Chapter II: On Ugborough Beacon

There came an August morning when Margery and Jacob made holiday and left Red House after breakfast to climb a famous hill some few miles distant.

Bullstone designed to visit his two farms, which extended their acres and lifted their homesteads upon the way; and they started, after an early breakfast, with two of the red terriers for company.

The road ran west and brought them through ferny lanes, that twined like a necklace beneath the border heights of the moor; while strung upon them at intervals stood farmhouses in coomb and hollow, where streams from aloft descended to the vale. Round each dwelling spread orchard and meadow and dark tilth; behind them heaved the grey hills, now brushed with the light of the ling.

Bullstone Farm, the ancient abode of Jacob's family, first appeared, and he spoke to his companion concerning the name.

"We were called Bullhornstone once," he said, "and on the old graves at Ugborough village you can see slates dating back far more than a hundred years under that name. But I suppose some busy forefather of mine found it was too much of a mouthful and dropped the 'horn.' And he dropped his luck at the same time. My grandfather, who died here, called himself 'Bullstone,' and there's a very good tomb to him and my grandmother at Ugborough that I'll show you some day. The family's nearly petered out. I am an only son; but I've got cousins in America--in Kentucky--heard from one not six months ago."

Margery was interested by one detail of this narrative.

"How did your forbear drop his luck?" she asked.

"Along of a wicked wife," he answered shortly. "No tale for your nice ears, yet a common enough thing for that matter. We're jealous folk, or was. He had a wife, and she had a lover, and Michael Bullstone caught them together and slew the pair of them. Then he gave himself up; but women were a bit lower in male value then than they are now, I reckon. The case was plain, but the jury--married men, no doubt--brought in Michael Bullstone not guilty. It put the fear of God into a good few wives I reckon. But the strange part of the tale is to tell. He was forty when he killed them---forty and a childless man. But at fifty he married one of the Elvins, of the same family that are at Owley Farm now. Jemima Elvin he married, and he had three sons and one daughter by her. People said it was like the tale of Job--only in that case the Devil took everything from the man but his wife; and in Michael Bullstone's case, his bad wife was the only thing he lost, and that by his own act."

"'Tis beyond belief to me," said Margery, "that a woman can ever roam from the man she loves."

"Such good-for-noughts don't know the meaning of love," he answered; "and you'll find such dregs and trash of women generally end in the gutter, where they belong."

"Must be an awful thing if love dies," she said.

"Love doesn't die," he answered with ingenuous conviction. "The woman that can look on her husband with a cold heart never loved him. True love is what you and I know--built for a lifetime."

"At first I was so proud, when you told me you loved me, that I couldn't feel anything else but the pride. It seemed too wonderful a thing to have happened to such an everyday girl as me. But when it came home, then the secret love I'd hid for you burst out in a sort of triumphant worship, till I felt, even if I died that instant minute, I'd have had more happiness than any woman ever deserved."

He laughed at that.

"You're the old-fashioned sort, I reckon--content for man to be master," he replied. "Women don't think so much like that now seemingly. They want to run their own lives a bit more and be free; but they'll soon tire of that caper and find security is better than adventures. You'll be the crown of my house and my mother's right hand so long as she's spared; and I'll do the man's work and stand between you and every wind that blows if I can."

"And well I know it," she said.

At Bullstone, the farmhouse stood back from the lane at the summit of a steep hill, and everything was well ordered. The whitewashed front of the house shone in bright sunlight, only broken by the open windows, and a great climbing shrub of buddleia, whose purple tassels fell over the porch. The roof was of Delabole slate, and behind the farm, a rising copse straggled up to frontier ridges of Ugborough Beacon. Round about the farmyard stood buildings, mostly under corrugated iron, that glittered silver bright, and in the porch sat an old man shelling peas.

He saw Jacob and Margery enter the outer gate and came to welcome them.

"Well, Mr. Catt, and how d'you find yourself?" asked the landlord, shaking hands.

"Pretty peart, master; but seventy-five years is a middling load," answered the other, putting his hand to his ear. "And who's the young lady? They tell me----"

"I know what they tell you, Matthew; they tell you; I've gone the way of all flesh and fallen in love."

"So they do then; and this will be Mrs. Huxam's daughter."

He shook hands with Margery.

"A godly mother you've got, my dear, and a godly husband you'll have. Come in and take a sup."

Jacob Bullstone's eyes were about the place while he smiled on the old man.

"How's Mrs. Parsons?" he asked,

"Nicely. She was here a minute agone. Dogs I see. When was you known without a dog? I'll call her."

Mr. Catt, who farmed Bullstone with a widowed daughter to keep his house, brought them to the kitchen, and Margery praised the room. It was rosy-washed, of surprising cleanliness and bright with brass upon the mantel-shelf and copper on the walls. There hung two warming-pans of ancient pattern and, between them, an 'eight-day' clock.

"You're a thought slow," said Jacob; then came Milly Parsons.

"Wish you both good luck and good fortune," she said, shaking hands with them. "When's it going to be, master?"

"Next November, Milly; and I'm hopeful you and Mr. Catt will mind the day and come along as my guests."

She brightened.

"Thank you, I'm sure. A great compliment."

Milly was a thin, sallow woman with pale hair and a kindly, but anxious face. With her came a pretty little, fair girl of ten years old--her daughter. Milly raised her voice and talked to her father, who heard badly.

"Mr. Bullstone's inviting us to the wedding next November, my dear."

"If I'm here, I'll gladly come," said Matthew.

Mrs. Parsons fetched a seed cake, two plates and two glasses.

"I was just thinking of 'forenoons," she said. "Father likes a snack about now. He've been trying a cup of cocoa, and he catches a nice bit of heat from it. He's a cold, old man, because he can't travel much about nowadays. But laziness don't fatten him. I wish it would. This is my daughter, Jane."

Mr. Catt nodded and smiled, aware that they were speaking of him, but not hearing the words. Margery made friends with the child who was very shy.

"I've got an old coat lined with rabbit-skin and only a bit worn," said Jacob. "Too hot for me in the coldest weather. Would he take it amiss from an old friend?"

"Not him," answered Mrs. Parsons. "He'd be proud to wear a coat after you I'm sure."

"He shall have it, then, next time somebody's along for Red House."

"Your father was always his great hero," continued Mr. Catt's daughter. "He often runs back over the past now and always says the same thing. He says 'Ah--ah--there were giants in the land in them days, and George Bullstone was the best of 'em.'"

"I like to hear the old generation praise my father," answered Jacob. "And now we must be gone. We're holiday making I must tell you--going to eat our dinner on top of the Beacon."

"And why not? Not often you make holiday."

Mr. Catt accompanied them to the outer gate and, as they went on their way, Jacob praised Matthew.

"Done for now--just waiting for time to throw him; but a rare good farmer in his day, and he's got three understanding men, so Bullstone's all right. A lot of quiet wisdom in the old chap that he didn't get out of books. The Catts were as good as the Bullstones once--yeomanry people like us; but they went down and we held up."

"There's a lot of Catts at Brent. One's a job master, and father thinks very well of him," said Margery.

"I wish Joe Elvin at Owley had a bit of old Matthew's sense; but he's always under the weather--a complaining man. Married to a good woman, though a bit fanciful in her ideas. She was upper housemaid at Beggar's Manor, and you'll find women who have gone to service in big houses pick up a lot of notions--some useful and some useless."

"Father, when he was a boy, took the first telegram that ever came to Brent out to Beggar's Manor," said Margery.

"A funny name for an estate; but no beggars ever lived there in human memory I should reckon."

Their way fell sharply beside an orchard beyond Bullstone and descended into a valley, where through the green and tangled bottom ran Glaze Brook. The road crossed this little water by a bridge of one arch, where, through a thicket of over-grown laurel, hazel and alder, peered the grey ruin of Owley Mill. But now its wheel had vanished, its roof was gone and only shattered walls remained. Beside the bridge stood a tall pear tree--a ghost of a tree draped in grey lichens that fluttered like an old woman's hair from every branch. The venerable thing still lived; leaves struggled with the parasite; scattered blossoms starred the boughs in early spring and a few small fruits annually ripened.

"Still it stands--a hundred years old, they say, and may be more," declared Jacob. Then they breasted the hill beyond and presently reached Owley. The farm showed fewer marks of prosperity than Bullstone. Green mosses throve on its ancient thatch, and the man who here pursued his life was not much disposed to tidiness.

"Who'd think that this was the richer place?" asked Jacob.

On one side of the way spread the farm, with fields round about; on the other stood Owley Cot, a pretty dwelling bowered in climbing roses with two great red firs springing beside it. Margery praised the cottage.

"I always think that the dinkiest little home I ever saw," she said. "But Mr. Elvin's mother ain't too contented for all that."

"Your home is nought if your heart's heavy," answered Jacob. "She knows that Joe is not particular happy, and he gets his cranky nature from her. Yet I'll be sorry if he's got to go."

"He pays his rent of course?"

"Oh, yes; but it drags a bit sometimes. He's had a good year, however; and his corn is above average as he admits himself, so it must be wonderful."

They entered, and Joe Elvin--a tall, thin man with a long nose, a black beard and a discontented face--himself answered Bullstone's knock.

They shook hands and Jacob explained that he had called on pleasure, not business.

The farmer welcomed them and took them into the kitchen, where his wife was making pastry, and two little boys played in a corner with the dried knuckle bones of sheep.

"Just want to introduce Mrs. Bullstone to be," said Jacob.

Mrs. Elvin, a handsome, big-built woman, showed pleasure and congratulated the lovers. Her little boys came and shook hands. They were a well-mannered, cheerful pair and resembled their mother.

"Going to make farmers of 'em I hope, Joe?" asked the owner of Owley; but Mr. Elvin was doubtful.

"Robert shapes for it," he answered. "But Jack is all for the sea."

"That's because he doesn't know anything about the sea," asserted Jacob. "You keep him on the land, Joe. There's little enough to be picked up off the sea, by all accounts."

The men strolled into the yard presently, for Elvin had a sick sheep-dog and Bullstone readily offered to see it.

"Just my luck if he's going to die," said Joe moodily. "Best ever I had, and sheep-dogs be so scarce you can't get a trained one over distemper for money."

"He's not going to die," declared Bullstone. "He's too thin--same as you are yourself."

He prescribed for the dog and Joe continued to grumble until Bullstone grew impatient.

"What the mischief's the matter with you? Always grizzling for nought. A man in fair health with a good wife, a good mother and two fine, healthy sons. What more d'you want?"

Joe laughed mirthlessly.

"It sounds all right to your ears I dare say. But if you looked underneath, perhaps you'd find a different story. Don't much matter how good people are if they ain't good to you? Nobody knows where the shoe pinches except the wearer, and you've no right to say I'm one of the lucky ones, because you don't know nothing about it."

"Don't meet trouble half-way, Joe, and keep your eye on the bright side."

"Time's past for silly sayings. Life's broke me and I know it; but why it's broke me, and how it's broke me, be my own business."

"Rubbish and stuff! Get some physic for your bad digestion and you'll soon feel hopefuller. It ain't life's broke you, but your own low-spirited outlook on life. Life don't break us. It's the canker inside spoils all when it works through. You can't help being a melancholy sort of man, I suppose. That's your nature. But you've got brains in your head and reasoning powers, and you ought to fight yourself and have it out, and balance your good against your bad; and look round with seeing eyes and count how many can't hold a candle to you for fortune."

"A canker inside is a very good figure of speech--a very clever thought," admitted Mr. Elvin. "And I'll tell you another thing: it's not much use for them as haven't got cankers to preach to them as have. Us ban't born with cankers most times. They grow, and I'm not grumbling against my lot in particular. I know there's many things might be worse. Only I've got in a state when I don't much like my fellow-creatures, and I don't like myself no more than the rest."

"A foolish thing to feel. We have our faults and our virtues also. You ought to see the faults in yourself and the virtues in other people. At your gait, you'll end by thinking life isn't worth while at all."

"I've thought that a powerful long time."

"Well, set about to make it worth while then--and if you can't make it worth while for yourself--then make it worth while for your wife and children. Do that, and you'll mighty soon find it worth while for yourself too."

"Sounds all right," admitted Joe. "You wise blades always do sound all right; but against a canker wise words be vain. A canker was a very true word, Jacob."

Bullstone preached a little longer, asked Joe to come and see him at Red House and shook his hand in friendly fashion when they parted.

He sighed, however, to Margery as they entered Ugborough Plain above Owley and began to climb the fern-clad bosom of the Beacon.

"There's a man Fate can't tempt to be sane," he said. "And if I were Fate and had the handling of him, I'd give over treating him fair and knock him about a bit. He's one of the sort that don't know he's born. He's asking for trouble, and his nature so poisons his mind and blinds his eyes that he can't see his blessings, but looks through and beyond into fancied woe that isn't there."

"Don't you know why?" she asked. "Old Mrs. Elvin will tell you. His father lost his wits and was put away."

Jacob reflected.

"I'd forgot that," he replied. "I'll mind it next time I have a word with him."

They ascended by a vast but gentle slope to Ugborough's crown of cairns, and presently sat at the summit, with the sun and wind in their faces and their backs against the stones.

Beneath them extended the mighty prospect of the South Hams, a mosaic of hamlet, forest and field, that seemed to be basking in the sun and stretching itself like a living thing. The varied colours of red tilth and pasture were washed in air, brought together and made harmonious. Earth rolled hugely out to the dim skyline of the sea, and westerly the Channel bit into the land, while easterly, Devon rose and swept the great waters out of sight behind her cliffs and ridges. Knap and knoll ascended to break the coverlet of the fields; here woods darkened the land and cloud shadows, vaster than they, hid a parish in their passing and swept over the sun-soaked expanses, to quicken the landscape with play of light and shadow.

"How tiny Brent looks from up here," laughed Margery; "just a grey smudge and no more. And Brent Hill, shrunk to no bigger than a slice of cake on end!"

"It's good to get a bird's view sometimes," said Jacob. "Steadies the mind and makes you see things their proper size compared to other things."

"But I was angry the first time I came up here, as a little one with a school treat," continued the girl. "Properly vexed I was, because it seemed all wrong somehow in my young eyes that the houses should be so small and the church and chapels no more than spots. And Marley Wood, that had always seemed to me the most wonderful place of mysteries on earth, was just a dark dab no bigger than a coal-scuttle, and the railway a thread, and the great thundering trains no bigger nor faster than caterpillars! It didn't seem right to have things turned upside down like that."

"I bet you were glad to go down among the familiar sights again and find they hadn't changed, Margery."

"But they had," she answered. "I couldn't forget. I tried--I tried hard, but children remember so. I hated the Beacon for days after that, and was always glad when his head was covered with clouds, so I couldn't see him. I thought he was a wicked monster that had gone and spoiled things I set store by, and showed me they were small and mean compared to him. But after to-day I'll forgive him."

Jacob felt mildly surprised at this unexpected glimpse into his sweetheart's mind.

"Who'd have thought a chit of a child could get such fancies," he said; "but I dare say girls are different from boys and dream all manner of funny things like that."

"Don't boys dream too?" she asked.

"Maybe some do. I never did. All the same I like to hear about your dreaming. Pretty I call it."

"No, you don't, Jacob. You'd call it silly in anybody but me. But so it was. I made up things and told 'em to other children. And I tried telling 'em to my brother, Thomas, who was some years younger than me. He had a great contempt for girls, however. He was just short of seventeen when he died, poor little chap."

"Took after your mother, she says."

"Yes, terrible serious, and that good! Goodness was his nature. Jeremy's more like me."

"Your mother's a thought stern."

Margery nodded.

"Brings religion into everything," she answered. "A wonderful mother she's been. You mustn't mind my seeing a lot of her after we're married, Jacob. The little that's good in me I owe to her."

"You're frightened of her?"

Margery considered this.

"I was--we all were. A sort of love we'd got that didn't cast out fear exactly. But I'm not frightened of her now. I trust her so in every thing. Where there's perfect trust, there didn't ought to be fear."

"I feel a very great respect of her, but she's hard," declared Jacob.

"I suppose she is to you," admitted Margery, "and I'll tell you why she seems so. 'Tis her great goodness and high religion. Very few can rise to it; and to everyday people mother does seem hard; but it's only because most are soft. There's a bit of jealousy also. Because even good people know they can't be as good as she is all round."

Jacob differed and held Mrs. Huxam to be narrow and self-righteous; but he did not say so.

"Don't you fear I shall quarrel with her," he said. "She's the mother of my wife to be, and I'll be a very good son to her if she lets me alone."

"She lets everybody alone when she can't help them," answered Margery. "She pours her whole thoughts and all her time into religion and the shop. It was a grief to her that I didn't go into the shop; and, looking back, I always wonder how I didn't; but I was such a one for out of doors, and father supported me, and doctor told her I'd be a stronger girl if I lived in the air. Till I was fifteen I was a poor, pinnikin thing."

"Never!"

"I was then--you look at my first photograph, took with Thomas and Jeremy. But now I'm--so strong as a pony."

They ate their meal and Margery did most of the talking, while Jacob, his hunger satisfied, lolled and smoked and listened to her.

Presently they set their faces northward and tramped Ugborough Moor, their goal, Three Barrows, towering ahead among lesser hills. Jacob dearly loved the Moor and discoursed upon it for his sweetheart's benefit.

"They are cairns, not barrows," he explained, when they stood on the great hill; but Margery was occupied with her old thoughts.

"Now even Ugborough looks small," she declared, gazing down whence they had come. "He's not everybody, after all!"

The feminine view amused Jacob and he declared the unimportance of size.

"It's not the greatness of a thing in bulk; it's the goodness and fineness in quality that matters," he told her. "Now we're lifted up between two rivers. Down there runs the Ernie and away beyond Zeal Plains lie the famous 'rings' and your beloved Auna."

They talked of the 'old men' who had built the ruined pounds, alignments and hut circles.

"Were they half apes, or creatures much like ourselves?" asked Margery. "Father says they were less than us, and mother doubts if they had souls at all. But mother says there can't be much hope for any before Jesus Christ came, whatever they were."

Bullstone laughed.

"And little hope for very many that came since, if Mrs. Huxam's right. I trust you are a bit larger hearted in that matter. It's not often you see such a terrible, good woman with such harsh views on the subject of heaven and hell as her."

Margery looked uncomfortable.

"It's hard to think so few be chosen; but of course there's chapter and verse for it," she answered. "I dare say a lot more will be saved than mother fears."

"A bootless business," he answered. "After all, there's no higher thought for living man than his duty to his neighbour; and if you do that, you'll mostly find you're doing your duty to yourself. God forbid I should quarrel with your mother; but I won't pretend, Margery; I don't go all the way with her and I'm glad of it."

The girl did not reply and he talked of the Moor.

"The 'old men' are gone," he said, "and be sure they were men and women as good as we, if not so clever. They lived hard for certain, but I dare say they had their bit of fun, if it was only fighting; and as for goodness and hope of salvation, who are we, with all our comforts and inventions, to deny goodness to them, or the eternal reward of goodness? Why in the name of charity must nine out of every ten humans that come into the world be doomed to hell? What did the Lord die for, Margery, if all the doubtful characters are to be damned?"

"Leave it," she said. "I feel same as you; but I haven't thought about such fearful things and more have you; but mother and father have. You must give them best in that matter, please, Jacob."

She was pained and they fell silent for a while. The man resolved to enlarge her ideas presently, and felt a smoulder of indignation that a creed so ugly to him should have seared the mind of an innocent and happy girl.

They still held north over wild lands with the heights rolling about them; then they reached the ancient Abbot's Way, running east and west, and met Auna's stream near Huntingdon Cross, a granite memorial from olden time. Less than five feet high it stood above the heath.

"Here's the Forest Boundary," said Jacob, "and now we'll get to the Warren House yonder, rest a bit and start for home.'

"I always feel sorry to turn at the end of a great day," she answered, "and this is the greatest day, but one, that ever I have lived."

He kissed her.

"And that one was the day you asked me to marry you, Jacob."

"Don't I know it?"

The Warren House stood before them under a ragged sycamore. It was almost the loneliest inhabited dwelling in Devon, and its squat, white face peered out upon the wilderness from under a black, tar-pitched roof. The rabbit warrens spread on either hand and the dwelling lay in the protection of a tumulus that piled up to the northward.

"I love this forgotten place," declared Bullstone. "In some moods--not now, but once when I was younger and less content than now--I've thought it would be a very good place to live, beyond the fret and cark of life."

But Margery shivered.

"I'd have to be broke in mind and body and not wishful to live at all, before I'd live here," she said.

Indeed the spot was somewhat melancholy and calculated to chill a cheerful spirit. Death seemed to have made this place a home. Evidences of mortality stared round about. In one corner of the little yard was a heap of bones, and suspended from a low bough of the sycamore, there hung a flayed horse by a hook.

"I'm sorry for my pretty Auna that she has to pass up here," declared Margery. "She must be properly glad to wind away down into our beautiful valley and come to Red House and Shipley Bridge."

"You should see Auna Head," he answered,--"that's where she rises, in a desert of bog and cotton grass under Ryder's Hill. Lonesome there if you like. Hardly will you hear a bee booming and never see colt or head of kine. Nothing but the pad marks of a fox and the sweep of his brush in the mud. We'll ride up some Sunday when I've got your pony. Now let's go in, and you'll see two men that are so nearly content as ever I knew men to be, for all their loneliness. Father and son they are."

"I know them well enough," she answered, "I've often met 'em coming in with rabbits when I was exercising the dogs."

"The deuce you have! And never told me?"

She smiled at him.

"Benny Veale's a good-looking chap, and his father's a fine old man and kindly."

"I'm hearing things," exclaimed Jacob.

"You get to talk to a lot of people out with the puppies. Everybody's so interested in them."

"And interested in you, I reckon. Well, you won't walk puppies and talk to strangers much longer."

Now came a riot of life in the shape of the warrener's dogs. Half a dozen lean, wiry creatures, barking and gambolling, ran before a man. They worked for him on the warren, and the dead horse represented meals to come. They wagged their tails and saluted the Irish terriers in friendship. Benny Veale followed them--a sun-tanned, red lad in a blue sailor's jersey and long boots. He was carrying a dozen dead rabbits, but threw them down and saluted the visitors.

"Who'd have thought to see you, Mr. Bullstone!" he exclaimed, grinning at Margery.

"Where's the governor?" asked Jacob.

"He'll be along direckly minute."

"Can you give us a cup of tea, Ned?"

"Ess I can, then; I'll make it."

"How's the rabbits?"

"No lack--just getting busy again; but us don't do much for a fortnight yet."

He lifted his voice and shouted.

"Here's Mr. Bullstone come up over, father."

Then an old, bent man appeared from the hillocks of the warren. He walked with a long stick and was bowed in the back and lame; but he revealed a cheerful countenance and proved an elderly edition of his son, though his red hair was nearly white and had dwindled to little patches above his ears. Upon his head not a hair remained.

He beamed from a mouth wherein teeth were few.

"So here's the she!" he said, first shaking Margery's hand. "And I wish you both luck I'm sure. 'Tis a terrible blow to Benny I can tell you, for he's been chattering about you, Miss, ever since he first catched sight of you along with the little dogs."

Benny did not hear this jest: he had gone in to prepare tea; but Jacob did hear and little liked it.

"You're getting too old for this place and this job," he said. "About time you took your bones down to the village, Frederick."

"Granted," answered Mr. Veale. "I did ought to be gone; but I say that every winter, and yet find myself up for one more season come summer again. I'm better this year than what I was last."

"You look very well indeed, Mr. Veale," declared Margery.

"The point of the wedge is in," confessed Frederick humorously. "Death have got it among my bones, and will hammer it home in God's good time; but my vitals is all working very suent yet, and if I sleep a lot, I'm wonderful between whiles."

They entered a rough, unclean kitchen cumbered with trappers' tools. Jacob was not at ease and regretted that they had come. He cut short Benny in some simple gallantries and having drunk a cup of tea, declared that they must push forward.

But Mr. Veale protested.

"Bide a bit," he said, "and smoke your pipe. Us don't have visitors very oft I warn 'e."

"I do trust you be going to ask us to the wedding, Miss," ventured Benny, who could not take his eyes off Margery's face.

"I'd like for you to come," she answered. "I hope there will be a brave rally of neighbours I'm sure."

"You'll be married from the post-office, of course," assumed Benny's father. "Trust Mr. and Mrs. Huxam to do it in good order. But be she willing to go to Church, or can the Chosen Few hold lawful marriage?"

"It's going to be in Church, because Mr. Bullstone's Church of England," explained Margery.

"And when do it happen, Miss?" asked Benny.

"Next November."

Jacob gave each man a fill from his pouch and the talk ran for a time on dogs; then he rose to depart.

"Well, may your love adventures all turn out well and fine," said Mr. Veale, "and the Lord remember you and be good to the pair of you."

Benny shyly took a sprig of white heath from a jam jar, where it stood in water.

"Found it yesterday. Please accept of it, Miss."

She thanked him and guessed he had intended to present it on the following day, when it was probable they would have met at Shipley Bridge--she with her puppies, he with a cart of rabbits on his way to Brent. But before Huntingdon Warren House was lost on their homeward way, Jacob asked her to drop the flower.

"I don't like that sort of nonsense," he said. "The young man made a hole in his manners offering it, in my opinion. I'll forgive him this time, because he used to be a sailor and they don't know better."

Margery instantly flung away the blossoms.

"A mannerless oaf," added Jacob, "else he'd have known wiser than to stare at you as though you were a show. I'll ask you not to take note of him if you meet him again without me."

Margery wondered and her heart beat a little quicker.

"Isn't he a good sort of man?" she asked.

"For all I know; but the woman that's going to marry me needn't trouble whether any other man's good or not."

"That's true," she said, smiling to herself. "I never thought about how good you were when I began to love you--only how wonderful and precious. Love don't take much account of goodness or badness I reckon."

"Very often not, till too late."

"Then it's a bit of added fortune to fall in love with a right good man," she said.

"Safest no doubt. But I wasn't quite like you. I did take into account your goodness; and I wouldn't have let myself love you, as I do love you, if you hadn't been better than gold. If I'd found you were light and didn't take life seriously, I should still have been interested in you and anxious for your future and wishful to advance it; but I shouldn't have fallen in love with you, Margery."

"You fright me when you say that," she answered, "because we all know lovers can't see straight; and now I shall fear you'll find me not half so good as you think."

"There--there; now you're fishing for praise! You know yourself very well; and if you hadn't been my sort, you wouldn't have fallen in love with me. And don't you be fearing I'm too serious and like to bore you. I love life and the good things of life, though work's the best of them and wears best. But we won't miss the junkettings and revels now and then; though with your upbringing, I shouldn't wonder if you proved a thought more stiff-starched than I, for all my age and experience."

They chatted very joyously together and then a good thing happened, for in the shaking moss, where a spring was born and bubbled up out of the granite, Jacob marked a piece of bog heather, white as snow, and though he had to wade half up his leggings to get it, he did not hesitate.

"There!" he said, "there's your white heather, and now you've got your luck from me and none else."

"I'll treasure it up for ever and ever," she said. "I've got my luck from you--that's a true word in the sight of God; and I hope a time is coming when you'll say you've got your luck from me."

"Luck's a poor word," he answered. "I've got my new life from you, Margery. All that's coming means you--all."

"Who laughed at me and said I was talking poetry on Ugborough?" she asked, with the evening light on her dark hair and in her eyes.

Jacob put his arm round her.

"What I say isn't poetry--unless God's truth be poetry," he answered.

So they came home together beside the river.