up. Now, don't stand there trembling and argufying, you're the local constable, and you've got to come, so now! Evening, your Reverence; Jarvey'll see you safe back to the church."

And presently the only sign of life in the schoolbarn was the nibbling of rats on the table, at the candle and the crumbs of bread and cheese.

239

CHAPTER XXIII.

TELLS OF THE MEETING AND THE BITCHAPEN.

"Let us return home," said Sancho; "no longer ramble about from Ceca to Mecca."

-Don Quixote, i., 3.

No woman would ever marry if she had not the chances of mortality for a release.

-The Beggars' Opera, ii., 2.

Ah, how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring. -The Double Gallant, i., 2.

One drachm of joy must have a pound of care.

-Locrine, iv., I.

“Don't let us rake up bygones,” said Tom, “if I ever offended you, forgive me."

240

XXIII.

"I CAN'T, I can't!-he's so ill," Dahlia murmured. "I can't—I won't! How can you ask me to do it?

ני

"That's a proper way to speak, and I don't hold you wrong for it, lass. But he wants thee away-he wants thee away, I tell you! That's why he sent for me, that's why I come. What else d'ye suppose I'd be here for?" There was irritation in the yeoman's

tone.

"

"I can't,' she said. '... For better, for worse her eyes were resting on the image of the inconstant moon, pale in the mill-pool below. "Till death do us part-no, I can't, Cousin; I'd liefer go than stop, Heaven knows I would!-but don't ask me!"

"But, burn it, you must!" the yeoman said irefully. "Must I?" she fired up. "I won't! And you

shan't make me!" Her eyes regarded the imaged moon. “... To have and to hold-in sickness and health," she murmured.

"Dall your whimsies!" he said bitterly. "Father Sturt didn't wed you with them words, I'm thinking." "The vow's the same. . . . No, Matt-I can't!"

"You're fain to stop, are you? Very well then, I'm fain to be off. I've wasted time eneugh, say nothing o' money-say nowt o' getting arrested. No

use me stopping here like a fooil, to get caught again. I don't relish this low kind o' living myself. One jail-bird in the family's eneugh, by-the-blest!"

"That's what

Dahlia's eyes were dry in an instant. you say, is it? Then go!" she said. "You had no call to come-I never asked you-I didn't know they'd sent for you, whatever you may think. You can go this very minute. . . ... There's nowt I want from anybody-you can tell father so, if you like.... Aldo will make a good husband to me yet!"

"Ay, when the sky rains larks, you silly judy!" Matt fumed.

The two were leaning on the rail of the open gallery that across the back of the derelict silk-mill ran, suspended above the water, to the top of the rusted, motionless great wheel; Matt stamped his foot to keep back an oath, and the gallery perilously swayed.

A little sound broke the sulky silence that ensued; it was the clink of steel on flint. The yeoman was lighting his consolation. With a sighing breath he sent the first puff out on the humid air. Somewhere among the sedges and willows that grew, hedge-like, around the pool, a bittern boomed. .

"Well, why don't you go, cousin?" in a hard voice Dahlia said at last.

"By Jud! you'd try the patience of Job, you would!" the yeoman groaned. "Talking that gait,

as if nowt were amiss!

You're as stubborn as a pot

mule! If you don't care about my feelings, or your mother's, or Uncle Abel's, you might have a bit of respect for the family good name, dall it all!"

Her finger-nails whitened with the pressure of her hands on the rail. "Do you see that water? Do you think it doesn't tempt me down, this minute even? Do you fancy it's love and happiness that's keeping me here? Can't you see I'd go, and be blythe to, if I honestly could? I'm tired of it; I'm sick of heart; I'm " She sobbed as she spoke.

He dropped his pipe into his pocket. His trembling hand slid along the rail to hers; he touched it; her fingers were rigid and cold. "You mean you— you don't care for him any longer, Dahlia ?

Dahlia!"

She flashed an angered face upon him, and snatched her hand to her tempestuous breast. "Leave me be! I-you-I-I don't know what I mean-it's wrongI'm going inside to my husband," she said, abruptly turning. "We've had the word you wanted before you saw him; it's enough. Let me go!"

She passed from the gallery into the darkness of the mill, and Cousin Matt was left alone. Again the butter-bump boomed his melancholy note. The mill itself was a place of melancholy; all the surroundings told of dashed hopes, efforts frustrate, labour and cost laid waste. Vanished were the hum and whir of happy toil; the pond slept almost stagnant, the mill