advantage of getting her into the house before making the

Now, the Baron's conjectures were right as to the event, but wrong as to the motives. Margery was a perfect

little dissembler on some occasions, and one of them was when she wished to hide any sudden mortification

that might bring her into ridicule. She had no sooner recovered from her first fit of discomfiture than pride

bade her suffer anything rather than reveal her absurd disappointment. Hence the scene progressed as

'Come here, Hayward,' said the invalid. Hayward came near. The Baron, holding her hand in one of his own,

and her lover's in the other, continued, 'Will you, in spite of your recent vexation with her, marry her now if

'And Margery, what do you say? It is merely a setting of things right. You have already promised this young

man to be his wife, and should, of course, perform your promise. You don't dislike Jim?'

'I like him better than I can tell you,' said the Baron. 'He is an honourable man, and will make you a good

husband. You must remember that marriage is a life contract, in which general compatibility of temper and

worldly position is of more importance than fleeting passion, which never long survives. Now, will you, at

my earnest request, and before I go to the South of Europe to die, agree to make this good man happy? I have

'To a T, sir,' said Jim emphatically; with a motion of raising his hat to his influential ally, till he remembered

he had no hat on. 'And, though I could hardly expect Margery to gie in for my asking, I feels she ought to gie

'That I shall not be made to live with him till I am in the mind for it; and that my having him shall be kept

'Well, her request is not unreasonable, seeing that the proceedings are, on my account, a little hurried. So

we'll proceed. You rather expected this, from my allusion to a ceremony in my note, did you not, Margery?'

When the carriage seen by Margery at the door was driving up to Mount Lodge it arrested the attention, not

only of the young girl, but of a man who had for some time been moving slowly about the opposite lawn,

engaged in some operation while he smoked a short pipe. A short observation of his doings would have

shown that he was sheltering some delicate plants from an expected frost, and that he was the gardener. When

the light at the door fell upon the entering forms of parson and lawyerthe former a stranger, the latter

known to him the gardener walked thoughtfully round the house. Reaching the small sideentrance he was

further surprised to see it noiselessly open to a young woman, in whose momentarily illumined features he

Altogether there was something curious in this. The man returned to the lawn front, and perfunctorily went on

putting shelters over certain plants, though his thoughts were plainly otherwise engaged. On the grass his

footsteps were noiseless, and the night moreover being still, he could presently hear a murmuring from the

The gardener took from a tree a ladder that he had used in nailing that day, set it under the window, and

ascended halfway, hoodwinking his conscience by seizing a nail or two with his hand and testing their

twigsupporting powers. He soon heard enough to satisfy him. The words of a churchservice in the strange

parson's voice were audible in snatches through the blind: they were words he knew to be part of the

solemnization of matrimony, such as 'wedded wife,' 'richer for poorer,' and so on; the less familiar parts being

Satisfied that a wedding was in progress there, the gardener did not for a moment dream that one of the

contracting parties could be other than the sick Baron. He descended the ladder and again walked round the

house, waiting only till he saw Margery emerge from the same little door; when, fearing that he might be

This building stood at the lower corner of the garden, and as soon as the gardener entered he was accosted by

a handsome woman in a widow's cap, who called him father, and said that supper had been ready for a long

time. They sat down, but during the meal the gardener was so abstracted and silent that his daughter put her

'Ahwhat is it!' cried the gardener. 'Something that makes very little difference to me, but may be of great

account to you, if you play your cards well. THERE'S BEEN A WEDDING AT THE LODGE TONIGHT!'

'We are folk that have got to get their living,' he said, 'and such ones mustn't tell tales about their

betters,Lord forgive the mockery of the word!but there's something to be made of it. She's a nice maid;

so, Harriet, do you take the first chance you get for honouring her, before others know what has happened.

Since this is done so privately it will be kept private for some timetill after his death, no question;when

I expect she'll take this house for herself; and blaze out as a widowlady ten thousand pound strong. You

being a widow, she may make you her companykeeper; and so you'll have a home by a little contriving.'

While this conversation progressed at the gardener's Margery was on her way out of the Baron's house. She

was, indeed, married. But, as we know, she was not married to the Baron. The ceremony over she seemed but

little discomposed, and expressed a wish to return alone as she had come. To this, of course, no objection

could be offered under the terms of the agreement, and wishing Jim a frigid goodbye, and the Baron a very

quiet farewell, she went out by the door which had admitted her. Once safe and alone in the darkness of the

park she burst into tears, which dropped upon the grass as she passed along. In the Baron's room she had

seemed scared and helpless; now her reason and emotions returned. The further she got away from the

glamour of that room, and the influence of its occupant, the more she became of opinion that she had acted

foolishly. She had disobediently left her father's house, to obey him here. She had pleased everybody but

However, thinking was now too late. How she got into her grandmother's house she hardly knew; but without

On going out into the garden next morning, with a strange sense of being another person than herself, she

'I am not going anywhere just now, thank you. But I shall go to my father's byandby with Edy.' She went

on with a sigh, 'I have done what he has all along wished, that is, married you; and there's no longer reason

'Trewtrew. Well, as I am going the same way, I can give you a lift in the trap, for the distance is long.'

They remained in silence, the gate between them, till Jim's convictions would apparently allow him to hold

'It is,' she said, as one whose thoughts have only too readily been identified. 'How I came to agree to it is

'The blame is more mine than yours, I suppose,' he returned. 'I ought to have said No, and not backed up the

gentleman in carrying out this scheme. 'Twas his own notion entirely, as perhaps you know. I should never

have thought of such a plan; but he said you'd be willing, and that it would be all right; and I was too ready to

'The thing is, how to remedy it,' said she bitterly. 'I believe, of course, in your promise to keep this private,

'Certainly,' said Jim. 'I don't want to trouble you. As for that, why, my dear Mrs. Hayward'

Jim paused. 'Well, you are she by law, and that was all I meant,' he said mildly.

'I said I would acknowledge no such thing, and I won't. A thing can't be legal when it's against the wishes of

the persons the laws are made to protect. So I beg you not to call me that anymore.'

'Very well, Miss Tucker,' said Jim deferentially. 'We can live on exactly as before. We can't marry anybody

else, that's true; but beyond that there's no difference, and no harm done. Your father ought to be told, I

suppose, even if nobody else is? It will partly reconcile him to you, and make your life smoother.'

'O, it is a mistakeI didn't see it all, owing to not having time to reflect! I agreed, thinking that at least I

should get reconciled to father by the step. But perhaps he would as soon have me not married at all as

married and parted. I must ha' been enchantedbewitched when I gave my consent to this! I only did it to

please that dear good dying noblemanthough why he should have wished it so much I can't tell!'

'Nor I neither,' said Jim. 'Yes, we've been fooled into it, Margery,' he said, with extraordinary gravity. 'He's

had his way wi' us, and now we've got to suffer for it. Being a gentleman of patronage, and having bought

several loads of lime o' me, and having given me all that splendid furniture, I could hardly refuse'

Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from the gate and looked critically at her.

''Tis a footy plot between you two men tosnare me!' she exclaimed. 'Why should you have done itwhy

should he have done itwhen I've not deserved to be treated so. He bought the furnituredid he! O, I've

been taken inI've been wronged!' The grief and vexation of finding that long ago, when fondly believing

the Baron to have loverlike feelings himself for her, he was still conspiring to favour Jim's suit, was more

Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm was over. 'One word, Miss

TuckMrs.Margery,' he then recommenced gravely. 'You'll find me man enough to respect your wish,

and to leave you to yourselffor ever and ever, if that's all. But I've just one word of advice to render 'ee.

That is, that before you go to Silverthorn Dairy yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your father. He's

friends with me, and he's not friends with you. I can break the news, a little at a time, and I think I can gain

his good will for you now, even though the wedding be no natural wedding at all. At any count, I can hear

She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the garden in the sunlight while he went on to

reconnoitre as agreed. It must not be supposed that Jim's dutiful echoes of Margery's regret at her precipitate

marriage were all gospel; and there is no doubt that his private intention, after telling the dairyfarmer what

had happened, was to ask his temporary assent to her caprice, till, in the course of time, she should be

reasoned out of her whims and induced to settle down with Jim in a natural manner. He had, it is true, been

somewhat nettled by her firm objection to him, and her keen sorrow for what she had done to please another;

But, alas for the astute Jim's calculations! He drove on to the dairy, whose white walls now gleamed in the

morning sun; made fast the horse to a ring in the wall, and entered the barton. Before knocking, he perceived

the dairyman walking across from a gate in the other direction, as if he had just come in. Jim went over to

him. Since the unfortunate incident on the morning of the intended wedding they had merely been on nodding

'Whatis that thee?' said Dairyman Tucker, in a voice which unmistakably startled Jim by its abrupt

It was a bad beginning for the young man's life as a soninlaw, and augured ill for the delicate consultation

'Matter! I wish some folks would burn their lime without burning other folks' property along wi' it. You ought

to be ashamed of yourself. You call yourself a man, Jim Hayward, and an honest lime burner, and a

respectable, marketkeeping Christen, and yet at six o'clock this morning, instead o' being where you ought

'Whythe sparks from thy couchheap blew over upon my hayrick, and the rick's burnt to ashes; and all to

come out o' my wellsqueezed pocket. I'll tell thee what it is, young man. There's no business in thee. I've

known Silverthorn folk, quick and dead, for the last coupleo'score year, and I've never knew one so

threecunning for harm as thee, my gentleman limeburner; and I reckon it one o' the luckiest days o' my life

when I 'scaped having thee in my family. That maid of mine was right; I was wrong. She seed thee to be a

drawlacheting rogue, and 'twas her wisdom to go off that morning and get rid o' thee. I commend her for't,

'You needn't take the trouble. She's coming homealong tonight of her own accord. I have seen her this

'So much the better. I'll welcome her warm. Nation! I'd sooner see her married to the parish fool than thee.

Not youyou don't care for my hay. Tarrying about where you shouldn't be, in bed, no doubt; that's what

you was adoing. Now, don't you darken my doors again, and the sooner you be off my bit o' ground the

Jim looked, as he felt, stultified. If the rick had been really destroyed, a little blame certainly attached to him,

but he could not understand how it had happened. However, blame or none, it was clear he could not, with

any selfrespect, declare himself to be this peppery old gaffer's soninlaw in the face of such an attack as

For monthsalmost yearsthe one transaction that had seemed necessary to compose these two families

satisfactorily was Jim's union with Margery. No sooner had it been completed than it appeared on all sides as

the gravest mishap for both. Stating coldly that he would discover how much of the accident was to be

attributed to his negligence, and pay the damage, he went out of the barton, and returned the way he had

Margery had been keeping a lookout for him, particularly wishing him not to enter the house, lest others

should see the seriousness of their interview; and as soon as she heard wheels she went to the gate, which was

'Because he thinks you have not married me! He's jawed me up hill and down. He hates me; and for your sake

Margery looked towards home with a sad, severe gaze. 'Mr. Hayward,' she said, 'we have made a great

'True, but I'll tell you what, mistressI won't stand' He stopped suddenly. 'Well, well; I've promised!' he

'We must suffer for our mistake,' she went on. 'The way to suffer least is to keep our own counsel on what

He inclined his head in indifferent assent, and she went indoors, leaving him there.

Margery returned home, as she had decided, and resumed her old life at Silverthorn. And seeing her father's

Her inner life, however, was not what it once had been. She had suffered a mental and emotional

displacementa shock, which had set a shade of astonishment on her face as a permanent thing.

Her indignation with the Baron for collusion with Jim, at first bitter, lessened with the lapse of a few weeks,

The Baron was not dead, but he was no longer at the Lodge. To the surprise of the physicians, a sufficient

improvement had taken place in his condition to permit of his removal before the cold weather came. His

desire for removal had been such, indeed, that it was advisable to carry it out at almost any risk. The plan

adopted had been to have him borne on men's shoulders in a sort of palanquin to the shore near Idmouth, a

distance of several miles, where a yacht lay awaiting him. By this means the noise and jolting of a carriage,

along irregular byeroads, were avoided. The singular procession over the fields took place at night, and was

witnessed by but few people, one being a labouring man, who described the scene to Margery. When the

seaside was reached a long, narrow gangway was laid from the deck of the yacht to the shore, which was so

steep as to allow the yacht to lie quite near. The men, with their burden, ascended by the light of lanterns, the

sick man was laid in the cabin, and, as soon as his bearers had returned to the shore, the gangway was

removed, a rope was heard skirring over wood in the darkness, the yacht quivered, spread her woven wings to

the air, and moved away. Soon she was but a small, shapeless phantom upon the wide breast of the sea.

When the inimical autumn and winter weather came on, Margery wondered if he were still alive. The house

being shut up, and the servants gone, she had no means of knowing, till, on a particular Saturday, her father

drove her to Exonbury market. Here, in attending to his business, he left her to herself for awhile. Walking in

a quiet street in the professional quarter of the town, she saw coming towards her the solicitor who had been

present at the wedding, and who had acted for the Baron in various small local matters during his brief

She reddened to peony hues, averted her eyes, and would have passed him. But he crossed over and barred

the pavement, and when she met his glance he was looking with friendly severity at her. The street was quiet,

'Whatand are your stipulations about secrecy and separate living still in force?'

'They will always be,' she replied decisively. 'Mr. Hayward and I agreed on the point, and we have not the

'H'm. Then 'tis Miss Tucker to the world; Mrs. Hayward to me and one or two others only?'

Margery nodded. Then she nerved herself by an effort, and, though blushing painfully, asked, 'May I put one

'Because, if he's alive, I am sorry I married James Hayward. If he is dead I do not much mind my marriage.'

'I repeat, he is dead to you,' said the lawyer emphatically. 'I'll tell you all I know. My professional services for

him ended with his departure from this country; but I think I should have heard from him if he had been alive

still. I have not heard at all: and this, taken in connection with the nature of his illness, leaves no doubt in my

Margery sighed, and thanking the lawyer she left him with a tear for the Baron in her eye. After this incident

she became more restful; and the time drew on for her periodical visit to her grandmother.

A few days subsequent to her arrival her aged relative asked her to go with a message to the gardener at

Mount Lodge (who still lived on there, keeping the grounds in order for the landlord). Margery hated that

direction now, but she went. The Lodge, which she saw over the trees, was to her like a skull from which the

warm and living flesh had vanished. It was twilight by the time she reached the cottage at the bottom of the

Lodge garden, and, the room being illuminated within, she saw through the window a woman she had never

seen before. She was dark, and rather handsome, and when Margery knocked she opened the door. It was the

She now found her opportunity. Margery's errand was soon completed, the young widow, to her surprise,

treating her with preternatural respect, and afterwards offering to accompany her home. Margery was not

sorry to have a companion in the gloom, and they walked on together. The widow, Mrs. Peach, was

demonstrative and confidential; and told Margery all about herself. She had come quite recently to live with

her fatherduring the Baron's illness, in factand her husband had been captain of a ketch.

'I saw you one morning, ma'am,' she said. 'But you didn't see me. It was when you were crossing the hill in

sight of the Lodge. You looked at it, and sighed. 'Tis the lot of widows to sigh, ma'am, is it not?'

Mrs. Peach lowered her voice. 'I can't say more, ma'am, with proper respect. But there seems to be no

question of the poor Baron's death; and though these foreign princes can take (as my poor husband used to

tell me) what they call lefthanded wives, and leave them behind when they go abroad, widowhood is

widowhood, lefthanded or right. And really, to be the lefthanded wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to

be married all round to a common man. You'll excuse my freedom, ma'am; but being a widow myself, I have

pitied you from my heart; so young as you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no

Now Margery did not understand a word more of this than the bare fact that Mrs. Peach suspected her to be

the Baron's undowered widow, and such was the milkmaid's nature that she did not deny the widow's

'But ah, ma'am, all your troubles are straight backward in your memorywhile I have troubles before as well

The other dropped her voice to revelation tones: 'I have been forgetful enough of my first man to lose my

'Ahtoo true! Well, I've tried everything to cure myselfread the words against it, gone to the Table the

first Sunday of every month, and all sorts. But, avast, my shipmate!as my poor man used to say there 'tis

just the same. In short, I've made up my mind to encourage the new one. 'Tis flattering that I, a newcomer,

'I don't like to tell you his name, for, though 'tis night, that covers all shamefacedness, my face is as hot as a

Margery put her hand on Mrs. Peach's face, and, sure enough, hot it was. 'Does he come courting?' she asked

'Well only in the way of business. He never comes unless lime is wanted in the neighbourhood. He's in the

Yeomanry, too, and will look very fine when he comes out in regimentals for drill in May.'

'Ohin the Yeomanry,' Margery said, with a slight relief. 'Then it can'tis he a young man?'

The description had an odd resemblance to Jim, of whom Margery had not heard a word for months. He had

promised silence and absence, and had fulfilled his promise literally, with a gratuitous addition that was

rather amazing, if indeed it were Jim whom the widow loved. One point in the description puzzled Margery:

Jim was not in the Yeomanry, unless, by a surprising development of enterprise, he had entered it recently.

At parting Margery said, with an interest quite tender, 'I should like to see you again, Mrs. Peach, and hear of

Seeing that Jim lived several miles from the widow, Margery was rather surprised, and even felt a slight

sinking of the heart, when her new acquaintance appeared at her door so soon as the evening of the following

Monday. She asked Margery to walk out with her, which the young woman readily did.

'I am come at once,' said the widow breathlessly, as soon as they were in the lane, 'for it is so exciting that I

can't keep it. I must tell it to somebody, if only a bird, or a cat, or a garden snail.'

'I've pulled grass from my husband's grave to cure itwove the blades into true lover's knots; took off my

'To feel the damp earth he's in, and make the sense of it enter my soul. But no. It has swelled to a head; he is

'Tomorrow. He looks so lovely in his accoutrements! He's such a splendid soldier; that was the last straw

that kindled my soul to say yes. He's home from Exonbury for a night between the drills,' continued Mrs.

Peach. 'He goes back tomorrow morning for the Review, and when it's over he's going to meet me. But,

Her exclamation had rise in the sudden appearance of a brilliant red uniform through the trees, and the tramp

of a horse carrying the wearer thereof. In another halfminute the military gentleman would have turned the

'He'd better not see me; he'll think I know too much,' said Margery precipitately. 'I'll go up here.'

The widow, whose thoughts had been of the same cast, seemed much relieved to see Margery disappear in

the plantation, in the midst of a spring chorus of birds. Once among the trees, Margery turned her head, and,

before she could see the rider's person she recognized the horse as Tony, the lightest of three that Jim and his

Jim, then, had joined the Yeomanry since his estrangement from Margery. A man who had worn the young

Queen Victoria's uniform for seven days only could not be expected to look as if it were part of his person, in

the manner of longtrained soldiers; but he was a wellformed young fellow, and of an age when few

positions came amiss to one who has the capacity to adapt himself to circumstances.

Meeting the blushing Mrs. Peach (to whom Margery in her mind sternly denied the right to blush at all), Jim

alighted and moved on with her, probably at Mrs. Peach's own suggestion; so that what they said, how long

they remained together, and how they parted, Margery knew not. She might have known some of these things

by waiting; but the presence of Jim had bred in her heart a sudden disgust for the widow, and a general sense

of discomfiture. She went away in an opposite direction, turning her head and saying to the unconscious Jim,

'There's a fine rod in pickle for you, my gentleman, if you carry out that pretty scheme!'

Jim's military coup had decidedly astonished her. What he might do next she could not conjecture. The idea

of his doing anything sufficiently brilliant to arrest her attention would have seemed ludicrous, had not Jim,

by entering the Yeomanry, revealed a capacity for dazzling exploits which made it unsafe to predict any

Margery was now excited. The daring of the wretched Jim in bursting into scarlet amazed her as much as his

doubtful acquaintanceship with the demonstrative Mrs. Peach. To go to that Review, to watch the pair, to

eclipse Mrs. Peach in brilliancy, to meet and pass them in withering contemptif she only could do it! But,

'If the Baron were alive, or in England,' she said to herself (for sometimes she thought he might possibly be

alive), 'and he were to take me to this Review, wouldn't I show that forward Mrs. Peach what a lady is like,

It might at first sight be thought that the best course for Margery at this juncture would have been to go to

Jim, and nip the intrigue in the bud without further scruple. But her own declaration in after days was that

whoever could say that was far from realizing her situation. It was hard to break such ice as divided their two

lives now, and to attempt it at that moment was a too humiliating proclamation of defeat. The only plan she

could think ofperhaps not a wise one in the circumstanceswas to go to the Review herself; and be the

A method of doing this with some propriety soon occurred to her. She dared not ask her father, who scorned

to waste time in sightseeing, and whose animosity towards Jim knew no abatement; but she might call on

her old acquaintance, Mr. Vine, Jim's partner, who would probably be going with the rest of the holidayfolk,

and ask if she might accompany him in his springtrap. She had no sooner perceived the feasibility of this,

through her being at her grandmother's, than she decided to meet with the old man early the next morning.

In the meantime Jim and Mrs. Peach had walked slowly along the road together, Jim leading the horse, and

Mrs. Peach informing him that her father, the gardener, was at Jim's village further on, and that she had come

to meet him. Jim, for reasons of his own, was going to sleep at his partner's that night, and thus their route

was the same. The shades of eve closed in upon them as they walked, and by the time they reached the

limekiln, which it was necessary to pass to get to the village, it was quite dark. Jim stopped at the kiln, to

see if matters had progressed rightly in his seven days' absence, and Mrs. Peach, who stuck to him like a

She held the horse while he ascended to the top of the kiln. Then rejoining her, and not quite knowing what to

do, he stood beside her looking at the flames, which tonight burnt up brightly, shining a long way into the

dark air, even up to the ramparts of the earthwork above them, and overhead into the bosoms of the clouds.

It was during this proceeding that a carriage, drawn by a pair of dark horses, came along the turnpike road.

The light of the kiln caused the horses to swerve a little, and the occupant of the carriage looked out. He saw

the bluish, lightninglike flames from the limestone, rising from the top of the furnace, and hard by the

figures of Jim Hayward, the widow, and the horse, standing out with spectral distinctness against the mass of

night behind. The scene wore the aspect of some unholy assignation in Pandaemonium, and it was all the

more impressive from the fact that both Jim and the woman were quite unconscious of the striking spectacle

they presented. The gentleman in the carriage watched them till he was borne out of sight.

Having seen to the kiln, Jim and the widow walked on again, and soon Mrs. Peach's father met them, and

relieved Jim of the lady. When they had parted, Jim, with an expiration not unlike a breath of relief; went on

to Mr. Vine's, and, having put the horse into the stable, entered the house. His partner was seated at the table,

solacing himself after the labours of the day by luxurious alternations between a long clay pipe and a mug of

'Sit downsit down,' said Vine. ''Tis working well; not but that I deserve something o' thee for the trouble

I've had in watching her. The soldiering was a fine move; but the woman is a better!who invented it?'

'Well; jealousy is making her rise like a thunderstorm, and in a day or two you'll have her for the asking, my

'The widow is getting rather a weight upon a feller, worse luck,' said Jim. 'But I must keep it up until

tomorrow, at any rate. I have promised to see her at the Review, and now the great thing is that Margery

should see we asmiling togetherI in my fulldress uniform and clinking arms o' war. 'Twill be a good

strong sting, and will end the business, I hope. Couldn't you manage to put the hoss in and drive her there?

'With all my heart,' said Mr. Vine, moistening the end of a new pipe in his perry. 'I can call at her grammer's

Margery duly followed up her intention by arraying herself the next morning in her loveliest guise, and

keeping watch for Mr. Vine's appearance upon the high road, feeling certain that his would form one in the

procession of carts and carriages which set in towards Exonbury that day. Jim had gone by at a very early

hour, and she did not see him pass. Her anticipation was verified by the advent of Mr. Vine about eleven

o'clock, dressed to his highest effort; but Margery was surprised to find that, instead of her having to stop

him, he pulled in towards the gate of his own accord. The invitation planned between Jim and the old man on

the previous night was now promptly given, and, as may be supposed, as promptly accepted. Such a strange

coincidence she had never before known. She was quite ready, and they drove onward at once.

The Review was held on some high ground a little way out of the city, and her conductor suggested that they

should put up the horse at the inn, and walk to the fielda plan which pleased her well, for it was more easy

to take preliminary observations on foot without being seen herself than when sitting elevated in a vehicle.

They were just in time to secure a good place near the front, and in a few minutes after their arrival the

reviewing officer came on the ground. Margery's eye had rapidly run over the troop in which Jim was

enrolled, and she discerned him in one of the ranks, looking remarkably new and bright, both as to uniform

and countenance. Indeed, if she had not worked herself into such a desperate state of mind she would have

felt proud of him then and there. His shapely upright figure was quite noteworthy in the row of rotund

yeomen on his right and left; while his charger Tony expressed by his bearing, even more than Jim, that he

knew nothing about limecarts whatever, and everything about trumpets and glory. How Jim could have

scrubbed Tony to such shining blackness she could not tell, for the horse in his natural state was ingrained

with limedust, that burnt the colour out of his coat as it did out of Jim's hair. Now he pranced martially, and

Having discovered Jim her next search was for Mrs. Peach, and, by dint of some oblique glancing Margery

indignantly discovered the widow in the most forward place of all, her head and bright face conspicuously

advanced; and, what was more shocking, she had abandoned her mourning for a violet drawnbonnet and a

gay spencer, together with a parasol luxuriously fringed in a way Margery had never before seen. 'Where did

she get the money?' said Margery, under her breath. 'And to forget that poor sailor so soon!'

These general reflections were precipitately postponed by her discovering that Jim and the widow were

perfectly alive to each other's whereabouts, and in the interchange of telegraphic signs of affection, which on

the latter's part took the form of a playful fluttering of her handkerchief or waving of her parasol. Richard

Vine had placed Margery in front of him, to protect her from the crowd, as he said, he himself surveying the

scene over her bonnet. Margery would have been even more surprised than she was if she had known that Jim

was not only aware of Mrs. Peach's presence, but also of her own, the treacherous Mr. Vine having drawn out

his flame coloured handkerchief and waved it to Jim over the young woman's head as soon as they had

'My partner makes a tidy soldier, ehMiss Tucker?' said the senior limeburner. 'It is my belief as a

Christian that he's got a party here that he's making signs tothat handsome figure o' fun straight overright

'And it's growing warm between 'em if I don't mistake,' continued the merciless Vine.

Margery was silent, biting her lip; and the troops being now set in motion, all signalling ceased for the

'Have you a piece of paper that I could make a memorandum on, Mr. Vine?' asked Margery.

Vine took out his pocketbook and tore a leaf from it, which he handed her with a pencil.

'Don't move from hereI'll return in a minute,' she continued, with the innocence of a woman who means

mischief. And, withdrawing herself to the back, where the grass was clear, she pencilled down the words

Armed with this document she crept into the throng behind the unsuspecting Mrs. Peach, slipped the paper

into her pocket on the top of her handkerchief; and withdrew unobserved, rejoining Mr. Vine with a bearing

Byandby the troops were in different order, Jim taking a lefthand position almost close to Mrs. Peach. He

bent down and said a few words to her. From her manner of nodding assent it was surely some arrangement

about a meeting byandby when Jim's drill was over, and Margery was more certain of the fact when, the

Review having ended, and the people having strolled off to another part of the field where sports were to take

'I'll just say a word to my partner afore he goes off the ground, if you'll spare me a minute,' said the old

limeburner. 'Please stay here till I'm back again.' He edged along the front till he reached Jim.

'In a trimming sweat,' said Mr. Vine. 'And my counsel to 'ee is to carry this larry no further. 'Twill do no

good. She's as ready to make friends with 'ee as any wife can be; and more showing off can only do harm.'

'But I must finish off with a spurt,' said Jim. 'And this is how I am going to do it. I have arranged with Mrs.

Peach that, as soon as we soldiers have entered the town and been dismissed, I'll meet her there. It is really to

say goodbye, but she don't know that; and I wanted it to look like a lopement to Margery's eyes. When I'm

clear of Mrs. Peach I'll come back here and make it up with Margery on the spot. But don't say I'm coming, or

she may be inclined to throw off again. Just hint to her that I may be meaning to be off to London with the

'No, no, it isn't,' said Jim. 'I know how to manage her. 'Twill just mellow her heart nicely by the time I come

His senior reluctantly gave in and returned to Margery. A short time afterwards the Yeomanry hand struck

'Yes, yes; they are going to meet,' said Margery to herself, perceiving that Mrs. Peach had so timed her

'Now we will go and see the games,' said Mr. Vine; 'they are really worth seeing. There's greasy poles, and

jumping in sacks, and other trials of the intellect, that nobody ought to miss who wants to be abreast of his

Margery felt so indignant at the apparent assignation, which seemed about to take place despite her

anonymous writing, that she helplessly assented to go anywhere, dropping behind Vine, that he might not see

Jim followed out his programme with literal exactness. No sooner was the troop dismissed in the city than he

sent Tony to stable and joined Mrs. Peach, who stood on the edge of the pavement expecting him. But this

acquaintance was to end: he meant to part from her for ever and in the quickest time, though civilly; for it

was important to be with Margery as soon as possible. He had nearly completed the manoeuvre to his

satisfaction when, in drawing her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe the tears from her eyes, Mrs. Peach's

Jim started and admitted that it was, beginning an elaborate explanation and apologies. But Mrs. Peach was

thoroughly roused, and then overcome. 'He's married, he's married!' she said, and swooned, or feigned to

'He's married, he's married!' said a boy hard by who watched the scene with interest.

'He's married, he's married!' said a hilarious group of other boys near, with smiles several inches broad, and

Jim cursed his illluck; the loss of time that this dilemma entailed grew serious; for Mrs. Peach was now in

such a hysterical state that he could not leave her with any good grace or feeling. It was necessary to take her

to a refreshment room, lavish restoratives upon her, and altogether to waste nearly half an hour. When she

had kept him as long as she chose, she forgave him; and thus at last he got away, his heart swelling with

tenderness towards Margery. He at once hurried up the street to effect the reconciliation with her.

'How shall I do it?' he said to himself. 'Why, I'll step round to her side, fish for her hand, draw it through my

arm as if I wasn't aware of it. Then she'll look in my face, I shall look in hers, and we shall march off the field

He entered the field and went straight as an arrow to the place appointed for the meeting. It was at the back of

a refreshment tent outside the mass of spectators, and divided from their view by the tent itself. He turned the

corner of the canvas, and there beheld Vine at the indicated spot. But Margery was not with him.

Vine's hat was thrust back into his poll. His face was pale, and his manner bewildered. 'Hullo? what's the

'You've carried this footy game too far, my man!' exclaimed Vine, with the air of a friend who has 'always

told you so.' 'You ought to have dropped it several days ago, when she would have come to 'ee like a cooing

'That's more than earthly man can tell! I never see such a thing! 'Twas a stroke o' the black artas if she

were sperrited away. When we got to the games I saidmind, you told me to!I said, "Jim Hayward thinks

o' going off to London with that widow woman"mind you told me to! She showed no wonderment, though

a' seemed very low. Then she said to me, "I don't like standing here in this slummocky crowd. I shall feel

more at home among the gentlepeople." And then she went to where the carriages were drawn up, and near

her there was a grand coach, ablazing with lions and unicorns, and hauled by two coalblack horses. I

hardly thought much of it then, and by degrees lost sight of her behind it. Presently the other carriages moved

off, and I thought still to see her standing there. But no, she had vanished; and then I saw the grand coach

rolling away, and glimpsed Margery in it, beside a fine dark gentleman with black mustachios, and a very

pale princelike face. As soon as the horses got into the hard road they rattled on like hellandskimmer, and

went out of sight in the dust, andthat's all. If you'd come back a little sooner you'd ha' caught her.'

Jim had turned whiter than his pipeclay. 'O, this is too badtoo bad!' he cried in anguish, striking his brow.

'That paper and that fainting woman kept me so long. Who could have done it? But 'tis my fault. I've stung

'She thinks I've gone off with that cust widow; and to spite me she's gone off with the man! Do you know

who that stranger wi' the lions and unicorns is? Why, 'tis that foreigner who calls himself a Baron, and took

Mount Lodge for six months last year to make mischiefa villain! O, my Margerythat it should come to

Jim turned to follow in the direction indicated, when, behold, there stood at his back her father, Dairyman

'Now look here, young man,' said Dairyman Tucker. 'I've just heard all that wailingand straightway will

ask 'ee to stop it sharp. 'Tis like your brazen impudence to teave and wail when you be another woman's

husband; yes, faith, I see'd her afainting in yer arms when you wanted to get away from her, and honest folk

astanding round who knew you'd married her, and said so. I heard it, though you didn't see me. "He's

married!" says they. Some sly registeroffice business, no doubt; but sly doings will out. As for

Margerywho's to be called higher titles in these parts hencefor'ardI'm her father, and I say it's all right

what she's done. Don't I know private news, hey? Haven't I just learnt that secret weddings of high people can

happen at expected deathbeds by special licence, as well as low people at registrars' offices? And can't

husbands come back and claim their own when they choose? Begone, young man, and leave noblemen's

Swift words of explanation rose to Jim's lips, but they paused there and died. At that last moment he could

not, as Margery's husband, announce Margery's shame and his own, and transform her father's triumph to

'IImust leave here,' he stammered. Going from the place in an opposite course to that of the fugitives, he

doubled when out of sight, and in an incredibly short space had entered the town. Here he made inquiries for

the emblazoned carriage, and gained from one or two persons a general idea of its route. They thought it had

taken the highway to London. Saddling poor Tony before he had half eaten his corn, Jim galloped along the

Now Jim was quite mistaken in supposing that by leaving the field in a roundabout manner he had deceived

Dairyman Tucker as to his object. That astute old man immediately divined that Jim was meaning to track the

fugitives, in ignorance (as the dairyman supposed) of their lawful relation. He was soon assured of the fact,

for, creeping to a remote angle of the field, he saw Jim hastening into the town. Vowing vengeance on the

young limeburner for his mischievous interference between a nobleman and his secretlywedded wife, the

Tucker had ridden on to the Review ground, so that there was no necessity for him, as there had been for poor

Jim, to reenter the town before starting. The dairyman hastily untied his mare from the row of other horses,

mounted, and descended to a bridlepath which would take him obliquely into the London road a mile or so

ahead. The old man's route being along one side of an equilateral triangle, while Jim's was along two sides of

Arrived here, the dairyman pulled up and looked around. It was a spot at which the highway forked; the left

arm, the more important, led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and

the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the other there appeared the back of a

carriage, which rapidly ascended a distant hill and vanished under the trees. It was the Baron's who,

according to the sworn information of the gardener at Mount Lodge, had made Margery his wife.

The carriage having vanished, the dairyman gazed in the opposite direction, towards Exonbury. Here he

Soon he reached the forking roads, and saw the dairyman by the wayside. But Jim did not halt. Then the

'Thank 'ee, dairyman, thank 'ee!' cried Jim, his pale face lighting up with gratitude, for he believed that

Tucker had learnt his mistake from Vine, and had come to his assistance. Without drawing rein he diminished

along the road not taken by the flying pair. The dairyman rubbed his hands with delight, and returned to the

Jim pursued his way through the dust, up hill and down hill; but never saw ahead of him the vehicle of his

search. That vehicle was passing along a diverging way at a distance of many miles from where he rode. Still

he sped onwards, till Tony showed signs of breaking down; and then Jim gathered from inquiries he made

that he had come the wrong way. It burst upon his mind that the dairyman, still ignorant of the truth, had

misinformed him. Heavier in his heart than words can describe he turned Tony's drooping head, and resolved

But the horse was now so jaded that it was impossible to proceed far. Having gone about half a mile back he

came again to a small roadside hamlet and inn, where he put up Tony for a rest and feed. As for himself, there

was no quiet in him. He tried to sit and eat in the inn kitchen; but he could not stay there. He went out, and

Standing in sight of the white way by which he had come he beheld advancing towards him the horses and

carriage he sought, now black and daemonic against the slanting fires of the western sun.

The why and wherefore of this sudden appearance he did not pause to consider. His resolve to intercept the

carriage was instantaneous. He ran forward, and doggedly waiting barred the way to the advancing equipage.

The Baron's coachman shouted, but Jim stood firm as a rock, and on the former attempting to push past him

Jim drew his sword, resolving to cut the horses down rather than be displaced. The animals were thrown

nearly back upon their haunches, and at this juncture a gentleman looked out of the window. It was the Baron

The Baron leapt out, and told the coachman to drive back out of sight and wait for him.

'I was hastening to find you,' he said to Jim. 'Your wife is where she ought to be, and where you ought to be

Jim, without replying, looked incredulously into the carriage as it turned. Margery was certainly not there.

'The other woman is nothing to me,' he said bitterly. 'I used her to warm up Margery: I have now done with

her. The question I ask, my lord, is, what business had you with Margery today?'

'My business was to help her to regain the husband she had seemingly lost. I saw her; she told me you had

eloped by the London road with another. I, who havemostlyhad her happiness at heart, told her I would

help her to follow you if she wished. She gladly agreed; we drove after, but could hear no tidings of you in

front of us. Then I took herto your houseand there she awaits you. I promised to send you to her if

'And I've been pursuing after you and Margery! My noble lord, your actions seem to show that I ought to

believe you in this; and when you say you've her happiness at heart, I don't forget that you've formerly proved

it to be so. Well, Heaven forbid that I should think wrongfully of you if you don't deserve it! A mystery to me

'I am glad to hear you say no worse. In one hour you'll have proof of my conductgood and bad. Can I do

Jim reflected. 'Baron,' he said, 'I am a plain man, and wish only to lead a quiet life with my wife, as a man

should. You have great power over herpower to any extent, for good or otherwise. If you command her

anything on earth, righteous or questionable, that she'll do. So that, since you ask me if you can do more for

me, I'll answer this, you can promise never to see her again. I mean no harm, my lord; but your presence can

do no good; you will trouble us. If I return to her, will you for ever stay away?'

'Hayward,' said the Baron, 'I swear to you that I will disturb you and your wife by my presence no more. And

In relating this incident to the present narrator Jim used to declare that, to his fancy, the ruddy light of the

setting sun burned with more than earthly fire on the Baron's face as the words were spoken; and that the ruby

flash of his eye in the same light was what he never witnessed before nor since in the eye of mortal man.

After this there was nothing more to do or say in that place. Jim accompanied his nevertobeforgotten

acquaintance to the carriage, closed the door after him, waved his hat to him, and from that hour he and the

A few words will suffice to explain the fortunes of Margery while the foregoing events were in action

elsewhere. On leaving her companion Vine she had gone distractedly among the carriages, the rather to

escape his observation than of any set purpose. Standing here she thought she heard her name pronounced,

and turning, saw her foreign friend, whom she had supposed to be, if not dead, a thousand miles off. He

beckoned, and she went close. 'You are illyou are wretched,' he said, looking keenly in her face. 'Where's

She told him her sad suspicion that Jim had run away from her. The Baron reflected, and inquired a few other

particulars of her late life. Then he said: 'You and I must find him. Come with me.' At this word of command

from the Baron she had entered the carriage as docilely as a child, and there she sat beside him till he chose to

speak, which was not till they were some way out of the town, at the forking ways, and the Baron had

discovered that Jim was certainly not, as they had supposed, making off from Margery along that particular

'To pursue him in this way is useless, I perceive,' he said. 'And the proper course now is that I should take you

to his house. That done I will return, and bring him to you if mortal persuasion can do it.'

'Didn't want to!' he answered. 'Let me remind you, Margery Hayward, that your place is in your husband's

house. Till you are there you have no right to criticize his conduct, however wild it may be. Why have you

The Baron sank into silence, and allowed his eye to rest on her. What thoughts were all at once engaging his

mind after those moments of reproof? Margery had given herself into his hands without a remonstrance, her

husband had apparently deserted her. She was absolutely in his power, and they were on the high road.

That his first impulse in inviting her to accompany him had been the legitimate one denoted by his words

cannot reasonably be doubted. That his second was otherwise soon became revealed, though not at first to

her, for she was too bewildered to notice where they were going. Instead of turning and taking the road to

Jim's, the Baron, as if influenced suddenly by her reluctance to return thither if Jim was playing truant,

signalled to the coachman to take the branch road to the right, as her father had discerned.

They soon approached the coast near Idmouth. The carriage stopped. Margery awoke from her reverie.

'Where are we?' she said, looking out of the window, with a start. Before her was an inlet of the sea, and in

the middle of the inlet rode a yacht, its masts repeating as if from memory the rocking they had practised in

'At a little seaside nook, where my yacht lies at anchor,' he said tentatively. 'Now, Margery, in five minutes

we can be aboard, and in half an hour we can be sailing away all the world over. Will you come?'

Then on a sudden, Margery seemed to see all contingencies: she became white as a fleece, and a bewildered

Baron von Xanten observed her distracted look, averted his face, and coming to a decision opened the

carriage door, quickly mounted outside, and in a second or two the carriage left the shore behind, and

In about an hour they reached Jim Hayward's home. The Baron alighted, and spoke to her through the

window. 'Margery, can you forgive a lover's bad impulse, which I swear was unpremeditated?' he asked. 'If

She did not do it, but eventually allowed him to help her out of the carriage. He seemed to feel the

awkwardness keenly; and seeing it, she said, 'Of course I forgive you, sir, for I felt for a moment as you did.

'I will, if any man can,' said he. 'Such penance is milder than I deserve! God bless you and give you

happiness! I shall never see you again!' He turned, entered the carriage, and was gone; and having found out

In due time the latter reached his lodging at his partner's. The woman who took care of the house in Vine's

absence at once told Jim that a lady who had come in a carriage was waiting for him in his sittingroom. Jim

proceeded thither with agitation, and beheld, shrinkingly ensconced in the large slippery chair, and

surrounded by the brilliant articles that had so long awaited her, his long estranged wife.

Margery's eyes were round and fearstricken. She essayed to speak, but Jim, strangely enough, found the

readier tongue then. 'Why did I do it, you would ask,' he said. 'I cannot tell. Do you forgive my deception? O

Margeryyou are my Margery still! But how could you trust yourself in the Baron's hands this afternoon,

'He said I was to come, and I went,' she said, as well as she could for tearfulness.

'I don't know,' said Jim musingly. 'I think he's a good man.' Margery did not explain. And then a sunnier

mood succeeded her tremblings and tears, till old Mr. Vine came into the house below, and Jim went down to

declare that all was well, and sent off his partner to break the news to Margery's father, who as yet remained

The dairyman bore the intelligence of his daughter's untitled state as best he could, and punished her by not

coming near her for several weeks, though at last he grumbled his forgiveness, and made up matters with Jim.

The handsome Mrs. Peach vanished to Plymouth, and found another sailor, not without a reasonable

As for the mysterious gentleman who had exercised such an influence over their lives, he kept his word, and

was a stranger to Lower Wessex thenceforward. Baron or no Baron, Englishman or foreigner, he had shown a

genuine interest in Jim, and real sorrow for a certain reckless phase of his acquaintance with Margery. That

he had a more tender feeling toward the young girl than he wished her or any one else to perceive there could

be no doubt. That he was strongly tempted at times to adopt other than conventional courses with regard to

her is also clear, particularly at that critical hour when she rolled along the high road with him in the carriage,

after turning from the fancied pursuit of Jim. But at other times he schooled impassioned sentiments into fair

conduct, which even erred on the side of harshness. In after years there was a report that another attempt on

his life with a pistol, during one of those fits of moodiness to which he seemed constitutionally liable, had

been effectual; but nobody in Silverthorn was in a position to ascertain the truth.

There he is still regarded as one who had something about him magical and unearthly. In his mystery let him

remain; for a man, no less than a landscape, who awakens an interest under uncertain lights and touches of

When she heard of his mournful death Margery sat in her nursing chair, gravely thinking for nearly ten

minutes, to the total neglect of her infant in the cradle. Jim, from the other side of the fire place, said: 'You

'Yes, yes,' she murmured, 'I am sorry.' After a moment she added: 'Now that he's dead I'll make a confession,

Jim, that I have never made to a soul. If he had pressed mewhich he did notto go with him when I was

in the carriage that night beside his yacht, I would have gone. And I was disappointed that he did not press

'Suppose he were to suddenly appear now, and say in a voice of command, "Margery, come with me!"'

'I believe I should have no power to disobey,' she returned, with a mischievous look. 'He was like a magician

to me. I think he was one. He could move me as a loadstone moves a speck of steel . . . Yet no,' she added,

hearing the infant cry, 'he would not move me now. It would be so unfair to baby.'

'Well,' said Jim, with no great concern (for 'la jalousie retrospective,' as George Sand calls it, had nearly died

out of him), 'however he might move 'ee, my love, he'll never come. He swore it to me: and he was a man of