EX 
 HBRIS 
 
 3SI 
 
 i
 
 iS^i^SS^
 
 LIBRAR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 x826 
 
 V.l
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/woodlanders01hard
 
 THE WOODLANDERS 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 ^
 
 THE WOODLANDERS 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS HARDY 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 Ilontion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1887 
 
 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserz-cd.
 
 EiCHARD Clay and Sons, 
 
 LONDON AND BUNGAY.
 
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The rambler who, for old association's 
 sake, should trace the forsaken coach-road 
 running almost in a meridional line from 
 Bristol to the south shore of E norland, 
 would find himself during the latter half of 
 his journey in the vicinity of some extensive 
 woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. 
 Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearinor as the 
 case may be, make the wayside hedges 
 ragged by their drip and shade, their lower 
 limbs stretching in level repose over the 
 
 VOL. I. IJ
 
 2 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 road, as thoue^i reclininor on the Insubstantial 
 air. At one place, where Rubdon Hill Is 
 crossed, a bank slopes up to the trees on the 
 left hand, while on the right spreads a deep 
 and silent vale. The spot Is lonely, and 
 when the days are darkening the many gay 
 ones now^ perished who have rolled over the 
 hill, the blistered soles that have trodden It, 
 and the tears that have wetted It, return 
 upon the mind of the loiterer. 
 
 The physiognomy of a deserted highway 
 expresses solitude to a degree that Is not 
 reached by mere dales or downs, and be- 
 speaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic 
 than that of glades and pools. The contrast 
 of what Is with what might be, probably 
 accounts for this. To step, for Instance, at 
 the place under notice, from the edge of the 
 plantation Into the adjoining pale thorough- 
 fare, and pause amid Its emptiness for a 
 moment, was to exchanq;e by the act of a
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 single stride the simple absence of human 
 companionship for an incubus of the forlorn. 
 
 At this spot, on the lowering evening of a 
 by-gone winter's day, there stood a man who 
 had thus indirectly entered upon the scene 
 from a stile hard by, and was temporarily 
 influenced by some such feeling of being 
 suddenly more alone than before he had 
 emerged upon the highway. 
 
 It could be seen by a glance at his rather 
 finical style of dress that he did not belong to 
 the country proper ; and from his air, after a 
 while, that thouQ^h there mi^rht be a sombre 
 beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, 
 and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in 
 the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he 
 was mainly puzzled about the way. 
 
 He looked north and south, and mechani- 
 cally prodded the ground with his walking- 
 stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated 
 the testimony of his clothes. Nothing 
 
 B 2
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 irradiated It ; the expression enthroned there 
 was absokite submission to and beHef In a 
 Httle assortment of forms and habitudes. 
 
 At first not a soul appeared who could 
 enlighten him as he desired, or seemed likely 
 to appear that night. But presently a slight 
 noise of labouring wheels, and the steady dig 
 of a horse's shoe-tips became audible ; and 
 there loomed, in the notch of hill and planta- 
 tion that the road formed here, a carrier's 
 van drawn by a single horse. 
 
 The vehicle was half full of passengers, 
 mostly women. He held up his stick at Its 
 approach, and the woman who v/as driving 
 drew rein. 
 
 '' I've been trying to find a short w^ay to 
 Little Hintock this last half hour, Mrs. 
 Dollery," he said. '' But though I've been 
 to Great Hintock and Hintock House half a 
 dozen times, I am at fault about the small 
 village. You can help me, I dare say ? "
 
 THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 She assured him that she could — that as 
 she went to Great Hintock her van passed 
 near it — that it was only up the lane branch- 
 ing out of the road into ^^hich she was about 
 to turn. "Though," continued ]\Irs. Dollery, 
 " 'tis such a little small place that, as a 
 town gentleman, you'd need have a candle 
 and lantern to find it if ye don't know 
 where 'tis. Bedad I I wouldn't live there it 
 they'd pay me to. Xow at Great Hintock 
 you do see the world a bit." 
 
 He mounted and sat beside her, with his 
 feet outwards, where they were ever and anon 
 brushed over by the horse's tail. 
 
 This van was rather a movable attachment 
 of the roadway than an extraneous object, 
 to those who knew it well. The old horse, 
 whose hair was of the rouQrhness and colour 
 of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and 
 hoofs were distorted by harness and drudg- 
 ery from colthood — though if all had their
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 rights he ought, symmetrical in outHne, to 
 
 have been picking the herbage of some 
 
 Eastern plain instead of tugging here — had 
 
 trodden this road almost daily for twenty 
 
 years. Even his subjection was not made 
 
 congruous throughout, for, the harness ^being 
 
 too short, his tail was not drawn through 
 
 the crupper, so that the breeching slipped 
 
 awkwardly to one side. He knew every 
 
 subtle incline of the six or seven miles of 
 
 ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas 
 
 — the market town to which he journeyed 
 
 — as accurately as any surveyor could have 
 
 learnt it by a Dumpy level. 
 
 The vehicle had a square black tilt which 
 nodded with the motion of the wheels, and 
 at a point in it over the driver's head was 
 a hook to which the reins were hitched at 
 times, forming a catenary curve from the 
 horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the 
 axles was a loose chain, whose only known
 
 THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 purpose was to clink as It went. Mrs. 
 Dollery, having to hop up and down many 
 times in the service of her passengers, wore, 
 especially In windy weather, short leggings 
 under her gown for modesty's sake ; and 
 instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down 
 with a handkerchief, to guard against an 
 ear-ache to which she was frequently subject. 
 In the rear of the van was a glass window 
 which she cleaned with her pocket-hand 
 kerchief every market-day before starting. 
 Looking at the van from the back, the 
 spectator could thus see, through Its interior, 
 a square piece of the same sky and land 
 scape that he saw without, but intruded on 
 by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, 
 as they rumbled onward, their lips mo\ing 
 and heads nodding In aniniated private 
 converse, remained In happy unconsciousness 
 that their mannerisms and facial peculiarities 
 were sharply defined to the public eye.
 
 8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 This hour of coming home from market 
 was the happy one, if not the happiest, of 
 the week for them. vSnugly ensconced under 
 the tilt they coukl forget the sorrows of the 
 world without, and survey life and recapitu- 
 late the incidents of the day with placid 
 smiles. 
 
 The passengers in the back part formed 
 a group to themselves, and while the new- 
 comer spoke to the proprietress, they 
 indulged in a confidential chat about him 
 as about other people, which the noise of 
 the van rendered^*'inaudible to himself and 
 Mrs. Dollery sitting forward. 
 
 " 'Tis Barber Percomb — he that's got the 
 waxen woman in his window," said one 
 " What business can bring him out here 
 at this time, and not a journeyman hair- 
 cutter, but a master-barber that's left off 
 his pole because 'tis not genteel?" 
 
 Thev listened to his conversation, but
 
 THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 the barber, though he had nodded and 
 spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify 
 the curiosity that he had aroused ; and the 
 unrestrained flow of ideas which had ani- 
 mated the inside of the van before his 
 arrival was checked thenceforward. 
 
 Thus they rode on till they turned into 
 a half-Invisible little lane, whence, as it 
 reached the verge of an eminence, could 
 be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile 
 to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in 
 a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of 
 the woodland. From this self-contained 
 place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of 
 smoke, which the eve of imacrination could 
 trace downward to their root on quiet 
 hearthstones, festooned overhead with hams 
 and flitches. It was one of those sequestered 
 spots outside the gates of the world where 
 may usually be found more meditation than 
 action, and more listlessness than medita-
 
 lo THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 tion ; where reasoning proceeds on narrow 
 premisses, and results in inferences wildly 
 imaginative ; yet where, from time to time, 
 no less than in other places, dramas of a 
 grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are 
 enacted in the real, by virtue of the con- 
 centrated passions and closely-knit inter- 
 dependence of the lives therein. 
 
 This place was the Little HIntock of the 
 master-barber's search. The coming ni^ht 
 gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, 
 but the position of the wood-environed com- 
 munity could still be distinguished by a few 
 faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually 
 throucrh the leafless bouo^hs and the undls- 
 cernlble songsters they bore, in the form 
 of balls of feathers, at roost among them. 
 
 Out of the lane followed by the van 
 branched a yet smaller lane, at the corner 
 of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's 
 van going on to the larger village, whose
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. li 
 
 superiority to the despised smaller one as 
 an exemplar of the \vorld's movements was 
 not particularly apparent in its means of 
 approach. 
 
 "A very clever and learned young doctor, 
 who, they say, is in league with the devil, 
 lives in the place you be going to— not 
 because there's anybody for'n to cure there, 
 but because 'tis the middle of his district." 
 
 The observation was flung at the barber 
 by one of the women at parting, as a last 
 attempt to get at his errand that way. 
 
 But he made no reply, and without further 
 pause plunged towards the umbrageous nook, 
 and paced cautiousl)' over the dead leaves 
 which nearly buried the road or street of the 
 hamlet. As very few people except them- 
 selves passed this way after dark, a majority 
 of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed 
 window-curtains unnecessary ; and on this 
 account their visitor made it his business to
 
 12 • THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Stop opposite the casements of each cottage 
 that he came to, with a demeanour which 
 showed that he was endeavouring to conjec- 
 ture, from the persons and things he observed 
 within, the whereabouts of somebody or other 
 who resided here. 
 
 Only the smaller dwellings interested him ; 
 one or two houses, whose size, antiquity, and 
 rambling appurtenances signified that not- 
 withstanding their remoteness they must 
 formerly have been, if they were not still, 
 inhabited by people of a certain social 
 standing, being neglected by him entirely. 
 Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting 
 cider, which reached him from the back 
 quarters of other tenements, revealed the 
 recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, 
 and joined with the scent of decay from the 
 perishing leaves under foot. 
 
 Half a dozen dwellings were passed without 
 result. The next, which stood opposite a tall
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 13 
 
 tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, 
 the flickering brightness from the inside 
 shining up the chimney and making a lumi- 
 nous mist of the emerging smoke. The 
 interior, as seen through the window, caused 
 him to draw up with a terminative air and 
 watch. The house was rather large for a 
 cottage, and the door, which opened imme- 
 diately into the living-room, stood ajar, so 
 that a riband of light fell through the opening 
 into the dark atmosphere without. Every 
 now and then a moth, decrepit from the late 
 season, would flit for a moment across the 
 outcoming rays and disappear again into the 
 night.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the room from which this cheerful blaze 
 proceeded he beheld a girl seated on a willow 
 chair, and busily working by the light of the 
 fire, which was ample and of wood. With a 
 bill-hook in one hand, and a leather glove, 
 much too large for her, on the other, she w^as 
 making spars, such as are used by thatchers, 
 with great rapidity. She wore a leather 
 apron for this purpose, w^hlch was also much 
 too laree for her figure. On her left hand 
 lay a bundle of the straight, smooth hazel 
 rods called spar-gads — the raw material of 
 her manufacture ; on her right a heap of
 
 CH. II. THE WOODLAXDERS. 15 
 
 chips and ends — the refuse — \vlth which the 
 fire was maintained ; in front, a pile of the 
 finished articles. To produce them she took 
 up each gad, looked crincally at it from 
 end to end, cut it to length, split it into four, 
 and sharpened each of the quarters with 
 dexterous blows, which brought it to a 
 triangular point precisely resembling that of 
 a bayonet. 
 
 Beside her, in case she might require 
 more li^-ht, a brass candlestick stood on a 
 little round table, curiously formed of an 
 old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on, 
 the white surface of the latter contrastinor 
 oddly with the black carved oak of the 
 substructure. The social position of the 
 household in the past was almost as defini- 
 tively shown by the presence of this article 
 as that of an esquire or nobleman by his 
 old helmets or shields. It had been customary 
 for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure
 
 i6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 was by copy of court-roll, or In any way 
 more permanent than that of the mere cotter, 
 to keep a pair of these stools for the use 
 of his own dead ; but changes had led to 
 the discontinuance of the custom, and the 
 stools were frequently made use of in the 
 manner described. 
 
 The voune woman laid down the bill- 
 hook for a moment and examined the palm 
 of her right hand, which, unlike the other, 
 was uneloved, and showed little hardness 
 or roughness about it. The palm was red 
 and blistering, as if this present occupation 
 were not frequent enough with her to sub- 
 due it to what it worked in. As with so 
 many right hands born to manual labour, 
 there was nothing in its fundamental shape 
 to bear out the physiological convention- 
 alism that gradations of birth, gentle or 
 mean, show themselves primarily in the 
 form of this member. Nothing but a cast
 
 THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 of the die of destiny had decided that the 
 girl should handle the tool ; and the fingers 
 which clasped the heavy ash haft might have 
 skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, 
 had they only been set to do It in good time. 
 Her face had the usual fulness of expres- 
 sion which is developed by a life of solitude. 
 \Vhere the eyes of a multitude continuously 
 beat like waves upon a countenance they 
 seem to wear away Its individuality ; but 
 In the still water of privacy every tentacle 
 of feeling and sentiment shoots out in visible 
 luxuriance, to be Interpreted as readily as 
 a printed book by an Intruder. In years 
 she was no more than nineteen or twenty, 
 but the necessity of taking thought at a 
 too early period of life had forced the pro- 
 visional curves of her childhood's face to 
 a premature finality. Thus she had but 
 little pretension to beauty, save In one pro- 
 minent particular — her hair. Its abundance 
 VOL. I. C
 
 i8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 made it almost unmanageable ; Its colour 
 was, roughly speaking, and as seen here 
 by firelight, brown ; but careful notice, or 
 an observation by day, would have revealed 
 that Its true shade was a rare and beautiful 
 approximation to chestnut. 
 
 On this one bright gift of Time to the 
 particular victim of his now before us the 
 newcomer's eyes were fixed ; meanwhile the 
 fingers of his right hand mechanically played 
 over something sticking up from his waist- 
 coat pocket — the bows of a pair of scissors, 
 whose polish made them feebly responsive 
 to the light from within the house. In 
 her present beholder's mind the scene formed 
 by the girlish spar-maker composed Itself 
 into an impression-picture of extremest 
 type, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the 
 focus of observation, w^as depicted with 
 intensity and distinctness, while her face, 
 shoulders, hands, and figure In general,
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 were a blurred mass of unimportant detail, 
 lost In haze and obscurity. 
 
 He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the 
 door and entered. The young woman turned 
 at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, 
 and exclaiming, " Oh, Mr. Percomb, how 
 you frightened me ! " quite lost her colour for 
 a moment. 
 
 He replied, " You should shut your door — 
 then you'd hear folk open It." 
 
 " I can't," she said ; *' the chimney smokes 
 so. Mr. Percomb, you look as unnatural 
 away from your wigs as a canary in a thorn- 
 hedge. Surely you have not come out here 
 on my account — for — " 
 
 "Yes — to have your answer about this." 
 He touched her hair with his cane, and she 
 winced. " Do you agree ? " he continued. 
 "It is necessary that I should know at once, 
 as the lady is soon going away, and It takes 
 time to make u^^." 
 
 C 2
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 '* Don't press me — it worries me. I was In 
 hopes you had thought no more of It. I can 
 not part with it — so there ! " 
 
 " Now look here, Marty," said the other, 
 sitting down on the coffin-stool table. 
 " How much do you get for making these 
 spars : 
 
 " Hush — father's up stairs awake, and he 
 don't know^ that I am doing his work." 
 
 " Well, now tell me/' said the man more 
 softly. " How much do you get ?" 
 
 " Eighteenpence a thousand," she said 
 reluctantly. 
 
 " Who are you making them for ? " 
 
 *' Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just 
 ]:)elow here." 
 
 " And how many can you make in a 
 day ? " 
 
 " In a day and half the night, three bundles 
 — that's a thousand and a half" 
 
 '' Two and threepence." Her visitor
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 paused. " Well, look here/' he continued, 
 with the remains of a computation in his tone, 
 which computation had been to fix the 
 probable sum of money necessary to 
 outweigh her present resources, and her 
 women's love of comeliness, " here's a 
 sovereign — a gold sovereign, almost new." 
 He held it out between his finder and thumb. 
 ''That's as much as you'd earn in a week 
 and a half at that rouoh man's-work, and 
 it's yours for just letting me snip oft' what 
 you've got too much of." 
 
 The girl's bosom moved a very little. 
 '•' Why can't the lady send to some other girl 
 who don't value her hair — not to me ? " 
 she exclaimed. 
 
 " Why, simpleton, because yours is the 
 exact shade of her own, and 'tis a shade you 
 can't match by dyeing. But you are not 
 o;oinQf to refuse me now I've come all the 
 way from Sherton on purpose ? "
 
 22 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " I say I won't sell it — to you or any- 
 body." 
 
 " Now listen," and he drew up a little 
 closer beside her. '' The lady is very rich, 
 and won't be particular to a few shillings ; so 
 I will advance to this on my own responsibility 
 — I'll make the one sovereio^n two, rather 
 than go back empty-handed." 
 
 " No, no, no ! " she cried,- beginning to be 
 much agitated. '' You are a tempting me. 
 You OTQ on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in 
 the penny book. But I don't want your 
 money, and won't agree. Why did you come? 
 I said when you got me into your shop and 
 urged me so much that I didn't mean to sell 
 my hair ! " The speaker was hot and stern. 
 
 " Marty, now hearken. The lady that 
 wants it wants it badly. And, between you 
 and me, you'd better let her have it. 'Twill 
 be bad for you if you don't." 
 
 '' Bad for me ? Who is she then ? "
 
 11. THE WOODLANDERS. 23 
 
 The wig-maker held his tongue, and the 
 girl repeated the question. 
 
 " I am not at Hberty to tell you. And as 
 she is going abroad soon it makes no 
 difference who she is at all." 
 
 "She wants it to go abroad wi' .-^ "' He 
 assented by a nod. 
 
 The girl regarded him reflectively. '" Xow, 
 Mr.- Percomb," she said, '' I know who 'tis. 
 'Tis she at the House — Mrs. Charmond ! " 
 
 " That's mv secret. However, if vou ao:ree 
 to let me have it, Til tell you in confidence.'' 
 
 *' I'll certainly not let you have it unless 
 you tell me the truth. It is Mrs. Charmond." 
 
 The man dropped his voice. " Well — it is. 
 You sat in front of her in church the other 
 day, and she noticed how exactly your hair 
 matches her own. Ever since then she's 
 been hankering for it, to help out hers, and at 
 last decided to e^t it. As she won't wear it 
 till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody
 
 24 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 will recognise the change. I'm commissioned 
 to get it for her, and then it is to be made up. 
 I shouldn't have vamped all these miles for 
 any less important employer. Now, mind — 
 'tis as much as my business with her is worth 
 If it should be known that I've let out her 
 name ; but honour between us two, Marty, 
 and you'll say nothing that would Injure me ? " 
 
 " I don't wish to tell upon her," said 
 "Marty coolly. " But my hair Is my own, 
 and I'm going to keep it." 
 
 *' Now that's not fair, after what I've 
 told you," said the nettled emissary. " You 
 see, Marty, as you are In the same parish, 
 and In one of this lady's cottages, and 
 your father Is 111, and wouldn't like to turn 
 out, It would be as well to oblige her. I 
 say that as a friend. But I won't press 
 you to make up your mind to-night. You'll 
 be coming to market to-morrow, I dare say, 
 and you can call then. If you think it
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 25 
 
 over you'll be inclined to bring what I 
 want, I know." 
 
 " I've nothing more to say," she answered. 
 
 Her companion saw from her manner 
 that it was useless to urge her further by 
 speech. " As you are a trusty young 
 woman," he said, " I'll put these sovereigns 
 up here, for ornament, that you may see 
 how handsome they are. Bring the article 
 to-morrow, or return the sovereigns." He 
 stuck them edgewise into the frame of a 
 small mantel looking-glass. " I hope you'll 
 bring it ; for your sake and mine. I should 
 have thought she could have suited herself 
 elsewhere ; but as it's her fancy it must be 
 indulged if possible. If you cut it off 
 yourself mind how you do it, so as to 
 keep all the locks one way." He showed 
 her how this was to be done. 
 
 " But I sha'n't," she replied with laconic 
 indifference. " I value my looks too much
 
 26 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 to Spoil 'em. She wants my curls to get 
 another lover with ; though if stories are 
 true she's broke the heart of many a noble 
 gentleman already." 
 
 '' Lord, it's wonderful how you guess 
 things, Marty," said the barber. " I've 
 had it from those that know that there 
 certainly is some foreign gentleman in her 
 eye. However, mind what I ask." 
 
 " She's not going to get him through me." 
 
 Percomb had retired as far as the door ; 
 he came back, planted his cane on the 
 coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. 
 " Marty South," he said with deliberate 
 emphasis, '' yoitve got a lover yourself, and 
 that's why you won't let it go ! " 
 
 She reddened so intensely as to pass the 
 mild blush that suffices to heighten beauty ; 
 she put the yellow leather glove on one 
 hand, took up the hook with the other, 
 and sat down doggedly to her work without
 
 II. THE WOODLANDERS. 27 
 
 turning her face to him again. He regarded 
 her head for a moment, went to the door, 
 and with one look back at her departed 
 on his way homeward. 
 
 Marty pursued her occupation for a few 
 minutes ; then suddenly laying down the 
 bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the 
 back of the room, where she opened a door 
 which disclosed a staircase so whitely 
 scrubbed that the grain of the wood was 
 well-nigh sodden away by cleansing. At 
 the top she gently approached a bedroom, 
 and without entering said, " Father, do you 
 want anything ? " 
 
 A weak voice inside answered in the 
 negative, adding, '' I should be all right 
 by to-morrow if it were not for the 
 tree ! " 
 
 " The tree again — always the tree ! Oh, 
 father, don't worry so about that. You 
 know it can do you no harm."
 
 28 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. Ii. 
 
 " Who have ye had talking to ye down 
 stairs ? " 
 
 ''A Sherton man called — nothing to trouble 
 about," she said soothingly. '' Father," she 
 went on, ''can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of 
 our house if she's minded to ? " 
 
 '' Turn us out ? No. Nobody can turn 
 us out till my poor soul is turned out of my 
 body. 'Tis lifehold, like Giles Winterborne's. 
 But when my life drops 'twill be hers — not 
 till then." His words on this subject so far 
 had been rational and firm enough. But now 
 he lapsed into his moaning strain : "And the 
 tree will do it — that tree will soon be the 
 death of me." 
 
 " Nonsense, you know better. How can 
 it be ? " She refrained from furtlier speech, 
 and descended to the ground floor again. 
 
 '' Thank Heaven, then," she said to 
 herself, "what belongs to me I keep."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The lights In the village went out, house 
 after house, till there only remained two in 
 the darkness. One of these came from a 
 residence on the hill-side, of which there is 
 something to be said later on ; the other 
 shone from the window of ]^Iarty South. 
 Precisely the same extinguished effect was 
 produced here, however, by her rising \\ hen 
 the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick 
 cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to 
 keep ajar In hers as in most cottages, because 
 of the smoke ; but she ob\ iated the eft'ect of 
 the riband of light through the chink by
 
 30 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 hanorincr a cloth over that also. She was one 
 
 o o 
 
 of those people who, If they have to work 
 harder than their neighbours, prefer to keep 
 the necessity a secret as far as possible ; and, 
 but for the slight sounds of wood-spllntering 
 which came from within, no wayfarer would 
 have perceived that here the cottager did not 
 sleep as elsewhere. 
 
 Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck ; the 
 heap of spars grew higher, and the pile of 
 chips and ends more bulky. Even the light 
 on the hill had nov/ been extinguished ; but 
 still she worked on. When the temperature 
 of the nieht without had fallen so low as to 
 make her chilly, she opened a large blue 
 umbrella to ward off the drausfht from the 
 door. The two sovereigns confronted her 
 from the looking-glass In such a manner as 
 to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the 
 watch for an opportunity. Whenever she 
 sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 31 
 
 towards them, but withdrew it quickly, 
 stroking her tresses for a moment, as if to 
 assure herself that they were still secure. 
 When the clock struck three she arose and 
 tied up the spars she had last made in a 
 bundle resemblinss: those that lav against 
 the wall. 
 
 She wrapped round her a long red woollen 
 cravat, and opened the door. The night in 
 all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, 
 like the very brink of an absolute void, or the 
 ante-mundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by 
 her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were 
 fresh from the blaze, and here there was no 
 street lamp or lantern to form a kindly 
 transition between the inner glare and the 
 outer dark. A lingering wind brought to 
 her ear the creakinof sound of two over- 
 crowded branches in the neiii^hbourincr wood, 
 which were rubbing each other into wounds, 
 and other vocalised sorrows of the trees,
 
 32 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 together with the screech of owls, and the 
 flutterlnor tumble of some awkward wood- 
 pigeon Ill-balanced on Its roosting bough. 
 
 But the pupils of her young eyes soon 
 expanded, and she could see well enough for 
 her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars 
 under each arm, and guided by the serrated 
 line of tree-tops against the sky, she went 
 some hundred yards or more down the lane 
 till she reached a long open shed, carpeted 
 around with the dead leaves that lay about 
 everywhere. Night, that strange personality, 
 which within walls brings ominous Introspec- 
 tlveness and self-distrust, but under the open 
 sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too 
 trivial for thought, gave to Marty South a 
 less perturbed and brisker manner now. She 
 laid the spars on the ground within the shed 
 and returned for more, going to and fro till 
 her whole manufactured stock was deposited 
 here.
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 33 
 
 This erection was the waggon-house of the 
 chief man of business hereabout, ]\Ir. George 
 Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware 
 merchant for whom ^Marty's father did work 
 of this sort by the piece. It formed one 
 of the manv rambHnof outhouses which sur- 
 rounded his dwelHng, an equally irregular 
 block of building, whose immense chimneys 
 could just be discerned even now. The four 
 huQre waororons under the shed were built on 
 those ancient lines whose proportions have 
 been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes 
 bulging and curving at the base and ends 
 like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which 
 venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles 
 evidenced a constructive spirit curiously in 
 harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, 
 another with hurdles, another with ash-poles, 
 and the fourth, at the foot of which she 
 had placed her thatching-spars, was half 
 full of similar bundles. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 She was pausing a moment with that 
 easeful sense of accompHshment which 
 follows work done that has been a hard 
 struggle in the doing, when she heard a 
 woman's voice on the other side of the 
 hedge say anxiously, " George ! " 
 
 In a moment the name was repeated, 
 with " Do come indoors ! What are you 
 doing there ? " 
 
 The cart-house adjoined the garden, and 
 before Marty had moved she saw enter the 
 latter from the timber-merchant's back door 
 an elderly woman sheltering a candle w^ith 
 her hand, the light from which cast a moving 
 thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face. 
 Its rays soon fell upon a man whose clothes 
 were carelessly thrown on, standing in 
 advance of the speaker. He was a thin, 
 slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous 
 mouth, and a face cleanly shaven ; and he 
 walked along the path with his eyes bent
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 35 
 
 on the ground. In the pair Marty South 
 recognised her employer Melbury and his 
 wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, 
 the first having died shordy after the birth 
 of the timber-merchant's only child. 
 
 *' 'Tis no use to stay in bed ! " he said 
 as soon as she came up to w^here he was 
 pacing restlessly about. " I can't sleep. I 
 keep thinking of things." 
 
 " What things ? " 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 "The lady at the Great House?" 
 
 '' No." 
 
 " The turnpike bonds ? " 
 
 " No. Though I wish I hadn't got 
 em. 
 
 "The ghosts of the Two Brothers?" 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Not about Grace ? " 
 
 "Yes. 'Tis she." 
 
 (Grace was the speaker's only daughter.) 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 ** Why worry about her ? " 
 
 " First, I cannot think why she doesn't 
 answer my letter. She must be ill." 
 
 " No, no. Things only appear so gloomy 
 in the night-time." 
 
 " Second, I have not invested any money 
 specially for her, to put her out of the reach 
 of poverty if my affairs fail." 
 
 " They are safe. Besides, she is sure to 
 marry well." 
 
 " You are wrong. That's my third 
 trouble. I have a plan in my head about 
 her, and according to my plan she won't 
 marry well." 
 
 "A plan for her not to marry well .-^ " 
 said his wife, surprised. 
 
 *' In one sense. It is a plan for her to 
 marry a particular person, and he is poor. 
 It is Giles W'interborne." 
 
 " Giles Winterborne ? Well, it is all 
 right. Love will make up for his want of
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 37 
 
 money. He adores the very ground she 
 walks on." 
 
 (Marty South started, and could not tear 
 herself away.) 
 
 '' Yes," said the timber-merchant ; " I 
 know that well. There will be no lack of 
 that with him. But since I have educated 
 her so well, and so long, and so far above 
 the level of the daughters hereabout, it is 
 wasting her to give her to a man of no 
 higher standing than he." 
 
 " Then why do it ? " she asked. 
 
 *' Ah ! — now you've hit it ! Lucy, it is in 
 obedience to a solemn resolve I made .... 
 I made it because I did his father a terrible 
 wrong ; and it has been a weight on my 
 conscience ever since that time, till this 
 scheme of making amends occurred to me 
 through seeing that Giles liked her." 
 
 "Wronged his father.'*" asked Mrs. 
 Melbury.
 
 38 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 " Yes, grievously wronged him," said her 
 husband. 
 
 ''Well, don't think of it to-night," she 
 urged. " Come indoors." 
 
 '* No, no ; the air cools my head. I shall 
 not stay long." 
 
 He was silent awhile; then he told her 
 that his first wife, his daughter's mother, 
 was first the promised of Winterborne's 
 father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the 
 speaker, won her away from him by a 
 trick, because he wanted to marry her 
 himself. He went on to say that the other 
 man's happiness was ruined by it ; that 
 though he married Winterborne's mother, 
 it was but a half-hearted business with him. 
 Melbury added that he was afterwards very 
 miserable at what he had done ; but that 
 as time went on, and the children grew up, 
 and seemed to be attached to each other, 
 he determined to do all he could to right
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 39 
 
 the wrong by letting his daughter marry 
 the lad ; not only that, but to give her the 
 best education he could afford, so as to 
 make the gift as valuable a one as it lay 
 in his power to bestow. " I still mean to 
 do it," said Melbury. 
 
 " Then do," said she. 
 
 '' But all these things trouble me," said 
 he ; " for I feel I am sacrificing her for 
 my own sin ; and I think of her, and often 
 come down here and look at this." 
 
 '* Look at what ? " asked his wife. 
 
 He took the candle from her hand, held 
 it to the o^round, and removed a tile which 
 lay in the garden-path. *' 'Tis the track 
 of her shoe that she made when she ran 
 down here the day before she went away 
 all those months ago. I covered it up when 
 she was gone ; and when I come here and 
 look at it, I ask myself again, why should 
 she be sacrificed to a poor man ? "
 
 40 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 "It is not altogether a sacrifice," said 
 the woman. "He is in love with her, 
 and he's honest and upright. If she en- 
 courages him, what can you w^ish for more ? " 
 
 " I wish for nothinor definite. But there's 
 
 o 
 
 a lot of things possible for her. Why, 
 Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined 
 young lady, I hear, to go abroad with 
 her — as companion or something of the 
 kind. She'd jump at Grace." 
 
 " That's all uncertain. Better stick to 
 what's sure." 
 
 ''True, true," said Melbury ; "and I 
 hope it will be for the best. Yes, let mc 
 get 'em married up as soon as I can, so 
 as to have it over and done with." He 
 continued looking at the imprint, while he 
 added, " Suppose she should be dying, and 
 never make a track on this path any more ? " 
 
 " She'll write soon, depend upon't. Come, 
 'tis wrong to stay here and brood so."
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 41 
 
 He admitted it, but said he could not 
 help it. "Whether she write or no, I shall 
 fetch her in a few days." And thus speak- 
 ing he covered the track, and preceded his 
 wife indoors. 
 
 Melbury perhaps was an unlucky man 
 in havinof within him the sentiment which 
 could indulge in this foolish fondness about 
 the imprint of a daughter's footstep. Nature 
 does not carry on her government with a 
 view to such feelings ; and when advancing 
 years render the opened hearts of those who 
 possess them less dexterous than formerly 
 in shutting against the blast, they must 
 suffer '' buffeting at will by rain and storm " 
 no less than little celandines. 
 
 But her own existence, and not Mr. 
 Melbury's, was the centre of ^Marty's con- 
 sciousness, and it was in relation to this 
 that the matter struck her as she slowly 
 withdrew.
 
 42 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " That, then, is the secret of it all," she 
 said. '' And Giles Winterborne is not for 
 nie, and the less I think of him the better." 
 
 She returned to her cottaofe. The 
 sovereigns were staring at her from the 
 looking-glass as she had left them. With 
 a preoccupied countenance, and with tears in 
 her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and 
 began mercilessly cutting off the long locks 
 of her hair, arranging and tying them with 
 their points all one way, as the barber had 
 directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal 
 of the coflin-stool table they stretched like 
 waving and ropy weeds over the washed 
 white bed of a stream. 
 
 She would not turn again to the little 
 looking-glass out of humanity to herself, 
 knowing what a deflowered visage would 
 look back at her, and almost break her 
 heart ; she dreaded it as much as did her 
 own ancestral goddess the reflection in the
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 43 
 
 pool after the rape of her locks by Loke 
 the Malicious. She steadily stuck to busi- 
 ness, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and 
 sealed it up ; after which she raked out 
 the fire and went to bed, having first set 
 up an alarum made of a candle and piece 
 of thread, with a stone attached 
 
 But such a reminder was unnecessary to- 
 night. Havinor tossed about till five o'clock, 
 Marty heard the sparrows walking down 
 their lon^f holes in the thatch above her 
 sloping ceiling to their exits at the eaves ; 
 whereupon she also arose, and descended 
 to the ground floor again. 
 
 It was still dark, but she began moving 
 about the house in those automatic initiatory 
 acts and touches which represent among 
 housewives the installation of another day. 
 While thus eno^ao^ed she heard the rumblino- 
 of Mr. Melbury's waggons, and knew that 
 there, too, the day's toil had begun.
 
 44 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 An armful of gads thrown on the still hot 
 embers caused them to blaze up cheerfully, 
 and bring her diminished head-gear into 
 sudden prominence as a shadow. At this a 
 step approached the door. 
 
 '' Are folk astir here yet ? " inquired a 
 voice she knew well. 
 
 *' Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, 
 throwing on a tilt bonnet, which completely 
 hid the recent ravages of the scissors. 
 '* Come in ! " 
 
 The door was flung back, and there 
 stepped in upon the mat a m^in, not parti- 
 cularly young for a lover, nor particularly 
 mature for a person of affairs — each of which 
 functions he in some degree discharged. 
 There was reserve in his glance, and re- 
 straint upon his mouth. He carried a horn 
 lantern which hung upon a swivel, and, 
 wheeling as it dangled, marked grotesque 
 shapes upon the shadier part of the walls.
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 45 
 
 He said that he had looked In on his way 
 down, to tell her that they did not expect her 
 father to make up his contract if he was not 
 well. ]Mr. ]\Ielbury would give him another 
 week, and they would go their journey with 
 a short load that day. 
 
 " They are done," said Marty, " and lying 
 in the cart-house." 
 
 " Done ?" he repeated. " Your father has 
 not been too ill to work after all, then ? " 
 
 She made some evasive reply. " I'll show 
 you where they be, if you are going down," 
 she added. 
 
 They went out and walked together, the 
 pattern of the air-holes in the top of the 
 lantern being thrown upon the mist over- 
 head, where they appeared of giant size, as 
 if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had 
 no remarks to m.ake to each other, and they 
 uttered none. Hardly anything could be 
 more isolated or more self-contained than the
 
 46 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 lives of these two walking here in the lonely 
 hour before day, when grey shades, material 
 and mental, are so very grey. And yet, 
 looked at in a certain way, their lonely 
 courses formed no detached design at all, 
 but w-ere part of the pattern in the great w^eb 
 of human doings then weaving in both hemi- 
 spheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn. 
 
 The shed was reached, and she pointed 
 out the spars. WInterborne regarded them 
 silently, then looked at her. 
 
 " Now, Marty, I believe " he said, and 
 
 shook his head. 
 
 -What?" 
 
 " That you've done the work yourself" 
 
 " Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr. 
 W'interborne ? " she pleaded by way of 
 answer. " Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury 
 may refuse my w^ork If he knows It Is mine." 
 
 " But how could you learn to do It ? 'TIs 
 a trade."
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 47 
 
 " Trade ! " said she. " I'd be bound to 
 learn it in two hours." 
 
 " Oh, no, you wouldn't, iNIrs. Marty." 
 Winterborne held down his lantern, and 
 examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay 
 '' Marty," he said w^ith dry admiration, "your 
 father with his forty years of practice never 
 made a spar better than that. They are too 
 Qfood for the thatchinQ^ of houses ; they are 
 good enough for the furniture. But I won't 
 tell. Let me look at your hands — your 
 poor hands ! " 
 
 He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe 
 tone ; and when she seemed reluctant to show 
 her hands he took hold of one and examined 
 it as if it were his own. Her finQ:ers were 
 blistered. 
 
 " They'll get harder in time," she said. 
 " For if father continues ill I shall have to 
 go on wi^ it. Now I'll help put 'em up in 
 waggon."
 
 48 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 Winterborne without speaking set down 
 his lantern, lifted her like a doll as she was 
 about to stoop over the bundles, placed her 
 behind him, and began throwing up the 
 bundles himself. " Rather than you should 
 do it I will," he said. " But the men will be 
 here directly. Why, Marty — whatever has 
 happened to your head ? Lord, it has 
 shrunk to nothing — it looks like an apple 
 upon a gate-post ! " 
 
 Her heart swelled, and she could not 
 speak. At length she managed to groan, 
 looking on the ground, " I've made myself 
 ugly — and hateful — that's what I've done ! " 
 
 ''No, no," he answered, ''You've only 
 cut your hair — I see now." 
 
 " Then why must you needs say that about 
 apples and gate-posts ? " 
 
 " Let me see ! " 
 
 For answer she ran off into the gloom of 
 the sluggish dawn. He did not attempt to
 
 III. THE WOODLANDERS. 49 
 
 follow her. When she reached her father's 
 door she stood on the step and looked back. 
 Mr. Melbury's men had arrived, and were 
 loading up the spars ; and their lanterns 
 appeared from the distance at which she 
 stood to have wan circles round them, like 
 eyes weary with watching. She observed 
 them for a few seconds as they set about 
 harnessins: the horses, and then went 
 indoors. 
 
 VOL. T,
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There was now a distinct manifestation of 
 morning in the air, and presently the bleared 
 white visage of a sunless winter day emerged 
 like a dead-born child. The woodlanders 
 everywhere had already bestirred themselves, 
 rising at this time of the year at the far less 
 dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had 
 been above an hour earlier, before a single 
 bird had untucked his head, that twenty 
 lights were struck in as many bedrooms, 
 twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty 
 pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast 
 the weather for the day.
 
 CH. IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 Owls that had been catching mice In the 
 outhouses, rabbits that had been eating the 
 winter-greens In the gardens, and stoats that 
 had been sucklno: the blood of the rabbits, 
 discerning that their human neighbours were 
 on the move, discreetly withdrew from pub- 
 licity, and were seen and heard no more 
 till nightfall. 
 
 The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. 
 Melbury's homestead, of which the waggon- 
 sheds had been an out-lying erection. It 
 formed three sides of an open quadrangle, 
 and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the 
 largest and central one being the dwelling 
 Itself. The fourth side of the quadrangle 
 was the public road. 
 
 It was a dwelling-house of respectable, 
 roomy, almost dignified aspect, which, taken 
 with the fact that there were the remains 
 of other such buildings hereabout, indicated 
 that Little HIntock had at some time or 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Other been of greater importance than now, 
 as its old name of Hintock St. Osmond also 
 testified. The house was of no marked 
 antiquity ; yet of well-advanced age ; older 
 than a stale novelty, but no canonised 
 antique ; faded, not hoary ; looking at you 
 from the still distinct middle-distance of the 
 early Georgian time, and awakening on that 
 account the instincts of reminiscence more 
 decidedly than the remoter, and far grander, 
 memorials which have to speak from the 
 misty reaches of mediaevalism. The faces, 
 dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenges of the 
 great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers 
 who had been the first to o^aze from those 
 rectangular windows, and had stood under 
 that keystoned doorway, could be divined 
 and measured by homely standards of to-day. 
 It was a house in whose reverberations queer 
 old personal tales were yet audible if properly 
 listened for ; and not, as with those of the
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 53 
 
 castle and cloister, silent beyond the 
 possibility of echo. 
 
 The garden-front remained much as it had 
 always been, and there was a porch and 
 entrance that way. But the principal house- 
 door opened on the square yard or quad- 
 rangle towards the road, formerly a regular 
 carriage entrance ; though the middle of the 
 area was now made use of for stacking 
 timber, faggots, bundles, and other products 
 of the wood. It was divided from the lane 
 by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a pair 
 of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpen- 
 dicular, with a round white ball on the top 
 of each. 
 
 The building on the left of the inclosure 
 was a long-backed erection, now used for 
 spar-making, sawing, crib -framing, and copse- 
 ware manufacture in general. Opposite 
 were the waggon-sheds where Marty had 
 deposited her spars.
 
 54 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Pi ere WInterborne had remained after the 
 girl's abrupt departure, to see that the loads 
 were properly made up. Winterborne was 
 connected with the Melbury family In various 
 ways. In addition to the sentimental rela- 
 tionship which arose from his father having 
 been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winter- 
 borne's aunt had married and emigrated with 
 the brother of the timber-merchant many 
 years before — an alliance that was sufficient 
 to place WInterborne, though the poorer, 
 on a footing of social intimacy with the 
 Melburys. As in most villages so secluded 
 as this, Intermarriages were of Hapsburglan 
 frequency among the inhabitants, and there 
 were hardly two houses in Little Hintock 
 unrelated by some matrimonial tie or 
 other. 
 
 For this reason a curious kind of part- 
 nership existed between Melbury and the 
 younger man — a partnership based upon an
 
 THE WOODLAXDERS. 55 
 
 unwritten code, by which each acted in the 
 way he thought fair towards the other, on a 
 give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his 
 timber and copse-ware business, found that 
 the weight of his labour came in winter and 
 spring. Wlnterborne was In the apple and 
 cider trade, and his requirements in cartage 
 and other work came in the autumn of each 
 year. Hence horses, waggons, and In some 
 degree men, were handed over to him when 
 the apples began to fall ; he in return, lend- 
 ino^ his assistance to Melburv in the busiest 
 wood-cutting season, as now. 
 
 Before he had left the shed a boy came 
 from the house to ask him to remain till Mr. 
 Melbury had seen him. Wlnterborne there- 
 upon crossed over to the spar-house where 
 some journeymen were already at work, two 
 of them being travelling spar-makers from 
 White- Hart Lane, who, when the fall of the 
 leaf began, made their appearance regularly,
 
 56 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 and when winter was over disappeared in 
 silence till the season came again. 
 
 Firewood was the one thing abundant in 
 Little Hintock ; and a blaze of gad-ends 
 made the outhouse gay with its light, which 
 vied with that of the day as yet. In the hollow 
 shades of the roof could be seen pale dangling 
 arms of ivy which had crept through the joints 
 of the tiles and were groping in vain for some 
 support, their leaves being dwarfed and 
 sickly for want of sunlight ; others were 
 pushing in with such force at the eaves as to 
 lift from their supports the shelves that were 
 fixed there. 
 
 Besides the itinerant journey - workers 
 there w^ere also present John Upjohn, Mel- 
 bury's regular man ; a neighbour engaged 
 in the hollows-turnery trade ; Old Timothy 
 Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and 
 bottom sawyers at work in Mr. Melbury's 
 pit outside ; Farmer Cawtree, who kept the
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 57 
 
 cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old man 
 who worked for Winterborne, and stood 
 warming his hands ; these latter having been 
 enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they 
 had no particular business there. None of 
 them call for any remark, except perhaps 
 Creedle. To have completely described him 
 it would have been necessary to write a 
 military memoir, for he wore under his 
 smock-frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that 
 had seen hot service, its collar showing just 
 above the flap of the frock ; also a hunting 
 memoir, to include the top-boots that he had 
 picked up by chance ; also chronicles of 
 voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife 
 had been given him by a weather-beaten 
 sailor. But Creedle carried about with him 
 on his uneventful rounds these silent tes- 
 timonies of war, sport, and adventure, and 
 thought nothing of their associations or their 
 stories.
 
 58 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Copse-work, as it was called, being an 
 occupation which the secondary intelligence 
 of the hands and arms, could carry on with- 
 out requiring the sovereign attention of the 
 head, the minds of its professors wandered 
 considerably from the objects before them ; 
 hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications 
 of family history which were recounted here 
 were of a very exhaustive kind. 
 
 Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not 
 arrived, stepped back again outside the door ; 
 and the conversation interrupted by his mo- 
 mentary presence flowed anew, reaching his 
 ears as an accompaniment to the regular 
 dripping of the fog from the plantation 
 boughs around. 
 
 The topic at present handled was a highly 
 popular and frequent one — the personal cha- 
 racter of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the 
 surrounding woods and groves. 
 
 " My brother-in-law told me, and I have
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 59 
 
 no reason to doubt it," said Creedle, '' that 
 she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock 
 hardly higher than her elbows. ' Oh, you 
 wicked woman ! ' he said to himself when he 
 first see her, ' you go to your church, and sit, 
 and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased 
 with very saint's anointment, and tell off your 
 hear-us-good- Lords as pat as a business man 
 counting money ; and yet you can eat your 
 victuals such a fig^ure as that ! ' Whether 
 she's a reformed character by this time I 
 can't say ; but I don't care who the man is, 
 that's how she went on when my brother-in- 
 law lived there." 
 
 " Did she do it In her husband's time ? 
 
 "That I don't know — hardly, I should 
 
 think, considering his temper. Ah ! " 
 
 Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance 
 into physical form by slowly resigning his 
 head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. 
 " That man ! ' Not if the angels of heaven
 
 6o THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 come down, Creedle,' he said, 'shall you 
 do another day's work for me ! ' Yes — he 
 w^ould as soon take a winged creature's 
 name in vain as yours or mine ! Well, 
 now I must get these spars home-along, 
 and to-morrow, thank God, I must see 
 about using 'em." 
 
 An old woman now entered upon the 
 scene. She was Mr. Melbury's servant, 
 and passed a great part of her time in 
 crossing the yard between the house-door 
 and the spar-shed, whither she had come 
 now for fuel. She had two facial aspects — 
 one, of a soft and flexible kind, which she 
 used indoors ; the other, with stiff lines 
 and corners, which she assumed when 
 bustling among the men outside. 
 
 " Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, 
 "it do do my heart good to see a old 
 woman like you so dapper and stirring, 
 when I bear In mind that, after fifty, one
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 6r 
 
 year counts as two did afore ! But your 
 smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty 
 minutes past seven by my beater ; and 
 that's late, Grammer Oliver." 
 
 " If you was a full-sized man, John, I 
 might take notice of your scornful meanings. 
 But really a woman couldn't feel hurt if 
 such smallness were to spit fire and 
 brimstone itself at her. Here," she added, 
 holding out a spar-gad to one of the 
 workmen, from which dauQ^led a lona black- 
 pudding, " here's something for thy break- 
 fast, and if you want tea you must fetch 
 it from indoors." 
 
 " ^Ir. Melbury is late this morning," said 
 the bottom-sawyer, 
 
 "Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. 
 Oliver. " Even when I opened the door, 
 so late as I was, you couldn't have told 
 poor men from gentlemen, or John from a 
 reasonable-sized object. And I don't think
 
 62 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 malster's slept at all well to-night. He's 
 anxious about his daughter ; and I know 
 what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for 
 my own. ' 
 
 When the old woman had gone Creedle 
 said : — 
 
 '' He'll fret his heart green if he don't 
 soon hear from that rnaid of his. Well, 
 learninof Is better than houses and lands. 
 But to keep a maid at school till she is 
 taller out of pattens than her mother was 
 in 'em — 'tis tempting Providence." 
 
 "It seems no time ago that she was a 
 little playward girl," said young Timothy 
 Tangs. 
 
 '' I can mind her mother," said the hollow- 
 turner. " Alway a teuny, delicate piece ; her 
 touch upon your hand was as soft as wind. 
 She w^as inoculated for the small-pox and 
 had it beautifully fine, just about the time 
 that I was out of my apprenticeship — ay,
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 63 
 
 and a long apprenticeship 'twas. I served 
 that master of mine six years and three 
 hundred and fourteen days." 
 
 The hohow-turner pronounced the days 
 with emphasis, as if, considering their 
 number, they were a rather more remarkable 
 fact than the years. 
 
 *' Mr. Winterborne's father walked 
 with her at one time," said old Timothy 
 Tangs. ** But Mr. Melbury won her. She 
 was a child of a woman, and would cry like 
 rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she 
 and her husband came to a puddle in their 
 walks together he'd take her up like a half- 
 penny doll and put her over without dirting 
 her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter 
 so long at boarding school he'll make her 
 as nesh as her mother was. But here he 
 comes." 
 
 Just before this moment Winterborne had 
 seen Melbury crossing the court from his
 
 64 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 door. He was carrying an open letter in 
 his hand, and came straight to Winterborne. 
 His gloom of the preceding night had quite 
 gone. 
 
 " I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, 
 to go and see why Grace didn't come or 
 write than I get a letter from her — ' My dear 
 father,' says she, * I'm coming home to- 
 morrow (that's to-day), but I didn't think it 
 worth while to write long beforehand.' The 
 little rascal, and didn't she ! Now, Giles, as 
 you are going to Sherton market to-day 
 with your apple-trees, w^hy not join me 
 and Grace there, and we'll drive home all 
 together ? " 
 
 He made the proposal with cheerful 
 energy ; he was hardly the same man as the 
 man of the small dark hours. Even among 
 the moodiest, the tendency to hit cheered 
 is stronger than the tendency to be cast 
 down ; and a soul's specific gravity stands
 
 IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 65 
 
 permanently less than that of the sea of 
 troubles into which it is thrown. 
 
 Winterborne, though not demonstrative, 
 replied to this suggestion with alacrity. 
 There was not much doubt that ]\Iarty's 
 grounds for cutting off her hair were substan- 
 tial enough, if this man's eyes had been a 
 reason for keeping it on. As for the timber- 
 merchant, it was plain that his invitation had 
 been given solely in pursuance of his scheme 
 for uniting the pair. He had made up his 
 mind to the course as a duty, and was 
 strenuously bent upon following it out. 
 
 Accompanied by Winterborne he now- 
 turned towards the door of the spar-house, 
 when his footsteps were heard by the men 
 as aforesaid. 
 
 "Well, John, and Robert," he said, 
 noddino^, as he entered. " A rimv morninor." 
 
 " 'Tis, sir/' said Creedle, energetically, for 
 not having as yet been able to summon 
 
 VOL. I. • F
 
 66 THE WOOD LANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 force sufficient to go away and begin work 
 he felt the necessity of throwing some into 
 his speech. " I don't care who the man is, 
 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this 
 falh" 
 
 " I heard you wondering why I've kept 
 my daughter so long at boarding-school," 
 resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the 
 letter which he was reading anew by the 
 fire, and turning to them with the sudden- 
 ness that w^as a trait in him. " Hey.^" he 
 asked with affected shrewdness. " But you 
 did, you know\ Well now, though it is my 
 own business more than anybody else's, I'll 
 tell ye. When I w^as a boy another boy — 
 the pa'son's son — along with a lot of others, 
 asked me, ' Who dragged Whom round the 
 walls of What ? ' and I said, * Sam Barrett, 
 who draeeed his w^ife in a chair round the 
 tower when she went to be churched.' They 
 laughed at me so much that I went home
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 67 
 
 ashamed, and couldn't sleep for shame ; and 
 I cried that night till my pillow was wet ; 
 till I thought to myself — ' They may laugh at 
 me for my ignorance, but that was father's 
 fault, and none o" my making, and I must 
 bear it. But they shall never laugh at my 
 children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' 
 Thank God I've been able to keep her at 
 school at the figure of near a hundred a year ; 
 and her scholarship is such that she has 
 stayed on as governess for a time. Let 'em 
 laugh now if they can : Mrs. Charmond 
 herself is not better informed than my girl 
 Grace." 
 
 There was something between high In- 
 difference and humble emotion in his delivery, 
 which made it difficult for them to reply. 
 WInterborne's interest was of a kind which 
 did not show itself in words ; listening, he 
 stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the 
 embers with a spar-gad. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 ''You'll be, then, ready, Giles ?" Melbury 
 continued, avvaklne from a reverie. " Well, 
 what was the latest news at Shottsford 
 yesterday, Mr. Cawtree ? " 
 
 '' Oh, well, Shottsford Is Shottsford still 
 — you can't victual your carcase there unless 
 you've got money ; and you can't buy a cup 
 of genuine there, whether or no. . . . But as 
 the saying Is * Go abroad and you'll hear 
 news of home.' It seems that our new 
 nelehbour, this younof Doctor What's-his- 
 name, Is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman ; 
 and there's good reason for supposing he has 
 sold his soul to the wicked one." 
 
 " 'Od name It all," murmured the timber- 
 merchant, unimpressed by the news, but re- 
 minded of other things by the subject of it ; 
 " I've got to meet a gentleman this very 
 morning, and yet I've planned to go to 
 Sherton Abbas for the maid." 
 
 " I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 69 
 
 I hear what sort of bargain he's made," 
 said the top-sawyer. 
 
 " 'Tis only an old woman's tale," said 
 Cawtree. " But it seems that he wanted 
 certain books on some mysterious black art. 
 and in order that the people hereabout should 
 not know anything about them, he ordered 
 'em direct from London, and not from the 
 Sherton bookseller. The parcel was delivered 
 by mistake at the pa'son's, and as he wasn't 
 at hom^e his wife opened it, and went into 
 hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her 
 husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be 
 the ruin of the children. But when he came 
 he knew no more about *em than she ; and 
 found they were this Mr. Fitzpiers's property. 
 So he wrote ' Beware ! ' outside, and sent 
 'em on by the sexton." 
 
 *' He must be a curious young man,"' 
 mused the hollow-turner. 
 
 " He must," said Timothy Tangs.
 
 70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authorita- 
 tively, " he's only a gentleman fond of science, 
 and philosophy, and poetry, and, in fact, 
 every kind of knowledge ; and being lonely 
 here he passes his time in making such 
 matters his hobby." 
 
 " Well," said old Timothy, " 'tis a strange 
 thing about doctors that the worse they be 
 the better they be. I mean that if you hear 
 anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one 
 they can cure ye as nobody else can." 
 
 ** True," said Cawtree, emphatically. ''And 
 for my part I shall take my custom from old 
 Jones and go to this one directly I've any- 
 thing the matter inside me. That last 
 medicine old Jones gave me had no taste 
 in it at all." 
 
 Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed 
 man, did not listen to these recitals, being, 
 moreover, preoccupied with the business 
 appointment which had come into his head.
 
 IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 
 
 He walked up and down, looking on the 
 floor — his usual custom when undecided. 
 That stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee- 
 joint, which was apparent when he walked, 
 was the net product of the divers sprains and 
 over-exertions that had been required of him 
 in handling trees and timber when a young 
 man, for he was of the sort called self-made, 
 and had worked hard. He knew the origin 
 of every one of these cramps ; that in his left 
 shoulder had come of carrying a pollard, 
 unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home ; 
 that in one leg was caused by the crash of 
 an elm ao^ainst it when thev were fellinor ; 
 that in the other was from lifting a bole. On 
 many a morrow after wearvincr himself bv 
 these prodigious muscular eftbrts, he had 
 risen from his bed fresh as usual ; and 
 confident in the recuperative power of his 
 youth, he had repeated the strains anew. 
 But treacherous Time had been onlv hidinqr
 
 72 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 ill results when they could be guarded 
 against, for greater effect when they could 
 not. Now in his declining years the store 
 had been unfolded in the form of rheuma- 
 tisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of 
 which Melbury recognised some act, which, 
 had its consequence been contemporaneously 
 made known, he would wisely have abstained 
 from repeating. 
 
 On a summons by Grammer Oliver to 
 breakfast he went to the kitchen, where 
 the family breakfasted in winter to save 
 house-labour ; and sitting down by the fire 
 looked a long time at the pair of dancing , 
 shadows cast by each fire-Iron and dog- 
 knob on the whitewashed chimney-corner 
 — a yellow one from the window, and a 
 blue one from the fire. 
 
 '' I don't quite know what to do to-day," 
 he said to his wife at last. *' IVe recollected 
 that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's
 
 IV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 73 
 
 Steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock, 
 and yet I want to go for Grace." 
 
 '* Why not let Giles fetch her by himself ? 
 'Twill bring 'em together all the quicker." 
 
 " I could do that — but I always have 
 gone, without fail, every time hitherto, 
 and perhaps she'll be disappointed if 1 
 stay away." 
 
 " You may be disappointed, but I don't 
 think she will, if you send Giles," said 
 Mrs. Melbury drily. 
 
 '' Very well — I'll send him." 
 
 Melbury was often persuaded by the 
 quietude of his wife's words when strenuous 
 argument would have had no effect. This 
 second Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman, 
 who had been nurse to his child Grace 
 after her mother's death. Little Grace 
 had clung to the nurse with much affection ; 
 and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the 
 only w^oman who cared for the girl should
 
 74 THE WOODLANDERS. chap 
 
 be induced to leave her, persuaded the 
 mild Lucy to marry him. The arrange- 
 ment — for it was little more — had worked 
 satisfactorily enough ; Grace had thriven, 
 and IMelbury had not repented. 
 
 He returned to the spar-house and found 
 Giles near at hand, to w^iom he explained 
 the change of plan, " As she won't arrive 
 till five o'clock, you can get your busi- 
 ness very w^ell over in time to receive her," 
 said Melbury. "The green gig will do for 
 her ; you'll spin along quicker with that, and 
 Avon't be late upon the road. Her boxes can 
 be called for by one of the waggons." 
 
 Winterborne, knowinor nothinof of the 
 timber-merchant's restitutory aims, quietly 
 thought all this to be a kindly chance. 
 Wishing, even more than her father, to 
 despatch his apple-tree business in the 
 market before Grace's arrival, he prepared 
 to start at once. 
 
 i
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. 75 
 
 Melbury was careful that the turn-out 
 should be seemly. The gig-wheels, for 
 instance, were not always washed during 
 winter-time before a journey, the muddy 
 roads rendering that labour useless ; but 
 they were washed to-day. The harness 
 was blacked, and when the grey horse had 
 been put in, and Winterborne was in his 
 seat ready to start, Mr. ^Nlelbury stepped 
 out with a blacking-brush and with his 
 own hands touched over the yellow hoofs 
 of the animal. 
 
 "You see, Giles," he said as he blacked, 
 " coming from a fashionable school she 
 mieht feel shocked at the homeliness of 
 home ; and 'tis these little things that catch 
 a dainty woman's eye if they are neglected. 
 We, living here alone, don't notice how 
 the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth 
 over us ; but she, fresh from a city — why, 
 she'll notice everything ! "
 
 76 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " That she will," said Giles. 
 
 " And scorn us if we don't mind." 
 
 " Not scorn us." 
 
 *' No, no, no — that's only words. She's 
 too good a girl to do that. But when we 
 consider what she knows, and what she 
 has seen since she last saw us, 'tis as 
 well to meet her views. Why, 'tis a year 
 since she was in this old place, owing to 
 her going abroad in the summer ; and 
 naturally we shall look small, just at first 
 — I only say just at first." 
 
 Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain 
 exultation in the very sense of that inferior- 
 ity he affected to deplore ; for this advanced 
 and refined being, was she not his own all 
 the time ? Not so Giles ; he felt doubtful. 
 He looked at his clothes with misgiving ; 
 but said nothing. 
 
 It was his custom during the planting 
 season to carry a specimen apple-tree to
 
 IV. THE WOODLANDERS. ^^ 
 
 market with him as an advertisement ot 
 what he dealt in. This had been tied across 
 the gig ; and mounting in front he drove 
 away, the twigs nodding with each step 
 of the horse. Melbury went indoors. 
 Before the gig had passed out of sight 
 Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted after — 
 
 "Here, Giles," he said, breathlessly follow- 
 ing with some wraps, " it may be very chilly 
 to-night, and she may want something extra 
 about her. And Giles," he added, when 
 the young man put the horse in motion 
 once more ; '' tell her that I should have 
 come myself, but I had particular business 
 with Mrs. Charmond's agent which pre 
 vented me. Don't forget." 
 
 He watched Winterborne out of sight 
 under the boughs, where cobwebs glistened 
 in the now clearing air, lengthening and 
 shortening their shine like elastic needles ; 
 he saw the woodpigeons rise as Giles drove
 
 78 THE VVOODLANDERS. CH. iv. 
 
 past them ; and said to himself with a jerk 
 — a shape into which emotion with him 
 often resolved itself — " There now, I hope 
 the two will bring it to a point, and have 
 done w^ith It ! 'TIs a pity to let such a 
 girl throw herself away upon him — a 
 thousand pities ! . . . And yet 'tis my duty, 
 for his father's sake."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WiNTERBORNE Sped OH his way to Sherton 
 Abbas without elation and without discom- 
 posure. Had he regarded his inner self 
 spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more 
 wont to do, he might have felt pride in 
 the discernment of a somewhat rare power 
 in him — that of keeping not only judgment 
 but emotion suspended in difficult cases. 
 But he noted it not. 
 
 Arrived at the entrance to a long flat 
 lane, which had taken the spirit out of 
 many a pedestrian in times when, with the 
 majority, to travel meant to walk, he saw
 
 8o THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 before him the trim figure of a young 
 woman In pattens, journeying with that 
 steadfast concentration which means purpose 
 and not pleasure. He was soon near enough 
 to see that she was Marty South. CHck, 
 click, cHck, went the pattens ; and she did 
 not turn her head. 
 
 Yet she had seen him, and shrank from 
 being overtaken by him thus ; but as It 
 was Inevitable, she braced herself up for 
 his Inspection by closing her lips so as to 
 make her mouth quite unemotional, and by 
 throwing an additional firmness into her 
 tread. 
 
 " Why do you wear pattens, Marty ? The 
 turnpike Is clean enough although the lanes 
 are muddy." 
 
 ** They save my boots." 
 
 ''But twelve miles In pattens— -'twill twist 
 your feet off. Come, get up and ride with 
 me." 
 
 I
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 8i 
 
 She hesitated, removed her pattens, 
 knocked the gravel out of them against the 
 wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding 
 specimen apple tree. She had so arranged 
 her bonnet with a full border and trimmings 
 that her lack of lone hair did not much 
 injure her appearance ; though Giles of 
 course saw that it was gone, and may have 
 guessed her motive in parting with it, such 
 sales though infrequent being not unheard 
 of in that locality. 
 
 But nature's adornment was still hard by, 
 in fact, within two feet of him. In Marty's 
 basket was a brown-paper packet, and in 
 the packet the chestnut locks, which, by 
 reason of the barber's request for secrecy, 
 she had not ventured to intrust to other 
 hands. 
 
 Giles asked, with some hesitation, how 
 her father was getting on. 
 
 He was better, she said ; he would be 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 able to work in a day or two ; he would 
 be quite well but for his craze about the 
 tree falling on him. 
 
 " You know why I don't ask for him so 
 often as I might, I suppose ? " said Winter- 
 borne. " Or don't you know ? " 
 - I think I do." 
 " Because of the houses ? " 
 She nodded. 
 
 '' Yes. 1 am afraid it may seem that my 
 anxiety is about those houses which I should 
 lose by his death, more than about him. 
 Marty, I do feel anxious about the houses, 
 since half my Income depends upon them ; 
 but I do likewise care for him ; and it almost 
 seems wrong that houses should be leased 
 for lives, so as to lead to such mixed 
 feelings." 
 
 " After father's death they will be Mrs. 
 Charmond's ?" 
 
 " They'll be hers."
 
 V. THE WOODLAXDERS. 83 
 
 " They are going to keep company with 
 my hair," she thought. 
 
 Thus talking they reached the town. By 
 no pressure would she ride up the street 
 with him. "That's the rieht of another 
 woman," she said with playful malice as 
 she put on her pattens. '' I wonder what 
 you are thinking of I Thank you for the 
 lift in that handsome gig. Good-bye." 
 
 He blushed a little, shook his head at 
 her, and drove on ahead into the streets ; 
 the churches, the abbey, and other buildings 
 on this clear bright morning having the 
 linear distinctness of architectural drawings, 
 as if the original dream and vision of the 
 conceiving master-mason were for a few 
 minutes flashed down through the centuries 
 to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their 
 eloquent look on this day of transparency, 
 but could not construe it. He turned into 
 the inn- yard. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Marty, followincy the same track, marched 
 promptly to the hairdresser's. Percomb was 
 the chief of his trade in Sherton Abbas. 
 He had the patronage of such county off- 
 shoots as had been obHged to seek the 
 shelter of small houses in that ancient town, 
 of the local clergy, and so on ; for some 
 of whom he had made wigs, while others 
 among them had compensated for neglecting 
 him in their lifetime by patronising him 
 when they were dead, and letting him shave 
 their corpses. On the strength of all this 
 he had taken down his pole, and called 
 himself " Perruquier to the aristocracy." 
 
 Nevertheless this sort of support did not 
 quite fill his children's mouths, and they 
 had to be filled. So behind his house there 
 was a little yard reached by a passage from 
 the back street, and In that yard was a pole, 
 and under the pole a shop of quite another 
 description than the ornamental one In the
 
 V. THE WOODLAXDERS. ^s 
 
 front Street. Here on Saturday nights from 
 seven till ten he took an almost innumerable 
 succession of twopences from the farm- 
 labourers who flocked thither in crowds from 
 the country. And thus he lived. 
 
 Marty, of course, went to the front shop, 
 and handed her packet to him silently. 
 
 " Thank you," said the barber quite 
 joyfully. " I hardly expected it after what 
 you said last night." 
 
 She turned aside, while a tear welled up 
 and stood in each eye at this reminder. 
 
 *' Nothing of what I told you," he whis- 
 pered. '' But I can trust you, I see." 
 
 She had now reached the end of this 
 distressing business ; and went listlessly 
 alono: the street to attend to other errands. 
 These occupied her till four o'clock, at which 
 time she re-crossed the market-place. It 
 was impossible to avoid re-discovering 
 Winterborne every time she passed that
 
 86 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 way, for standing, as he always did at this 
 season of the year, with his specimen apple- 
 tree in the midst, the boughs rose above 
 the heads of the farmers, and brought a 
 delightful suggestion of orchards into the 
 heart of the town. 
 
 When her eye fell upon him for the last 
 time he was standing somewhat apart, hold- 
 ing the tree like an ensign, and looking on 
 the ground Instead of pushing his produce 
 as he ouofht to have been doin^. He was, 
 in fact, not a very successful seller either of 
 his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking 
 his mind when he spoke at all militating 
 against this branch of his business. 
 
 While she regarded him he lifted his eyes 
 In a direction away from Marty, and his face 
 kindled with recognition and surprise. She 
 followed his gaze, and saw walking across 
 to him a flexible young creature in whom 
 she perceived the features of her she had
 
 V. THE WOODLANDERS. Sj 
 
 known as Miss Grace ]Melbury, but now 
 looking glorified and refined to much above 
 her former level. W'interborne, being fixed 
 to the spot by his apple-tree, could not 
 advance to meet her : he held out his spare 
 hand with his hat in it, and with some em- 
 barrassment beheld her coming on tip-toe 
 through the mud to the middle of the square 
 where he stood. 
 
 Miss Melbury, as ]\Iarty could see, had 
 not been expected by Giles so early. In- 
 deed, her father had named five o'clock as 
 her probable time, for which reason that 
 hour had been loomino: out all the dav in 
 his forward perspective, like an important 
 edifice on a dull plain. Now here she was 
 come, he knew not how, and his arranged 
 welcome stultified. 
 
 His face became gloomy at her necessity 
 for stepping into the road, and more still at 
 the little look of embarrassment she showed
 
 8S THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 at having to perform the meeting with him 
 under an apple-tree ten feet high in the 
 middle of the market-place. Having had 
 occasion to take off the new gloves she had 
 bought to come home in, she held out to 
 him a hand graduating from pink at the tips 
 of the fingers to white at the palm ; and the 
 reception formed a scene, with the tree over 
 their heads, W'hich was not by any means an 
 ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets. 
 
 Nevertheless the greeting in her looks and 
 on her lips had a restrained shape, which 
 perhaps was not unnatural. For true it w^as 
 that Giles Winterborne, though well-attired 
 and w^ell-mannered for a yeoman, looked 
 rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly 
 occurred to him, in his ruminating silences 
 at Little Hintock, that external phenomena 
 — such as the lowness or height or colour of 
 a hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a 
 boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of
 
 V. THE WOODLANDERS. 89 
 
 a limb at the instant of view — may have a 
 great influence upon feminine opinion of a 
 man's worth, so frequently founded on non- 
 essentials ; but a certain causticity of mental 
 tone towards himself and the world in 
 general had prevented to-day, as always, 
 any enthusiastic action on the strength of 
 that reflection, and her momentary instinct 
 of reserve at first si^rht of him was the 
 penalty he paid for his laxness. 
 
 He gave away the tree to a bystander, as 
 soon as he could find one who would accept 
 the cumbersome mit and the twain moved 
 on towards the inn at which he had put up. 
 Marty made as if to step forward for the 
 pleasure of being recognised by ]\Iiss Mcl- 
 bury ; but abruptly checking herself she 
 glided behind a carrier's van, saying dryly, 
 "No; I baint wanted there;" and critically 
 regarded Winterborne's companion. 
 
 It would have been very difficult to describe
 
 90 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Grace Melbury with precision, either then or 
 at any time. Nay, from the highest point of 
 view, to precisely describe a human being, 
 the focus of a universe, how impossible ! 
 But, apart from transcendentalism, there 
 never probably lived a person who was in 
 herself more completely a rediictio ad ab- 
 surdum of attempts to appraise a woman, 
 even externally, by items of face and figure. 
 
 Speaking generally, it may be said that 
 she was sometimes beautiful, at other times 
 not beautiful, according to the state of her 
 health and spirits. 
 
 In simple corporeal presentment she was 
 of a fair and clear complexion, rather pale 
 than pink, slim in build and elastic in move- 
 ment. Her look expressed a tendency to 
 wait for others' thoughts before uttering her 
 own : possibly also to wait for others' deeds 
 before her own doing. In her small, delicate 
 mouth, which had hardly settled down to its 
 
 i
 
 V. THE WO CD LANDERS. 91 
 
 matured curves, there was a gentleness that 
 mieht hinder sufficient self-assertion for her 
 own good. She had well-formed eyebrows 
 which, had her portrait been painted, would 
 probably have been done in Prout's or 
 Vandyke brown. 
 
 There was nothinof remarkable in her 
 dress just now, beyond a natural fitness, and 
 a style that was recent for the streets of 
 Sherton. But, had it been the reverse, and 
 quite striking, it would have meant just as 
 little. For there can be hardlv anvthinc;: less 
 connected with a woman's personality than 
 drapery which she has neither designed, 
 manufactured, cut, sewed, nor even seen, 
 except by a glance of approval when told 
 that such and such a shape and colour must 
 be had because it has been decided by others 
 as imperative at that particular time. 
 
 What people therefore saw of her in a 
 cursory view was very little ; in truth, mainly
 
 92 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 something that was not she. The woman 
 herself w^as a shadowy conjectural creature 
 who had little to do with the outlines pre- 
 sented to Sherton eyes : a shape in the 
 gloom, whose true quality could only be 
 approximated by putting together a move- 
 ment now and a glance then, in that patient 
 attention w^hich nothinor but w^atchful lovine- 
 kindness ever troubles to give. 
 
 There was a little delay in their setting 
 out from the town, and Marty South took 
 advantage of it to hasten forward, wdth the 
 view of escaping them on the way, lest they 
 should feel compelled to spoil their tete-a-tete 
 by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and 
 one-third of the journey was done, and the 
 evening rapidly darkening, before she per- 
 ceived any sign of them behind her. Then, 
 while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their 
 vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the
 
 V. THE WOODLANDERS. 93 
 
 incline, their heads sHghtly bent towards 
 each other, drawn together, no doubt, by 
 their souls ; as the heads of a pair of horses 
 well in hand are drawn in by the rein. She 
 walked still faster. 
 
 But between these and herself there was a 
 carriage, apparently a brougham, coming in 
 the same direction, with lighted lamps. 
 When it overtook her — which was not soon 
 on account of her pace — the scene was much 
 darker, and the lights glared in her eyes 
 sufficiently to hide the details of the 
 equipage. 
 
 It occurred to Marty that she might take 
 hold behind this carriage and so keep along 
 with it, to save herself from the patronage of 
 being overtaken and picked up for pity's 
 sake by the coming pair. Accordingly, as 
 the carriage drew abreast of her in climbinof 
 the long ascent, she walked close to the 
 wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp pene-
 
 94 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 trating her very pores. She had only just 
 dropped behind when the carriage stopped, 
 and to her surprise the coachman asked her, 
 over his shoulder, If she would ride. What 
 made the question more surprising was that 
 it came in obedience to an order from the 
 interior of the vehicle. 
 
 Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, 
 very weary, after working all night and 
 keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside 
 the coachman, wondering why this good 
 fortune had happened to her. He was rather 
 a great man in aspect, and she did not like 
 to inquire of him for some time. 
 
 At last she said, " Who has been so kind 
 as to ask me to ride ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Charmond,'' replied her statuesque 
 companion. 
 
 Marty was stirred at the name, so closely 
 connected with her last night's experiences. 
 "Is this her carriage ? " she whispered. 
 
 i
 
 V. THE WOODLANDERS. 95 
 
 " Yes ; she's Inside." 
 
 Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. 
 Charmond must have recognised her plodding 
 up the hill under the blaze of the lamp ; re- 
 cognised, probably, her stubbly poll (since she 
 had kept away her face), and thought that those 
 stubbles were the result of her own desire. 
 
 Marty South was not so very far wrong. 
 Inside the carriage a pair of bright eyes 
 looked from a ripe handsome face, and 
 though behind those bright eyes was a mind 
 of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there 
 beat a heart capable of quick, extempore 
 warmth — a heart which could indeed be 
 passionately and imprudently warm on cer- 
 tain occasions. At present, after recognising 
 the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, 
 possibly feeling gratified at the denuded 
 appearance which signified the success of her 
 agent in obtaining what she had required. 
 " 'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,"
 
 96 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 observed the magisterial coachman presently. 
 '' I have never known her do it before, for 
 as a rule she takes no interest in the village 
 folk at all." 
 
 Marty said no more, but occasionally 
 turned her head to see if she could get a 
 glimpse of the Olympian creature who, as 
 the coachman had truly observed, hardly 
 ever descended from her clouds into the 
 Tempe-vale of the parishioners. But she 
 could discern nothing of the lady. She 
 also looked for Miss Melbury and Winter- 
 borne. The nose of their horse sometimes 
 came quite near the back of Mrs. Char- 
 mond's carriage. But they never attempted 
 to pass it till the latter conveyance turned 
 towards the park gate, when they sped by. 
 Here the carriage drew up that the gate 
 might be opened ; and in the momentary 
 silence Marty heard a gentle oral sound, 
 soft as a breeze.
 
 V. THE WOODLAXDERS. 97 
 
 " What's that ?" she whispered. 
 
 '' Mis'ess yawning." 
 
 " Why should she yawn ? " 
 
 " Oh, because she's been used to such 
 wonderful good life, and finds It dull here. 
 She'll soon be off acrain on account of It." 
 
 " So rich and so powerful, and yet to 
 yawn ! " the girl murmured. " Then things 
 don't fay with she any more than with we ! " 
 
 Marty now alighted ; the lamp again 
 shone upon her, and as the carriage rolled 
 on, a voice said to her from the Interior, 
 '* Good niorht." 
 
 '* Good night, ma'am," said Marty. But 
 she had not been able to see the woman 
 who began so greatly to Interest her — the 
 second person of her own sex who had 
 operated strongly on her mind that day. 
 
 VOL. L H
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Meanwhile Winterborne and Grace 
 INIelbury had also undergone their httle 
 experiences. 
 
 As he drove off with her out of the town 
 the glances of people fell upon them, the 
 younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne 
 was in a pleasant place, and wondering 
 in what relation he stood towards her. 
 Winterborne himself was unconscious of 
 this. Occupied solely with the idea of 
 having her in charge, he did not notice 
 much with outward eye. 
 
 Their conversation was In briefest phrase
 
 CH. VI. THE WOODLAx\DERS. 99 
 
 for some time, Grace being somewhat dis- 
 concerted, throuirh not havinor understood 
 till they were about to start that Giles was 
 to be her sole conductor, in place of her 
 father. AMien they were in the open 
 country he spoke. 
 
 '' Don't Brownlev's farm-buildinors look 
 strange to you, now they have been moved 
 bodily from the hollow where the old ones 
 stood to the top of the hill ? " 
 
 She admitted that they did, though she 
 should not have seen any difference in them 
 if he had not pointed It out. 
 
 '' They had a good crop of bitter-sweets, 
 they couldn't grind them all " — nodding 
 towards an orchard where some heaps of 
 apples had been left lying ever since the 
 
 inoratherlne. 
 
 She said "Yes," but looking at another 
 orchard. 
 
 " Why, you are looking at John-apple- 
 
 II 2
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 trees ! You know bitter-sweets — you used 
 to well enoucrh ? " 
 
 o 
 
 " I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is 
 Qfettine too dark to distinofuish." 
 
 Winterborne did not continue. It seemed 
 as if the knowledo^e and interests which 
 had formerly moved Grace's mind had 
 quite died away from her. He wondered 
 whether the special attributes of his image 
 in the past had evaporated like these other 
 things. 
 
 However that might be, the fact at 
 present was merely this, that where he was 
 seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she 
 was beholdinor a much contrastin^r scene : a 
 broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a 
 fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in 
 the evening sun, amid which bounding 
 girls, gracefully clad in artistic arrange- 
 ments of blue, brown, red, and white, were 
 playing at games, with laughter and chat,
 
 VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. loi 
 
 in all the pride of life, the notes of piano 
 and harp trembling in the air from the 
 open windows adjoining. ^Moreover they 
 were girls — and this was a fact which Grace 
 IVIelbury's delicate femininity could not 
 lose sight of — whose parents Giles would 
 have addressed with a deferential Sir or 
 Madam. Beside this visioned scene the 
 homely farmsteads did not quite hold their 
 own from her present twenty-year point 
 of survey. For all his woodland sequestra- 
 tion Giles knew the primitive simplicity of 
 the subject he had started, and now sounded 
 a deeper note. 
 
 *' 'Twas very odd what we said to each 
 other vears cl^zo ; I often think of it. I 
 mean our savincr that if we still liked each 
 other when you were twenty and I twenty- 
 five, we'd " 
 
 " It was child's tattle." 
 
 " }Vm ?" said Giles suddenly.
 
 I02 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " I mean we were young," said she more 
 considerately. That abrupt manner of his 
 in making inquiries reminded her that he 
 was unaltered. 
 
 ''Yes ... I beg your pardon, Miss 
 Melbury ; your father sent me to meet you 
 to-day." 
 
 " I know it, and I am glad of it." And 
 she looked at him affectionately. 
 
 He seemed satisfied with her and went 
 on — ''At that time you were sitting beside 
 me at the back of your father's covered 
 car, when we were coming home from 
 gipsying, all the party being squeezed in 
 together as tight as sheep in an auction- 
 pen. It got darker and darker, and I 
 said — I forget the exact words — but I put 
 my arm round your waist, and there you 
 let it stay till your father, sitting in front, 
 suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer 
 Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone
 
 VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 103 
 
 into the car, and showed us all up distinctly ; 
 my arm flew from your waist like lightning, 
 yet not so quickly but that some of 'em 
 had seen, and lauc^hed at us. Yet vour 
 father, to our amazement, instead of being 
 angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite 
 pleased. Have you forgot all that, or 
 haven't you ? " 
 
 She owned that she remembered it very 
 well, now that he mentioned the circum- 
 stances. '' But I must have been in short 
 frocks/' she said slily. 
 
 '' Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't 
 do ! Short frocks Indeed ! You know 
 better as well as I." 
 
 Grace thereupon declared that she would 
 not areue with an old friend she valued so 
 highly as she valued him, but if It were 
 as he said, then she was virtually no less 
 than an old woman now, so far did the 
 time seem removed from her present.
 
 104 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " But old feelings come to life again in 
 some people," she added softly. 
 
 ''And in others they have never died!" 
 said he. 
 
 "Ah — they are Love's very oiunest and 
 best, I suppose ! I don't pretend to rank 
 so high as they." 
 
 '' It's not a they — it's a he." 
 
 Grace sighed. 
 
 " Shall I tell you all about Bath or 
 Cheltenham, or places on the Continent 
 that I visited last summer ? " she said. 
 
 "With all my heart." 
 
 She then described places and persons, 
 avoiding, however, what he most wished 
 to hear — everything specially appertaining 
 to her own existence. When she had 
 done she said gaily, " Now do you tell 
 me in return what has happened in Hintock 
 since I have been aw^ay." 
 
 " Anything to keep the conversation
 
 VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 105 
 
 away from her and me," said Giles within 
 him. 
 
 It was true ; cultivation had so far ad- 
 vanced in the soil of !Miss Melbury"s mind 
 as to lead her to talk of anything save of 
 that she knew well, and had the greatest 
 interest in developing — herself She had 
 fallen from the orood old Hintock wavs. 
 
 He had not proceeded far with his some- 
 what bald narration when they drew near 
 a carriage that had been preceding them 
 for some time in the dusk. ?^Iiss ]\Ielbury 
 inquired if he knew whose carriage it was. 
 
 Winterborne, although he had seen it, 
 had not taken it into account. On ex- 
 amination he said it was Mrs. Charmond's. 
 
 Grace watched the vehicle and its easy 
 roll, and seemed to feel more nearly akin 
 to it than to the one she was in. 
 
 '' Pooh — we can polish off the mileage 
 as well as they, come to that," said Winter-
 
 io6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 borne, reading her mind ; and rising to 
 emulation at what it bespoke he whipped 
 on the horse. This it was which had 
 brought the nose of Mr. IMelbury's old 
 grey close to the back of ^Irs. Charmond's 
 much eclipsing vehicle. 
 
 " There's Marty South sitting up with 
 the coachman," said he, discerning her by 
 her dress. 
 
 ''Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to 
 come to see me this very evening. How 
 does she happen to be riding there ? " 
 
 " I don't know. It is very singular." 
 
 Thus these people with converging des- 
 tinies went along the road together, till 
 Winterborne, leaving the track of the 
 carriage, turned into Little Hintock, where 
 almost the first house was the timber- 
 merchant's. Pencils of light streamed out 
 of the windows sufficiently to show the 
 white laurestinus flowers, and glance against
 
 VT. THE WOODLAXDERS. 107 
 
 the polished leaves of laurel. The Interior 
 of the rooms could be seen distinctly, 
 warmed up by the fire-flames, which in 
 the parlour were reflected from the pictures 
 and book-case, and in the kitchen from 
 the utensils and ware. 
 
 " Let us look at the dear place for a 
 moment before we call them," she said. 
 
 In the kitchen dinner was preparing ; 
 for thouQ^h Melburv dined at one o'clock 
 at other times, to-day the meal had been 
 kept back for Grace. A rickety old spit 
 was In motion, its end being- fixed in the 
 fire-dog, and the whole kept going by 
 means of a cord conveyed over pulleys 
 along the ceiling to a large stone suspended 
 in a corner of the room. Old Grammer 
 Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle 
 like that of a mill. 
 
 In the parlour a colossal shade of Mrs. 
 Melburv's head fell on the wall and ceiling ;
 
 io8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 but before the irlrl had regarded this room 
 many moments their presence was dis- 
 covered, and her father and stepmother 
 came out to welcome her. 
 
 The character of the ?ylelbury family was 
 of that kind which evinces some shyness 
 in showing strong" emotion among each 
 other ; a trait frequent in rural households, 
 and one curiously inverse to most of the 
 peculiarities distinguishing villagers from 
 the people of towns. Thus hiding 
 their warmer feelings under commonplace 
 talk all round, Grace's reception produced 
 no extraordinary demonstrations. But that 
 more was felt than was enacted appeared 
 from the fact that her father, in takin^r 
 her indoors, quite forgot the presence of 
 Giles without, as did also Grace herself. 
 
 He said nothino^ • but took the £!;ior round 
 to the yard and called out from the spar- 
 house the man who attended to these
 
 VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 109 
 
 matters, when there was no conversation 
 among the spar-makers to particularly en- 
 gage him. WInterborne then returned to 
 the door with the Intention of entering the 
 house. 
 
 The family had gone Into the parlour, 
 and were still absorbed In themselves. The 
 fire w^as as before the only light, and It 
 Irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to 
 make them look wondrously smooth and 
 fair beside those of the two elders ; shining 
 also through the loose hair about her 
 temples as sunlight through a brake. Her 
 father was surveying her in a dazed con- 
 jecture, so much had she developed and 
 progressed In manner and stature since he 
 last had set eyes on her. 
 
 Observinor these thincrs WInterborne re- 
 malned dubious by the door, mechanically 
 tracing with his fingers certain time-worn 
 letters carved In the jambs, — initials of
 
 no THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 bygone generations of householders who 
 had Hved and died there. 
 
 No, he declared to himself, he would 
 not enter and join the family ; they had 
 forgotten him, and it was enough for to- 
 day that he had brought her home. Still, 
 he was a little surprised that her father's 
 eaeerness to send him for Grace should 
 have resulted in such indifference as this. 
 
 He walked softly aw^ay into the lane 
 towards his own house, looking back when 
 he reached the turning, from which he 
 could get a last glimpse of the timber- 
 merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as 
 to what Grace was saying just at that 
 moment, and murmured with some self- 
 derision, " nothing about me!" He looked 
 also in the other direction, and saw against 
 the sky the thatched hip and solitary 
 chimney of Marty's cottage, and thought 
 of her too, struggling bravely along under
 
 VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. in 
 
 that humble shelter, among her spar-gads 
 and pots and skimmers. 
 
 At the timber-merchant's, in the mean- 
 time, conversation flowed ; and as Giles 
 Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, 
 on subjects in which he had no share. 
 AmoncT the excluding- matters there was, 
 as chief, the effect upon ]\Ir. Melbury of 
 the womanly mien and manners of his 
 daughter, which took him so much unawares 
 that it thrust the image of her conductor 
 homeward back into quite the obscurest 
 cellarage of his brain. 
 
 Another was his interview with Mrs. 
 Charmond's agent that morning, at which 
 the lady herself had been present for a 
 few minutes. Melbury had purchased some 
 standincT timber from her a lon£{ time 
 before, and now that the date had come 
 for felling it he was left to pursue almost
 
 112 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 his own course. This was what the house- 
 hold were actually talking of during Giles's 
 cogitation without. 
 
 '' So thoroughly does she trust me," 
 said Melbury, " that I might fell, top, or 
 lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' 
 timber whatever In her wood, and fix the 
 price o't, and settle the matter. But name 
 It all, I wouldn't do such a thing. How- 
 ever, it may be useful to have this good 
 understanding with her. ... I wish she 
 took more Interest In the place, and stayed 
 here all the year round." 
 
 " I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, 
 but her dislike o( Hintock, that makes 
 her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. 
 Melbury. 
 
 When dinner w^as over, Grace took a 
 candle and began to ramble pleasurably 
 through the rooms of her old home, from 
 which she had latterly become well-nigh
 
 VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 113 
 
 an alien. Each nook and each object revived 
 a memory, and simultaneously modified it. 
 The chambers seemed lower than they had 
 appeared on any previous occasion of her 
 return, the surfaces of both walls and 
 ceilings standing in such near relations to 
 the eye that it could not avoid taking 
 microscopic note of their irregularities and 
 old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at 
 once a look more familiar than when she 
 had left it, and yet a face estranged. The 
 world of little things therein gazed at her 
 in helpless statlonariness, as though they 
 had tried and been unable to make any 
 progress without her presence. Over the 
 place where her candle had been accustomed 
 to stand, when she had used to read in 
 bed till the midniorht hour, there was still 
 the brown spot of smoke. She did not 
 know that her father had taken especial 
 care to keep it from being cleaned off. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Having concluded her perambulation of 
 this now uselessly commodious edifice, 
 Grace began to feel that she had come a 
 long journey since the morning ; and when 
 her father had been up himself, as well as 
 his wife, to see that her room was com- 
 fortable and the fire burning, she prepared 
 to retire for the night. 
 
 No sooner, however, was she in bed than 
 her momentary sleepiness took itself off, 
 and she wished she had stayed up longer. 
 She amused herself by listening to the 
 old familiar noises that she could hear to 
 be still going on down stairs, and by look- 
 ing towards the window as she lay. The 
 blind had been drawn up. as she used to 
 have it when a girl, and she could just 
 discern the dim tree-tops against the sky 
 on the neighbouring hill. Beneath this 
 meeting-line of light and shade nothing 
 was visible save one solitary point of light,
 
 VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 115 
 
 which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to 
 and fro before its beams. 
 
 From its position it seemed to radiate 
 from the window of a house on the hill- 
 side. The house had been empty when 
 she was last at home, and she wondered 
 who inhabited the place now. 
 
 Her conjectures, however, were not 
 intently carried on, and she was watching 
 the light quite idly, when it gradually 
 changed colour, and at length shone blue 
 as sapphire. Thus it remained several 
 minutes, and then it passed through violet 
 to red. 
 
 Her curiosity was so widely awakened 
 by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed, 
 and stared steadily at the shine. An appear- 
 ance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention 
 anywhere, was no less than a marvel in 
 Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. 
 Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 in that woodland place had hitherto been 
 the direct result of the regular terrestrial 
 roll which produced the season's changes ; 
 but here was something dissociated from 
 these normal sequences, and foreign to 
 local knowledge. 
 
 It was about this moment that Grace 
 heard the household below preparing to 
 retire, the most emphatic noise in the 
 proceeding being that of her father bolting 
 the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and 
 her father and mother passed her chamber. 
 The last to come was Grammer Oliver. 
 
 Grace slid out of bed, ran across the 
 room, and lifting the latch said, '' I am not 
 asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me." 
 Before the old woman had entered Grace 
 was again under the bedclothes. Grammer 
 set down her candlestick, and seated her- 
 self on the edge of Miss Melbury's 
 coverlet.
 
 VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 117 
 
 '' I want you to tell me what light that is 
 I see on the hill-side,'^ said Grace. 
 
 Mrs. Oliver looked across. " Oh, that," 
 she said, '•' is from the doctor's. He's often 
 doing things of that sort. Perhaps you 
 don't know that we've a doctor living here 
 now — Mr. Fitzpiers by name?" 
 
 Grace admitted that she had not heard 
 of him. 
 
 ''Well then, miss, he's come here to get up 
 
 a practice. Though he belongs to the oldest, 
 
 ancientest family in the county, he's stooped 
 
 to make hisself useful like any common 
 
 genius. I know him very well, through 
 
 going there to help 'em scrub sometimes, 
 
 which your father said I might do if I 
 
 wanted to in my spare time. Being a 
 
 bachelor-man he've only lodgings. Oh, yes, 
 
 I know him very well. Sometimes he'll talk 
 
 to me as if 1 were his own mother." 
 
 *' Indeed."
 
 Ii8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " Yes. * Grammer,' he said one day when 
 I asked him why he came here w^here there's 
 hardly anybody hving, ' I'll tell you why 
 I came here. I took a map, and I marked 
 on it where Dr. Jones's practice ends to 
 the north of this district, and where Mr. 
 Taylor's ends on the south, and little Jimmy 
 Green's on the east, and somebody else's 
 to the west. Then I took a pair of com- 
 passes, and found the exact middle of the 
 country that was left between these bounds, 
 and that middle was Little Hintock ; so 
 here I am.' .... But, Lord, there : poor 
 young man ! " 
 
 ''Why?" 
 
 '' He said, ' Grammer Oliver, Lve been 
 here three months, and although there are 
 a good many people in the Hintocks and 
 the villages round, and a scattered practice 
 is often a very good one, I don't seem to 
 get many patients. And there's no society
 
 VI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 119 
 
 at all ; and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,' 
 he said, with a great yawn. ' I should be 
 quite if it were not for my books, and my 
 lab — laboratory, and what not. Grammer, 
 I was made for hlo-her thincrs.' And then 
 he'd yawn and yawn again." 
 
 ** Was he really made for higher things, 
 do you think? Is he clever?" 
 
 " Well, no. How can he be clever ? He 
 may be able to jine up a broken man or 
 woman after a fashion, and put his finger 
 upon an ache if you tell him nearly where 
 'tis ; but these young men — they should live 
 to my time of life, and then they'd see how 
 clever they were at five-and-twenty ! And 
 yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says 
 the oddest of rozums. ' Ah, Grammer,' he 
 said at another time. ' Let me tell you that 
 Everything is Nothing. There's only Me 
 and Not Me in the whole world.' And 
 he told me that no man's hands could help
 
 I20 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 what they did, any more than the hands of 
 
 a clock Yes, he's a man of strange 
 
 meditations, and his eyes seem to see as 
 far as the north star." 
 
 "He will soon go away, no doubt." 
 
 " I don't think so." 
 
 Grace did not say "Why ?" and Grammer 
 hesitated. At last she went on, " Don't 
 tell your father or mother, miss, if I let 
 you know a secret?" 
 
 Grace gave the required promise. 
 
 " Well, he talks of buying me ; so he 
 won't go away just yet." 
 
 " Buying you — how ? " 
 
 " Not my soul — my body, when I'm dead. 
 One day w^hen I was there cleaning, he 
 said, ' Grammer, you've a large brain — a 
 very large organ of brain,' he said. 'A 
 woman's is usually four ounces less than a 
 man's ; but yours is man's size.' Well, then 
 — hee, hee ! — after he'd flattered me a bit
 
 VI. THE WOODLANDERS. 121 
 
 like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds 
 to have me as a natomy after my death. 
 Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel left, 
 and nobody with any interest in me, I 
 thought, faith, if I can be of any use to 
 my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are 
 welcome to me ; so I said I'd think it over, 
 and would most likely agree and take the 
 ten pounds. Now^ this is a secret, miss, 
 between us two. The money would be very 
 useful to me ; and I see no harm in it." 
 
 " Of course there's no harm. But oh, 
 Grammer — how can you think to do it ? 1 
 wish you hadn't told me." 
 
 " I wish I hadn't — if you don't like to 
 know it, miss. But you needn't mind. 
 Lord, hee, hee ! I shall keep him waiting 
 many a year yet, bless ye ! " 
 
 " I hope you will, I am sure." 
 
 The girl thereupon fell into such deep 
 reflection that conversation languished, and
 
 122 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. vi. 
 
 Grammer Oliver taking her candle wished 
 Miss Melbury good-night. 
 
 The latter s eyes rested on the distant 
 glimmer, around which she allowed her 
 reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies 
 that shaped the doings of the philosopher 
 behind that light on the lines of intelli- 
 gence just received. It was strange to her 
 to come back from the world to Little 
 Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like 
 a tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus 
 of advanced ideas and practices which had 
 nothine in common with the life around. 
 Chemical experiments, anatomical projects, 
 and metaphysical conceptions had found a 
 strange home here. 
 
 Thus she remained thinking, the imagined 
 pursuits of the man behind the light inter- 
 mingling with conjectural sketches of his 
 personality, till her eyes fell together with 
 their own heaviness, and she slept.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alche- 
 mlst-sureeon, Grammer Oliver's skeleton, 
 and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought 
 Grace Melbury to the morning of the next 
 day. It was fine. A north wind was 
 blowing — that not unacceptable compromise 
 between the atmospheric cutlery of the 
 eastern blast and the spongy gales of the 
 west quarter. She looked from her window 
 in the direction of the light of the previous 
 evening, and could just discern through the 
 trees the shape of the surgeon's house. 
 Somehow, In the broad, practical daylight,
 
 124 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 that unknown and lonely gentleman seemed 
 to be shorn of much of the interest which 
 had invested his personality and pursuits in 
 the hours of darkness, and as Grace's dressing 
 proceeded he faded from her mind. 
 
 Meanwhile Winterborne, though half- 
 assured of her father's favour, was rendered 
 a little restless by Miss Melbury's behaviour. 
 Despite his shy self-control, he could not help 
 looking continually from his own door towards 
 the timber-merchant's in the probability of 
 somebod)''s emergence therefrom. 
 
 His attention was at length justified by 
 the appearance of two figures, that of Mr. 
 Melbury himself, and Grace beside him. 
 They stepped out in a direction towards 
 the densest quarter of the wood, and 
 Winterborne walked contemplatively behind 
 them, till all three were soon under the trees. 
 
 Althouofh the time of bare boughs had 
 now set in, there w^ere sheltered hollows
 
 VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 125 
 
 amid the HIntock plantations and copses in 
 which a more tardy leave-taking than on 
 windy summits was the rule with the foliage. 
 This caused here and there an apparent 
 mixture of the seasons ; so that in some of 
 the dells they passed by holly-berries in full 
 red growing beside oak and hazel whose 
 leaves were as yet not far removed from 
 green, and brambles whose verdure was rich 
 and deep as in the month of August. To 
 Grace these well-known peculiarities were as 
 an old painting restored. 
 
 Now could be beheld that change from the 
 handsome to the curious which the features 
 of a wood undero^o at the ingfress of the 
 winter months. Angles were taking the 
 place of curves, and reticulations of sur- 
 faces — a change constituting a sudden lapse 
 from the ornate to the primitive on Nature's 
 canvas, and comparable to a retrogres- 
 sive step from the art of an advanced
 
 126 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 school of painting to that of the Pacific 
 Islander. 
 
 \\^interborne followed, and kept his eye 
 upon the two figures as they threaded their 
 way through these sylvan masses. Mr. 
 Melbury's long legs, his gaiters drawn in 
 to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, 
 his habit of ofettincr lost in thought and 
 arousine himself with an exclamation of 
 " Hah ! " accompanied with an upw^ard jerk 
 of the head, composed a personage recognis- 
 able by his neighbours as far as he could be 
 seen. It seemed as if the squirrels and birds 
 knew him. One of the former would occa- 
 sionally run from the path to hide behind the 
 arm of some tree, which the little animal 
 carefully edged round pari passu with 
 Melbury and his daughter's movement 
 onward, assuming a mock manner, as 
 though he were saying, ''Ho, ho ; you are 
 only a timber-merchant, and carry no gun ! "
 
 VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 127 
 
 They went noiselessly over mats of starry- 
 moss, rustled through interspersed tracts of 
 leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots, 
 whose mossed rinds made them like hands 
 wearing green gloves ; elbowed old elms 
 and ashes with great forks, in which stood 
 pools of water that overflowed on rainy days, 
 and ran down their stems in green cascades. 
 On older trees still than these huge lobes of 
 fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, 
 the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life 
 what it is, was as obvious as it could be 
 among the depraved crowds of a city slum. 
 The leaf was deformed, the curve was 
 crippled, the taper was interrupted ; the 
 lichen ate the vigour of the stalk, and the 
 ivy slowly strangled to death the promising 
 sapling. 
 
 They dived amid beeches under which 
 nothing grew, the younger boughs still 
 retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in
 
 128 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 the breeze with a sound almost metallic, like 
 the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jarnvid 
 wood. Some flecks of white in Grace's 
 drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and 
 her father in view till this time ; but now he 
 lost sight of them, and was obliged to follow 
 by ear — no difficult matter, for on the line of 
 their course every wood-pigeon rose from its 
 perch with a continued clash, dashing its 
 wings against the branches with well-nigh 
 force enough to break every quill. By 
 taking the track of this noise he soon came 
 to a stile. 
 
 Was it worth while to go further ? He 
 examined the doughy soil at the foot of the 
 stile, and saw amoncrst the larcre sole-and- 
 heel tracks an impression of a slighter kind, 
 from a boot that was obviously not local, for 
 Winterborne knew all the cobblers' patterns 
 in that district, because they were very few 
 to know. The mud-picture was enough
 
 VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 129 
 
 to make him swing himself over and 
 proceed. 
 
 The character of the woodland now- 
 changed. The bases of the smaller trees 
 were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers 
 points heaps of fresh-made chips, and the 
 newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white 
 through the undergrowth. There had been 
 a large fall of timber this year, which ex- 
 plained the meaning of some sounds thai 
 soon reached him. 
 
 A voice was shouting Intermittently in a 
 sort of human bark, remindinof Giles that 
 there was a sale of trees and faggots that 
 very day. Melbury would naturally be 
 present. Thereupon WInterborne remem- 
 bered that he himself wanted a few faggots, 
 and entered upon the scene. 
 
 A large group of buyers stood round the 
 auctioneer, or followed him when, between 
 his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 plantation produce to another, like some 
 philosopher of the Peripatetic school deliver- 
 ing his lectures in the shady groves of the 
 Lyceum. His companions were timber- 
 dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and 
 others ; mostly woodland men, who on that 
 account could afford to be curious in their 
 walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited 
 various monstrosities of vegetation, the chief 
 being corkscrew shapes in black and white 
 thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow 
 torture of an encircling woodbine during 
 their growth, as the Chinese have been said 
 to mould human beings into grotesque toys 
 by continued compression in Infancy. Two 
 women, wearing men's jackets on their 
 gowns, conducted in the rear of the halting- 
 procession a pony-cart containing bread and 
 cheese, with a barrel of strong ale for the 
 select, and cider in milking-pails, into 
 which anybody dipped who chose.
 
 VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 131 
 
 The auctioneer adjusted himself to 
 circumstances by usin::^ his walking-stick 
 as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on 
 any convenient object that took his fancy, 
 such as the crown of a little boy's head, or 
 the shoulders of a bystander who had no 
 business there except to taste the brew ; a 
 proceeding which would have been deemed 
 humorous but for the air of stern rimditv 
 which the auctioneer's face preserved, tend- 
 ing to show that the eccentricity was a result 
 of that absence of mind which is eno^endered 
 by the press of affairs, and no freak of 
 fancy at all. 
 
 Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the 
 rest of the Peripatetics, and Grace beside 
 him, clinging closely to his arm ; her modern 
 attire looking almost odd where everything 
 else was old-fashioned, and throwing over 
 the familiar garniture of the trees a homeli- 
 ness that seemed to demand improvement 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP- 
 
 by the addition of a few contemporary 
 novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the 
 selling with the interest which attaches 
 to memories revived after an interval of 
 obliviousness. 
 
 Winterborne went and stood close to 
 them ; the timber-merchant spoke, and 
 continued his buying ; Grace merely smiled. 
 To justify his presence there Winterborne 
 began bidding for timber and faggots that 
 he did not want, pursuing the occupation in 
 an abstracted mood, in which the auctioneer's 
 voice seemed to become one of the natural 
 sounds of the woodland. 
 
 A few flakes of snow descended, at the 
 sight of which a robin, alarmed at these 
 signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no 
 offence was meant by the human invasion, 
 came and perched on the tip of the faggots 
 that were being sold, and looked into the 
 auctioneer's face, whilst waiting for some
 
 VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 133 
 
 chance crumb from the bread-basket. Stand- 
 ing a Httle behind Grace, Winterborne 
 observed how one flake would sail down- 
 ward and settle on a curl of her hair, and 
 how another would choose her shoulder, 
 and another the edore of her bonnet, which 
 took up so much of his attention that his bid- 
 dings proceeded incoherently ; and when 
 the auctioneer said every now and then, 
 with a nod towards him, ''' Yours, ]\Ir. 
 Winterborne,'' he had no idea whether he 
 had bought faggots, poles, or log-wood. 
 
 He regretted that her father should show 
 such inequalities of temperament as to keep 
 Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he 
 had quite lately seemed anxious to recognise 
 their betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, 
 and joining in no conversation with other 
 buyers except when directly addressed, he 
 followed the assemblage hither and thither 
 till the end of the auction, when Giles for
 
 134 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 the first time realised what his purchases 
 had been. Hundreds of faggots, and divers 
 lots of timber, had been set down to him, 
 when all he had required had been a few 
 bundles of spray for his man Robert 
 Creedle's use in baking and lighting fires. 
 
 Business being over, he turned to speak 
 to the timber-merchant. But Melbury's 
 manner was short and distant; and Grace too 
 looked vexed and reproachful. Winterborne 
 then discovered that he had been unwittingly 
 bidding against her father, and picking up his 
 favourite lots in spite of him. With a very 
 few words they left the spot, and pursued 
 their way homeward. 
 
 Giles was extremely blank at what he had 
 done, and remained standing under the trees, 
 all the other men having strayed silently 
 away. He saw Melbury and his daughter 
 pass down a glade without looking back. 
 While they moved slowly through it a lady
 
 VII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 135 
 
 appeared on horseback in the middle distance, 
 the hne of her progress converging upon that 
 of Melbury's. They met, Melbury took off 
 his hat, and she reined in her horse. A 
 conversation was evidently in progress 
 between Grace and her father and this 
 equestrian, in whom he was almost sure 
 that he recognised ]\Irs. Charmond, less by 
 her outline than by the livery of the groom 
 who had halted some yards off. 
 
 The interlocutors did not part till after 
 a prolonged pause, during which much 
 seemed to be said. When Melbury and 
 Grace resumed their walk it was with 
 something of a lighter tread than before. 
 
 Winterborne then pursued his own course 
 homeward. He was unwilling to let coldness 
 grow up between himself and the Melburys 
 for any trivial reason, and in the evening he 
 went to their house. On drawing near the 
 gate his attention was attracted by the sight
 
 136 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state 
 of illumination. In it stood Grace lighting 
 several candles, her right hand elevating the 
 taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face 
 thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled, 
 as if she saw in every flame's growth the rise 
 of a life to maturity. He wondered what 
 such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night. 
 
 On getting indoors he found her father 
 and stepmother in a state of suppressed 
 excitement, which at first he could not 
 comprehend. 
 
 " I am sorry about my biddings to-day," 
 said Giles. " I don't know what I was 
 doing. I have come to say that any of 
 the lots you may require are yours.'' 
 
 "Oh, never mind — never mind," replied 
 the timber merchant with a slight wave of 
 his hand. '' I have so much else to think 
 ot that I nearly had forgot it. Just now, 
 too, there are matters of a different kind
 
 vii. THE WOODLANDERS. 137 
 
 from trade to attend to, so don't let it 
 concern ye." 
 
 As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, 
 down to him from a higher plane than his 
 own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 " Grace is oroinc^ to the House to-morrow," 
 she said quietly. " She is looking out her 
 thino^s now. I dare sav she is wanting me 
 this minute to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. 
 iNIelbury left the room. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the in- 
 dependent personality of the tongue now 
 and then. Mr. INIelbury knew that his 
 words had been a sort of boast. He decried 
 boasting, particularly to Giles ; yet whenever 
 the subject was Grace, his judgment resigned 
 the ministry of speech in spite of him. 
 
 Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and 
 also a little apprehension at the news. 
 He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words. 
 
 '•' Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to
 
 138 THE WOQDLANDERS. chap. 
 
 have dragged out of him what he could 
 not In any circumstances have kept In. 
 " Comlne home from the woods this after- 
 noon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a 
 ride. She spoke to me on a Httle matter of 
 business and then got acquainted with Grace. 
 'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace In a 
 few minutes ; that freemasonry of education 
 made 'em close at once. Naturally enough 
 she w^as amazed that such an article — ha — 
 ha ! — could come out of my house. At 
 last It led on to Mis'ess Grace belno^ asked 
 to the House. So she's busy hunting up her 
 frills and furbelows to go In." As Giles 
 remained In thought without responding, 
 Melbury continued : " But I'll call her down 
 stairs ? " 
 
 " No, no ; don't do that, since she's busy," 
 said WInterborne. 
 
 Melbury, feeling from the young man's 
 manner that his own talk had been too much
 
 VII. THE WOODLANDERS. 139 
 
 at Giles and too little to him, repented at 
 once. His face changed, and he said, in 
 lower tones, with an effort : " She's yours, 
 Giles, as far as I am concerned." 
 
 " Thanks — my best thanks, sir. But I 
 think, since it is all right between us about 
 the biddings, that 111 not interrupt her now. 
 I'll step homeward, and call another time." 
 
 On leaving the house he looked up at the 
 bedroom aealn. Grace, surrounded bv a 
 sufficient number of candles to answer all 
 purposes of self-criticism was standing before 
 a cheval glass that her father had lately 
 bought expressly for her use ; she was 
 bonneted, cloaked, and cfloved, and o^lanced 
 over her shoulder into the mirror, estimat- 
 ing her aspect. Her face was lit with the 
 natural elation of a young girl hoping to 
 inaugurate on the morrow an intimate 
 acquaintance with a new, interesting, and 
 powerful friend.
 
 CHAPTER VHI. 
 
 The inspiriting appointment which had 
 led Grace Melbury to indulge in a six-candle 
 illumination for the arrangement of her attire 
 carried her over the ground the next 
 morning with a springy tread. Her sense 
 of being properly appreciated on her own 
 native soil seemed to brighten the atmosphere 
 and herbage around her, as the elow-worm's 
 lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she moved 
 along, avessel of emotion, going to empty 
 itself on she knew not what. 
 
 Twenty minutes' w^alking through copses, 
 over a stile, and along an upland law^n,
 
 CH. VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 141 
 
 brought her to the verge of a deep glen, in 
 which Hintock House appeared, immediately 
 beneath her eye. To describe it as standing 
 in a hollow would not express the situation 
 of the manor-house ; it stood in a hole. But 
 the hole was full of beauty. From the spot 
 which Grace had reached, a stone could easily 
 have been thrown over or into the birds'- 
 nested chimneys of the mansion. Its w^alls 
 were surmounted by a battlemented parapet ; 
 but the grey lead roofs were quite visible 
 behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, 
 and skylights, together with incised letter- 
 ings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers 
 thereon. 
 
 The front of the house was an ordinary 
 manorial presentation of Elizabethan windows, 
 mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff- 
 coloured freestone from local quarries. The 
 ashlar of the walls, where not overgrown 
 with ivy and other creepers, was coated
 
 142 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 with lichen of every shade, intensifying its 
 luxuriance with its nearness to the ground 
 till, below the plinth, it merged in moss. 
 
 Above the house to the back was a dense 
 plantation, the roots of whose trees were 
 above the level of the chimneys. The cor- 
 responding high ground on which Grace 
 stood was richly grassed, wuth only an old 
 tree here and there. A few sheep lay about, 
 which as they ruminated looked quietly into 
 the bedroom windows. 
 
 The situation of the house, prejudicial to 
 humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on 
 which account an endless shearing of the 
 heavy-armed ivy went on, and a continual 
 lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice 
 built in times when human constitutions were 
 damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous 
 was all that men thought of in choosing a 
 dwelling-place, the insidious being beneath 
 their notice ; and its hollow site was an ocular
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 143 
 
 reminder by Its unfitness for modern lives of 
 the fragility to which these have declined. 
 
 The highest architectural cunning could 
 have done nothing to make Hintock House 
 dry and salubrious ; and ruthless ignorance 
 could have done little to make it un- 
 plcturesque. It was vegetable nature's own 
 home ; a spot to inspire the painter and poet 
 of still life — If they did not suffer too much 
 from the relaxing atmosphere — and to draw 
 groans from the gregariously disposed. 
 
 Grace descended U;c green escarpment by 
 a zigzag path Into the drive, which swept 
 round beneath the slope. The exterior of 
 the house had been familiar to her from her 
 childhood, but she had never been Inside, and 
 the approach to knowing an old thing In a 
 new way was a lively experience. 
 
 It was with a little flutter that she was 
 shown in ; but she recollected that Mrs. 
 Charmond would probably be alone. Up to
 
 144 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 a few days before this time that lady had 
 been accompanied in her comings, stayings, 
 and goings by a relative, believed to be her 
 aunt ; latterly, however, these two ladies had 
 separated, owing, it was supposed, to a quarrel ; 
 and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. 
 Being presumably a woman who did not care 
 for solitude, this deprivation might possibly 
 account for her sudden interest in Grace. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery 
 opening from the hall when Miss Melbury 
 was announced, and saw her through the 
 glass doors between them. She came forward 
 with a smile on her face, and told the young 
 o-irl it was eood of her to come. 
 
 "Ah! you have noticed those," she said, 
 seeing that Grace's eyes were attracted b)^ 
 some curious objects against the walls. 
 " They are man-traps. My husband was a 
 connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns 
 and such articles, collecting them from all his
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 145 
 
 neighbours. He knew the histories of all 
 these — which gin had broken a man's leg 
 which eun had killed a man. I don't like 
 them here; but I've never yet given direc- 
 tions for them to be taken away.'' She 
 added playfully, " Man-traps are of rather 
 ominous significance where a person of ou r 
 sex lives, are they not ? " 
 
 Grace was bound to smile ; but that side 
 of womanliness was one which her inex- 
 perience had no great zest in contemplating. 
 
 " They are interesting, no doubt, as relics 
 of a barbarous time happily past," she said, 
 looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of 
 the instruments. 
 
 " Well, we must not take them too 
 seriously," said Mrs. Charmond with an in- 
 dolent turn of her head, and they moved 
 on inwards. 
 
 When she had shown her visitor different 
 articles in cabinets that she deemed likely to 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 interest her, some tapestries, wood carvings, 
 ivories, miniatures, and so on — always with 
 a mien of listlessness which might either 
 have been constitutional, or partly owing to 
 the situation of the place — they sat down 
 to an early cup of tea. 
 
 ''Will you pour it out, please? Do," she 
 said, leaning back in her chair, and placing 
 her hand above her forehead, while her 
 almond eyes — those long eyes so common 
 to the angelic legions of early Italian art — 
 became longer, and her voice more lan- 
 guishing. She showed that oblique-mannered 
 softness which Is perhaps most frequent In 
 women of darker comiplexlon and more 
 lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Char- 
 mond's was ; women who lingeringly smile 
 their meanings to men rather than speak 
 them, who Inveigle rather than prompt, and 
 take advantage of currents rather than steer. 
 
 *' I am the most Inactive woman when I
 
 VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 147 
 
 am here," she said. " I think sometimes I 
 was born to live and do nothing, nothing, 
 nothing but float about, as we fancy we do 
 sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be 
 really my destiny, and I must struggle 
 against such fancies." 
 
 " I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion 
 — it is quite sad ! I wish I could tend you 
 and make you very happy." 
 
 There was something so sympathetic, so 
 responsive in the sound of Grace's voice, 
 that it impelled people to play havoc with 
 their customary reservations in talking to 
 her. " It is tender and kind of you to feel 
 that," said Mrs. Charmond. *' Perhaps I 
 have given you the notion that my languor 
 is more than it really is. But this place 
 oppresses me, and I have a plan of going 
 abroad a good deal. I used to go with a 
 relative, but that arrangement has dropped 
 through." 
 
 o 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE WOODLANDERS. chap- 
 
 Reofardinor Grace with a final Q^lance of 
 criticism she seemed to make up her mind 
 to consider the vouncr ^"irl satisfactory, and 
 continued : 
 
 ''Now I am often impelled to record my 
 impressions of times and places. I have 
 often thouQ-ht of writinQ^ a jVeza Sentimental 
 Joitrney. But I cannot find energy enough 
 to do it alone. When I am at different 
 places in the south of Europe I feel a crowd 
 of ideas and fancies thronging upon me 
 continually ; but to unfold writing materials, 
 take up a cold steel pen, and put these im- 
 pressions down systematically on cold smooth 
 paper — that I cannot do. So I have thought 
 that if I always could have somebody at my 
 elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might 
 dictate any ideas that come into my head. 
 And directly I had made your acquaintance 
 the other day it struck me that you would suit 
 me so well. Would vou like to undertake it?
 
 VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 149 
 
 You might read to me, too, if desirable. 
 Will you think it over, and ask your parents 
 if they are willing ? " 
 
 ''Oh, yes," said Grace. '"I am almost 
 sure they would be very glad." 
 
 '' You are so accomplished, I hear ; I 
 should be quite honoured by such intellectual 
 company." 
 
 Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any 
 such idea. 
 
 " Do you keep up your lucubrations at 
 Little Hintock ? " 
 
 '' Oh, no . . . Lucubrations are not un- 
 known at Little Hintock ; but they are 
 not carried on by me." 
 
 '* What — another student in that retreat ? " 
 
 " There is a surgeon lately come, and I 
 have heard that he reads a great deal — I 
 see his light sometimes through the trees 
 late at night." 
 
 " Oh, yes — a doctor — I believe I was told
 
 I50 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 of him. It is a strange place for him to 
 settle in." 
 
 *'Itisa convenient centre for a practice, 
 they say. But he does not confine his 
 studies to medicine, It seems. He investi- 
 gates theology, and metaphysics, and all 
 sorts of subjects." 
 
 *' What Is his name ? " 
 
 '' Fitzplers. He represents a very old 
 family, I believe, the FItzpIerses of 
 Buckbiiry- Fitzplers — not a great many miles 
 from here." 
 
 '' I am not sufficiently local to know the 
 history of the family. I was never In 
 the country till my husband brought me 
 here." 
 
 Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue 
 this line of investigation. Whatever myster- 
 ious merit might attach to family antiquity, 
 it was one which her adaptable, wandering, 
 weltbih^gerliche nature had grown tired of
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 151 
 
 caring about — a peculiarity that made her 
 a contrast to her neighbours. 
 
 '• It Is of rather more importance to know 
 what the man is himself than what his family 
 is," she said, " If he Is going to practise upon 
 us as a surgeon. Heaven send him skill 1 
 Have you seen him ? " 
 
 Grace had not. " I think he Is not a 
 very old man/' she added. 
 
 " Has he a wife ? " 
 
 '' I am not aware that he has." 
 
 "Well, I hope he will be useful here. I 
 must get t o know him when I come back. 
 It will be very convenient to have a medical 
 man — if he is clever — in one's own parish. 
 I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, living 
 in such an outlandish place ; and Sherton is 
 so far to send to. Xo doubt you feel Hintock 
 to be a great change after watering-place 
 ife." 
 
 " I do. But it Is home. It has its
 
 J52 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 advantao^es and its disadvantaores." Grace 
 was thinkinor less of the solitude than 
 of the attendant circumstances. 
 
 They chatted on for some time, Grace 
 being set quite at her ease by her entertainer. 
 ^Irs. Charmond was far too well-practised a 
 woman not to know that to show a marked 
 patronage to a sensitive young girl who 
 would probably be very quick to discern it 
 was to demolish her dignity rather than to 
 establish it in that young girl's eyes. So 
 being violently possessed with her idea of 
 making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready 
 and waiting at her own door, she took great 
 pains to win her confidence at starting. 
 
 Just before Grace's departure the two 
 chanced to pause before a mirror which 
 reflected their faces in immediate juxta- 
 position, so as to bring into prominence 
 their resemblances and their contrasts. 
 Both looked attractive as glassed back by
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 153 
 
 the faithful reflector ; but Grace's countenance 
 had the effect of making ]\Irs. Charmond 
 appear more than her full age. There are 
 complexions which set oft" each other to great 
 advantage, and there are those which 
 antaoronlse, the one killino- or damaorino- Its 
 neighbour unmercifully. 
 
 This was unhappily the case here. Mrs. 
 Charmond fell Into a meditation, and replied 
 abstractedly to a cursory remark of her 
 companion's. However she parted from 
 her young friend In the kindliest tones, pro- 
 mising to send and let her know as soon as 
 her mind was made up on the arrangement 
 she had suo-aested. 
 
 When Grace had ascended nearly to the 
 top of the adjoining slope she looked back, 
 and saw that [Mrs. Charmond still stood at 
 the door meditatively regarding her. 
 
 Often during the previous night, after his
 
 154 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 call on the Melburys, Winterborne's thoughts 
 had run upon Grace's announced visit to 
 Hintock House. Why had he not proposed 
 to walk with her part of the way ? Some- 
 thing told him that she might not, on such 
 an occasion, have cared for his company. 
 
 He was still more of that opinion when, 
 standing in his garden next day, he saw her 
 go past on the journey with such a pretty 
 pride in the event. He wondered if her 
 fathers ambition, which had purchased for 
 her the means of intellectual light and 
 culture far beyond those of any other native 
 of the village, would conduce to the flight 
 of her future interests above and away 
 from the local life which was once to her 
 movement of the the world. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had her father's per- 
 mission to win her if he could ; and to this 
 end it became desirable to brinof matters soon 
 to a crisis. If she should think herself too
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 155 
 
 good for him, he must let her go, and make 
 the best of his loss. The question was how- 
 to quicken events towards an issue. 
 
 He thought and thought, and at last 
 decided that as good a way as any would be 
 to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace 
 and her parents to come as chief guests. 
 
 These ruminations were occupying him 
 when there became audible a slio;ht knocking 
 at his front door. He descended the path, 
 and looked out, and beheld ]\Iarty South, 
 dressed for out-door work. 
 
 "Why didn't you come, ?vlr. Winter- 
 borne ?" she said. '"' I've been waiting there 
 hours and hours, and at last I thought I 
 must try to find you." 
 
 '' Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said 
 Giles. 
 
 What he had forcrotten was that there were 
 a thousand young fir-trees to be planted in a 
 neighbouring spot which had been cleared
 
 15^ THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP 
 
 by the woodcutters, and that he had arranged 
 to plant them with his own hands. He had 
 a marvellous power of making trees grow. 
 Although he would seem to shovel in the 
 earth quite carelessly there was a sort of 
 sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, 
 or beech that he was operating on ; so that 
 the roots took hold of the soil in a few days. 
 When, on the other hand, any of the journey- 
 men planted, although they seemed to go 
 through an identically similar process, one 
 quarter of the trees would die away during 
 the ensuing August. 
 
 Hence Winterborne found delight in the 
 work even when, as at present, he contracted 
 to do it on portions of the woodland in which 
 he had no personal interest. Marty, who 
 turned her hand to anything, was usually the 
 one who performed the part of keeping the 
 trees in a perpendicular position whilst he 
 threw in the mould.
 
 VIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 157 
 
 He accompanied her towards the spot. 
 being stimulated yet further to proceed with 
 the work by the knowledge that the ground 
 was close to the wayside alonof which Grace 
 must pass on her return from Hintock 
 House. 
 
 "You've a cold in the head, ]^Iarty," he 
 said as they walked. " That comes of 
 cutting off vour hair." 
 
 " I suppose it do. Yes ; I've three head- 
 aches going on in my head at the same time." 
 '*' Three headaches ! " 
 
 "Yes, ]\Ir. Winterborne ; a rheumatic 
 headache in my poll, a sick headache over 
 my eyes, and a misery headache in the 
 middle of my brain. However, I came out, 
 for I thouq-ht vou mic^ht be waitinq; and 
 grumbling like anything if I was not there." 
 The holes were already dug, and they set 
 to work. Winterborne's finsfers were 
 endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in
 
 158 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 spreading the roots of each httle tree, 
 resulting in a sort of caress under which the 
 delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their 
 proper directions for growth. He put most 
 of these roots towards the south-west ; for, 
 he said, in forty years' time, when some great 
 gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees 
 will require the strongest holdfast on that 
 side to stand against it and not fall. 
 
 '' How they sigh directly we put 'em 
 upright, though while they are lying down 
 they don't sigh at all," said Marty. 
 
 '* Do they ? " said Giles. " I've never 
 noticed It." 
 
 She erected one of the young pines into 
 Its hole, and held up her finger ; the soft 
 musical breathing Instantly set in which was 
 not to cease night or day till the grown 
 tree should be felled — probably long after 
 the two planters should be felled themselves. 
 
 *' It seems to me," the girl continued, '' as
 
 VIII. THE WOOD LANDERS. 159 
 
 if they sigh because they are very sorry to 
 begin Hfe in earnest — just as we be." 
 
 "Just as we be?" He looked critically 
 at her. " You ought not to feel like that, 
 Marty." 
 
 Her only reply was turning to take up the 
 next tree ; and they planted on through 
 a great part of the day, almost without 
 another word. Winterborne's mind ran on 
 his contemplated evening-party, his abstrac- 
 tion being such that he hardly was conscious 
 of Marty's presence beside him. 
 
 From the nature of their employment, in 
 which he handled the spade and she merely 
 held the tree, it followed that he got good 
 exercise and she got none. But she was a 
 heroic eirl, and thoucrh her outstretched hand 
 was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, 
 and her cold worse than ever, she would not 
 complain whilst he was disposed to continue 
 work. But when he paused she said, " Mr.
 
 i6o THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Winterborne, can I run down the lane and 
 back to warm my feet ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening 
 anew to her existence. " Though I was just 
 thinking what a mild day It Is for the sea- 
 son. Now I warrant that cold of yours Is 
 twice as bad as It was. You had no business 
 to chop that hair off, Marty ; It serves you 
 almost right. Look here, cut off home at 
 once." 
 
 "A run down the lane will be quite 
 enough." 
 
 ''No It won't. You ought not to have 
 come out to-day at all." 
 
 " But I should like to finish the " 
 
 " Marty, I tell you to go home," said he 
 peremptorily. " I can manage to keep the 
 rest of them upright with a stick or some- 
 thing." 
 
 She went away without saying any more. 
 When she had eone down the orchard a
 
 VIII. THE WOODLANDERS. i6i 
 
 little distance she looked back. Giles 
 suddenly went after her. 
 
 '' Marty, it was for your good that I was 
 rough, you know. But warm yourself in 
 your own way, I don't care." 
 
 When she had run off he fancied he dis- 
 cerned a woman's dress through the holly 
 bushes which divided the coppice from the 
 road. It was Grace at last, on her way back 
 from the interview with Mrs. Charmond- 
 He threw down the tree he was planting, 
 and was about to break through the belt of 
 holly when he suddenly became aware of 
 the presence of another man, who was look- 
 ing over the hedge on the opposite side of 
 the way upon the figure of the unconscious 
 Grace. 
 
 The stranger appeared as a handsome and 
 gentlemanly personage of six or eight and 
 twenty, and he was quizzing her through an 
 eyeglass. Seeing that Winterbornc was 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. viii. 
 
 noticing him he let his glass drop with a 
 click upon the rail which protected the hedge, 
 and walked away In the opposite direction. 
 
 Giles knew in a moment that this must be 
 Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone Winter- 
 borne pushed through the holly, and emerged 
 close beside the Interesting object of their 
 contemplation.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " I HEARD the bushes move long before I 
 saw you," she began. '' I said first, ' it is 
 some terrible beast ' ; next, ' it is a poacher ' ; 
 next, ' it is a friend ! ' " 
 
 He regarded her with a slight smile, 
 weighing, not her speech, but the question 
 whether he should tell her that she had 
 been flatteringly watched by a gentleman. 
 He decided in the negative. 
 
 "You have been to the House i^" he 
 said. '* But I need not ask."' The fact was 
 that there shone upon Miss Melbury s 
 face a species of exaltation, which saw no 
 
 I^I 2
 
 i64 THE VVOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 environing details ; not even Giles's occupa- 
 tion ; only his bare presence. 
 " Why need you not ask ? " 
 " Your face is like the face of Moses when 
 he came down from the Mount." 
 
 She reddened a little and said, " How can 
 you be so profane, Giles Winterborne ? " 
 
 " How can you think so much of that 
 class of people ? Well, I beg pardon, I 
 didn't mean to speak so freely. How do 
 you like her house and her ? " 
 
 " Exceedingly. I had not been Inside the 
 walls since I was a child, when it used to be 
 let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late 
 husband bought the property. She is so 
 nice ! " And Grace fell into such an ab- 
 stracted eaze at the mental imao^e of Mrs. 
 Charmond and her niceness that It almost 
 conjured up a vision of that lady to Giles 
 himself. 
 
 '' She has onlv been here a month or two
 
 IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 165 
 
 it seems, and cannot stay much longer, be- 
 cause she finds it so lonely and damp in 
 winter. She is s^oincr abroad. Only think, 
 she would like m.e to go with her ! " 
 
 Giles's features stiffened a little at the 
 news. " Indeed ; what for ? But I won't 
 keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert I " he 
 cried to a swaying collection of old clothes 
 in the distance, which composed the figure 
 of Creedle, his man. '' Go on fiUinor in there 
 
 o 
 
 till I come back." 
 
 " I'm a coming, sir ; Tm a coming." 
 ''Well, the reason is this/' continued she 
 as they went on together, " Mrs. Charmond 
 has a delightful side to her character — a 
 desire to record her impressions of travel, 
 like Alexandre Dumas and Mery, and Sterne 
 and others. But she cannot find enerory 
 
 o ^ 
 
 enough to do it herself.'' And Grace pro- 
 ceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal 
 at large. " My notion is that Mery's style
 
 i66 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 will suit her best, because he writes in that 
 soft, emotional, luxurious way she has," 
 Grace said musingly. 
 
 ''Indeed!" said Winterborne, sighing. 
 " Suppose you talk over my head a little 
 longer, Miss Grace Melbury." 
 
 *' Oh, I didn't mean it ! " she said repent- 
 antly looking into his eyes. " And as for 
 myself, I hate French books. And I love 
 dear old Hintock, a7id the people in it, fifty 
 times better than all the Continent. But the 
 scheme ; I think it an enchanting notion, 
 don't you, Giles ? " 
 
 '' It is well enough in one sense, 
 but It will take you away," said he, 
 mollified. 
 
 '' Only for a short time. We should 
 return in May." 
 
 '* Well, Miss Melbury ; it is a question 
 for your father." 
 
 Winterborne walked with her nearly to
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 167 
 
 her house. He had awaited her coming, 
 mainly with the view of mentioning to her 
 his. proposal to have a Christmas party ; 
 but homely Christmas gatherings in the 
 jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive 
 and uncouth beside the lofty matters of 
 her converse that he refrained. 
 
 As soon as she was gone he turned back 
 towards the scene of his planting, and could 
 not help saying to himself as he walked, 
 that this engagement of his was a very un- 
 promising business. Her outing to-day had 
 not improved it. A woman who could go 
 to Hintock House, and be friendly with its 
 mistress ; enter into the views of its mistress, 
 talk like her, and dress not much unlike 
 her : why, she would hardly be contented 
 with him, a yeoman, immersed in tree plant- 
 ing, even though he planted them well. 
 " And yet she's a true-hearted girl," he 
 said, thinking of her words about Hintock.
 
 i68 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 " I must bring matters to a point, and 
 there's an end of it." 
 
 When he reached the place of work he 
 found that Marty had come back, and 
 dismissing Creedle he went on planting 
 silently with the girl as before. 
 
 " Suppose, Marty," he said after a while, 
 looking at her extended arm, upon which 
 old scratches from briars showed themselves 
 purple in the cold wind, '' Suppose you 
 know a person, and want to bring that 
 person to a good understanding with 
 you, do you think a Christmas party of 
 some sort is a warming up thing, and 
 likely to be useful in hastening on the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Is there to be dancinnr ? " 
 
 " There might be, certainly." 
 
 ''Will He dance with Her?" 
 
 "Well, yes." 
 
 "Then it might bring things to a head,
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 169 
 
 one way or the other, I won^t be the maid 
 to say which." 
 
 " It shall be done," said Winterborne, 
 not to her, though he spoke the words quite 
 loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, 
 he added, '' Here, ]\Iarty, I'll send up a 
 man to- plant the rest to-morrow. I've 
 other things to think of just now." 
 
 She did not inquire what other things, 
 for she had seen him walking with Grace 
 Melbury. She looked towards the western 
 sky, which was now aglow like some vast 
 foundry wherein new worlds were being 
 cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree 
 stretched horizontally, revealing every twig 
 against the evening fire, and showing in 
 dark profile every beck and movement of 
 three pheasants that were settling themselves 
 down on it in a row to roost. 
 
 " It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, 
 observing them with the vermilion light
 
 I70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, '' for 
 they are a-croupied down nearly at the end 
 of the bough. If it were going to be stormy 
 they'd squeeze close to the trunk. The 
 weather is almost all they have to think of, 
 isn't it, Mr. Winterborne ? and so' they 
 must be lighter-hearted than we." 
 
 " I dare say they are," said Winterborne. 
 
 Before taking a single step in the pre 
 parations, Winterborne, w^ith no great hopes, 
 went across that evening to the timber- 
 merchant's to ascertain if Grace and her 
 parents would honour him with their 
 presence. Having first to set his nightly 
 gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits 
 that ate his winter-greens, his call was 
 delayed till just after the rising of the 
 moon, whose rays reached the Hintock 
 houses but fitfully as yet, on account of 
 the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 171 
 
 on his way to call on some one at the 
 larger village, but he readily turned and 
 walked up and down with the young man. 
 
 Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of 
 living on a much smaller scale than the 
 Melburys* did, would not for the world 
 imply that his invitation was to a gathering 
 of any importance. So he put it in the 
 mild form of "Can you come in for an 
 hour when you have done business, the da)- 
 after to-morrow^; and ]\Irs. and Miss Alel- 
 bury, if they have nothing more pressing 
 to do ? " 
 
 Melbury would give no answ^er at once. 
 ''No, I can't tell you to-day," he said. '* 1 
 must talk it over with the women. As far 
 as I am concerned, my dear Giles, you know 
 I'll come with pleasure. But how do 1 
 know what Grace's notions may be ? You 
 see, she has been away amongst cultivated 
 folks a good while ; and now this acquaint-
 
 172 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 ance with Mrs. Charmond — well, I'll ask 
 her. I can say no more." 
 
 When Winterborne was gone the timber- 
 merchant went on his way. He knew very 
 well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, 
 would either go or not go, according as he 
 sueeested ; and his instinct was, for the 
 moment, to suggest staying at home. His 
 errand took him near the church, and the 
 way to his destination was equally easy 
 across the churchyard or outside it. For 
 some reason or other he chose the former 
 way. 
 
 The moon was faintly lighting up the 
 grave-stones, and the path, and the front 
 of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury 
 paused, turned in upon the grass, and 
 approached a particular headstone, where 
 he read, "In memory of John Winterborne," 
 with the subjoined date and age. It was 
 the grave of Giles's father.
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 173 
 
 The timber-merchant laid his hand upon 
 the stone, and was humanised. "Jack, my 
 wronged friend!" he said, ''I'll be faithful 
 to my plan of making amends to thee." 
 
 When he reached home that evening, 
 he said to Grace and ]Mrs. Melbury, who 
 were working at a little table by the fire, 
 '' Giles wants us to go down and spend an 
 hour with him the day after to-morrow ; 
 and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who 
 asks us, we'll go." 
 
 They assented without demur ; and the 
 timber-merchant sent Giles the next morning 
 an answer in the affirmative. 
 
 Winterborne, in his modesty, had men- 
 tioned no particular hour in his invitation to 
 the Melburys, though he had to the inferior 
 guests, therefore Mr. Melbury and his 
 family, expecting no other people, chose their 
 own time, which chanced to be rather early
 
 174 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 In the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat 
 quicker despatch than usual of the timber- 
 merchant's business that day. 
 
 They showed their sense of the unimport- 
 ance of the occasion by w^alklng quite slowly 
 to the house, as if they were merely out 
 for a ramble, and going to nothing special 
 at all ; or at most Intending to pay a casual 
 call and take a cup of tea. 
 
 At this hour stir and bustle pervaded 
 the Interior of WInterborne's domicile from 
 cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an 
 elaborate hleh tea for six o'clock or there- 
 abouts, and a good roaring supper to come 
 on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather 
 retiring habits, the whole of the preparations 
 devolved upon himself and his trusty man 
 and familiar Robert Creedle, who did every- 
 thing that required doing, from making 
 Giles's bed to catching moles in his field. 
 He was a survival from the days when
 
 IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 175 
 
 Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles 
 was a playing boy. 
 
 These two, with a certain dilatoriness 
 which appertained to both, were now in 
 the heat of preparation in the bakehouse, 
 expecting nobody before six o'clock. 
 Winterborne was standing before the brick 
 oven In his shirt-sleeves, tossing In thorn 
 sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass 
 with a long-handled, three-pronged, Beelze- 
 bub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon 
 his streaming face and making his eyes 
 like furnaces ; the thorns crackling and 
 sputtering ; while Creedle, having ranged 
 the pastry dishes In a row on the table till 
 the oven should be ready, was pressing out 
 the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling- 
 pin. A great pot boiled on the fire ; and 
 through the open door of the back-kitchen 
 a boy was seen seated on the fender, empty- 
 Inor the snuffers and scourlnor the candle- 
 
 o o
 
 176 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Sticks, a row of the latter standing upside 
 down on the hob to melt out the grease. 
 
 Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle 
 saw passing the window first the timber- 
 merchant, in his second-best suit, next 
 Mrs. Melbury in her best silk, and behind 
 them Grace in the fashionable attire which, 
 lately brought home with her from the 
 Continent, she had worn on her visit to 
 Mrs. Charmond's. The eyes of the three 
 had been attracted through the window 
 to the proceedings within by the fierce 
 illumination which the oven threw out 
 upon the operators and their utensils. 
 
 " Lord, Lord ; if they baint come a'ready ! " 
 said Creedle. 
 
 *' No — hey ? " said Giles, looking round 
 aghast ; while the boy in the back- 
 Q^round waved a reeking candlestick in his 
 delight. 
 
 As there was no help for it Winterborne
 
 IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 177 
 
 hastily rolled down his shirt-sleeves and 
 went to meet them in the doorway. 
 
 " My dear Giles, I see we have made a 
 mistake in the time," said the timber- 
 merchant's wife, her face lengthening with 
 concern. 
 
 " Oh, It is not much difference. I hope 
 you'll come in." 
 
 " But this means a regular randyvoo ! " 
 said Mr. ]\Ielbury accusingly, as he glanced 
 round and pointed towards the viands in the 
 bakehouse v/ith his stick. 
 
 " Well, yes," said Giles. 
 
 '* And — not Great Hintock band, and 
 dancing, surely ? " 
 
 " I told three of 'em they might drop in 
 if they'd nothing else to do," Giles mildly 
 admitted. 
 
 *' Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 
 afore that 'twas crolncr to be a bounclnof kind 
 of thing ? How should I know what folk 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 mean If they don't say ? Now, shall we 
 come in, or shall we go home, and come 
 back-along in a couple of hours ? " 
 
 '' I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good 
 as not to mind, now you are here ! I shall 
 have it all right and tidy in a very little 
 time. I ouo^ht not to have been so back- 
 ward ; but Creedle is rather slow." 
 
 Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of his 
 undemonstrative temperament ; for he feared 
 that if the Melburys once were back in their 
 own house they would not be disposed to 
 turn out again. 
 
 '''Tis we ouQ^ht not to have been so for- 
 ward ; that's what 'tis," said Mr. Melbury 
 testily. " Don't keep us here in your best 
 sitting-room ; lead on to the bakehouse, man. 
 Now we are here we'll help ye get ready for 
 the rest. Here, mis'ess, take off your things, 
 and help him out in his baking, or he won't 
 get done to-night. I'll finish heating the
 
 IX. THE WOODLAXDERS. 179 
 
 oven, and set you free to go and skiver up 
 them ducks." His eye had passed with 
 pitiless directness of criticism into yet re- 
 moter recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly 
 built premises, where the aforesaid birds 
 were hanging. 
 
 "And I'll help finish the tarts," said 
 Grace cheerfully. 
 
 " I don't know about that," said her 
 father. " 'Tisn't quite so much in your 
 line as it is in your mother-law's and 
 mine." 
 
 " Of course I couldn't let you, Grace ! " 
 said Giles, with some distress. 
 
 " I'll do it, of course," said ^Irs. Melbury, 
 taking off her silk train, hanging it up to a 
 nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pin- 
 ning them to her shoulders, and stripping 
 Giles of his apron for her own use. 
 
 So Grace pottered idly about while her 
 father and his wife helped on the pre- 
 
 N 2
 
 So THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 parations. A kindly pity of his household 
 management, which Winterborne saw in her 
 eyes whenever he caught them, depressed 
 him much more than her contempt would 
 have done. 
 
 Creedle met Giles at the pump after a 
 while, when each of the others was absorbed 
 in the difficulties of a cidsine based on uten- 
 sils, cupboards, and provisions that were 
 strange to them. He groaned to the young 
 man in a whisper, " This is a bruckle het, 
 maister, I'm much afeard ! Who'd ha' 
 thought they'd ha' come so soon ! " 
 
 The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look 
 hinted the misgivings he did not care to ex- 
 press. "Have you got the celery ready?" 
 he asked quickly. 
 
 '' Now, that's a thincr I never could mind ; 
 no, not if you'd pay me in silver and gold ! " 
 said Creedle. ''And I don't care who the 
 man is, I says that a stick of celery that
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. i8i 
 
 isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush, is 
 not clean." 
 
 ''Very well, very well! I'll attend to it. 
 You eo and Qfet 'em comfortable indoors." 
 
 He hastened to the garden, and soon re- 
 turned, tossinof the stalks to Creedle, who 
 w^as still in a tragic mood. " If ye'd ha' mar- 
 ried, d'ye see, maister," he murmured, " this 
 calamity couldn't have happened to us ! " 
 
 Everything being at last under way, the 
 oven set, and all done that could insure the 
 supper turning up ready at some time or 
 other, Giles and his friends entered the par- 
 lour, where the Melburys again dropped into 
 position as guests, though the room was not 
 nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing 
 bakehouse. Others now^ arrived, among 
 them Farmer Cawtree, and the hollow-turner, 
 and tea went off very well. 
 
 Grace's disposition to make the best ot 
 everything, and to wink at deficiencies in
 
 iS2 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Winterborne's way of living, was so uniform 
 and persistent that he suspected her of see- 
 incr even more deficiencies than he was aware 
 of. That suppressed sympathy which had 
 showed in her face ever since her arrival 
 told him as much too plainly. 
 
 '' This muddling style of housekeeping 
 is what youVe not lately been used to, I 
 suppose ? " he said when they were a 
 little apart. 
 
 '' No ; but I like it ; it reminds me so 
 pleasantly that everything here in dear old 
 Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is 
 — not quite nice ; but everything else is." 
 
 "The oil?" 
 
 " On the chairs, I mean ; because it gets 
 on one's dress. Still, mine is not a new 
 one. 
 
 Giles found that the boy, in his zeal to 
 make things look bright, had smeared the 
 chairs with some greasy furniture-polish, and
 
 IX. THE WOODLANDERS. 1S3 
 
 refrained from rubbing it dry in order not 
 to diminish the mirror-Hke effect that the 
 mixture produced as laid on. Giles apolo- 
 gised and scolded the boy ; but he felt that 
 the fates were ao^ainst him.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Supper-time came, and with it the hot- 
 baked meats from the oven, laid on a snowy 
 cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated 
 with folds as in Flemish Last - Suppers. 
 Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with 
 amazing alacrity ; the latter, to mollify his 
 superior, and make things pleasant, express- 
 ing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness 
 when they were alone. 
 
 " I s'pose the time when you learnt all 
 these knowing things, Mr. Creedle, was 
 when you was in the militia ? " 
 
 ''Well, yes. I seed the world that year
 
 CH. X. THE WOODLANDERS. 185 
 
 somewhat, certainly, and mastered many arts 
 of strange dashing Hfe. Not but that Giles 
 has worked hard in helping me to bring 
 things to such perfection to-day. ' Giles,' 
 says I, though he's maister. Not that I 
 should call'n maister by rights, for his father 
 growed up side by side with me, as if 
 one mother had twinned us and been our 
 nourishinof." 
 
 *' I s'pose your memory can reach a long 
 way back into history, Mr. Creedle ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Ancient days, when there was 
 battles, and famines, and hang-fairs, and 
 other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, 
 many's the patriarch I've seed come and go 
 in this parish ! There, he's calling for more 
 plates. Lord, why can t 'em turn their 
 plates bottom upward for pudding, as we 
 bucks used to do in former days ! " 
 
 Meanwhile in the adjoining room Giles 
 was presiding in a half unconscious state.
 
 i86 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 He could not get over the Initial failures in 
 his scheme for advancing his suit ; and hence 
 he did not know that he was eating mouth- 
 fuls of bread and nothing else, and continu- 
 ally snuffing the two candles next him till 
 he had reduced them to mere glimmers 
 drowned in their own grease. Creedle now 
 appeared with a specially prepared dish, 
 which he served by elevating the little 
 three-legged pot that contained it, and tilt- 
 ing the contents into a platter, exclaiming 
 simultaneously, '' Draw back, gentlemen and 
 ladies, please ! " 
 
 A splash followed. Grace gave a quick 
 involuntary nod and blink, and put her 
 handkerchief to her face. 
 
 " Good heavens, what did you do that for, 
 Creedle ? " said Giles, sternly, jumping up. 
 
 "'Tis how I do it when they baint 
 here, maister," mildly expostulated Creedle, 
 in an aside audible to all the company.
 
 X. THE WOODLAXDERS. 187 
 
 "Well yes — but — " replied Giles. He 
 went over to Grace, and hoped none of 
 it had gone into her eye. 
 
 ''Oh, no," she said. ''Only a sprinkle 
 on my face. It was nothing." 
 
 " Kiss It and make it well," gallantly 
 observed ^Ir. Cawtree. 
 
 Miss IMelbury blushed. 
 
 The timber-merchant replied quickly, 
 "Oh, it is nothing! She must bear these 
 little mishaps." But there could be dis- 
 cerned In his face something which said, 
 " I ought to have foreseen all this, and 
 kept her away." 
 
 Giles himself, since the untoward be- 
 ginning of the feast, had not quite liked 
 to see Grace present. He wished he had 
 not asked such people as Cawtree and 
 the hollow-turner. He had done It, In 
 dearth of other friends, that the room 
 might not appear empty. In his mind's
 
 i88 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 eye, before the event, they had been the 
 mere background or padding of the scene ; 
 but somehow in the reahty they were the 
 most prominent personages there. 
 
 After supper they played cards ; Cawtree 
 and the hollow-turner monopolising the 
 new packs for an interminable game, in 
 which a lump of chalk w^as incessantly 
 used — a game those two always played 
 wherever they were, taking a solitary 
 candle and going to a private table in a 
 corner with the mien of persons bent on 
 weighty matters. The rest of the company 
 on this account were obliged to put up 
 with old packs for their round game, that 
 had been lying by in a drawer ever since 
 the time that Giles's grandmother was 
 alive. Each card had a great stain in the 
 middle of its back, produced by the touch 
 of generations of damp and excited thumbs, 
 now fleshless in the grave ; and the kings
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 and queens wore a decayed expression of 
 feature, as if they were rather an im- 
 pecunious dethroned race of monarchs 
 hidinor in obscure slums than real reo^al 
 characters. Every now and then the com- 
 paratively few remarks of the players at 
 the round game were harshly intruded on 
 by the measured jingle of Farmer Cawtree 
 and the hollow-turner from the back of 
 the room : — 
 
 "And r will hold' a wa'-ger with you' 
 That air these marks' are thirt'-y-two ! " 
 
 accompanied by rapping strokes with the 
 chalk on the table ; then an exclamation, 
 an argument, a dealing of the cards ; then 
 the commencement of the rhymes anew. 
 
 The timber-merchant showed his feel- 
 ings by talking with a reserved weight in 
 his words, and by praising the party in 
 a patronising tone, when Winterbornc
 
 I90 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 expressed his fear that he and his were 
 not enjoying themselves. 
 
 *' Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What 
 handsome glasses those are ! I didn't 
 know you had such glasses in the house. 
 Now, Lucy [to his wife], you ought to 
 get some like them for ourselves." And 
 when they had abandoned cards, and 
 Winterborne was talking to Melbury by 
 the fire, it was the timber-merchant who 
 stood with his back to the mantel in a 
 proprietary attitude ; from which post of 
 vantage he critically regarded Giles's 
 person, rather as a superficies than as a 
 solid with ideas and feelings inside it ; 
 saying, *' What a splendid coat that one 
 is you have on, Giles. I can't get such 
 coats. You dress better than I." 
 
 After supper there was a dance, the 
 bandsmen from Great Hintock having 
 arrived some time before. Grace had been
 
 X. THE WOODLANDERS. 191 
 
 away from home so long, and was so 
 drilled In new dances, that she had 
 forgotten the old figures, and hence did 
 not join In the movement. Then Giles 
 felt that all was over. As for her, she 
 was thinking, as she watched the gyrations, 
 of a very different measure that she had 
 been accustomed to tread with a bevy of 
 sylph-lIke creatures In muslin, In the music- 
 room of a laro^e house, most of whom 
 were now moving In scenes widely removed 
 from this, both as regarded place and 
 character. 
 
 A woman she did not know came and 
 offered to tell her fortune with the 
 abandoned cards. Grace assented to the 
 proposal, and the woman told her tale 
 unskilfully, for want of practice, as she 
 declared. 
 
 Mr. Melbury was standing by, and 
 exclaimed contemptuously, " Tell her
 
 192 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 fortune, Indeed ! Her fortune has been 
 told by men of science — what do you call 
 'em ? Phrenologists. You can't teach her 
 anything new. She's been too far among 
 the wise ones to be astonished at anything 
 she can hear among us folks In HIntock.'' 
 
 At last the time came for breaking up, 
 INIelbury and his family being the earliest 
 to leave, the two card-players still pursuing 
 their game doggedly in the corner, where 
 they had completely covered Giles's 
 mahogany table with chalk scratches. The 
 Melburys walked home, the distance being 
 short and the night clear. 
 
 ''Well, Giles is a very good fellow," 
 said Mr. Melbury, as they struck down 
 the lane under bouehs which formed a 
 black filigree in which the stars seemed 
 set. 
 
 " Certainly he is," said Grace, quickly, 
 and In such a tone as to show that he
 
 X. THE WOODLANDERS. 193 
 
 Stood no lower, if no hicrher, in her regard 
 than he had stood before. 
 
 When they were opposite an opening 
 through which, by day, the doctor's house 
 could be seen, thev observed a lieht in 
 one of his rooms, although it was now 
 about two o'clock. 
 
 "The doctor is not abed yet," said 
 Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 '' Hard study, no doubt," said her husband. 
 " One would think that, as he seems to have 
 nothing to do about here by day, he could 
 at least afford to go to bed early at night. 
 'Tis astonishing how little we see of him." 
 Melbury's mind seemed to turn with 
 much relief to the contemplation of Mr. 
 Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. 
 "It is natural enough," he replied. "What 
 can a man of that sort fmd to interest 
 him in Hintock ? I don't expect he'll stay 
 here loner." 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 His thoughts then reverted to Giles's 
 party, and when they were nearly home 
 he spoke again, his daughter being a few 
 steps in advance : " It Is hardly the line 
 of life for a girl like Grace, after what 
 she's been accustomed to. I didn't foresee 
 that, in sending her to boarding-school, and 
 letting her travel, and what not, to make 
 her a good bargain for Giles, I should be 
 really spoiling her for him. Ah 'tis a 
 thousand pities ! But he ought to have 
 her — he ought ! " 
 
 At this moment the two exclusive, chalk- 
 mark men, having at last really finished 
 their play, could be heard coming along in 
 the rear, vociferously singing a song to 
 march-time, and keeping vigorous step to 
 the same in far-reaching strides — 
 
 " She may go, oh I 
 She may go, oh ! 
 She may go to the devil for me !
 
 X. THE WOODLANDERS. 195 
 
 The timber-merchant turned indignantly 
 to Mrs. Melbury. '' That's the sort of 
 society we've been asked to meet," he 
 said. " For us old folk it didn't matter ; 
 but for Grace — Giles should have known 
 better ! " 
 
 Meanwhile, in the empty house from 
 which the guests had just cleared out, the 
 subject of their discourse was walking from 
 room to room surveying the general dis- 
 placement of furniture with no ecstatic 
 feeling ; rather the reverse, indeed. At 
 last he entered the bakehouse, and found 
 there Robert Creedle sitting over the 
 embers, also lost in contemplation. 
 Winterborne sat down beside him. 
 
 ''Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd 
 better get on to bed." 
 
 '' Ay, ay, Giles — what do I call ye ? 
 Maister, I would say. But 'tis well 
 
 2
 
 196 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 to think the day is done, when 'tis 
 done." 
 
 Winterborne had abstractedly taken the 
 poker, and with a wrinkled forehead was 
 ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the 
 wide hearth, till it was like a vast scorching 
 Sahara, with red-hot boulders lying about 
 everywhere. " Do you think it went off 
 well, Creedle ? " he asked. 
 
 "The victuals did; that I know. And 
 the drink did ; that I steadfastly believe, 
 from the holler sound of the barrels. Good 
 honest drink 'twere, the headiest mead I ever 
 brewed ; and the best wine that berries could 
 rise to ; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves 
 cider ever wTung down, leaving out the spice 
 and sperrits I put into it, while that egg-flip 
 would ha passed through muslin, so little 
 criddled 'twere. 'Twas good enough to 
 make any king's heart merry — ay, to make 
 his whole carcase smile ! Still, I don't deny
 
 X. THE WOODLANDERS. 197 
 
 I'm afeard some things didn't go \vell with 
 He and his." Creedle nodded In a direction 
 which signified where the Melburys Hved. 
 
 '' I'm afraid, too, that It was a failure 
 there ! " 
 
 " If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but 
 what that snail might as well have come 
 upon anybody else's plate as hers." 
 
 ^' What snail ? " 
 
 " Well, malster, there was a little small 
 one upon the edge of her plate when I 
 brought It out ; and so It must have been 
 in her few leaves of winter-ereen." 
 
 '* How the deuce did a snail get there ?" 
 
 " That I don't know no more than the 
 dead ; but there my gentleman was." 
 
 " But, Robert, of all places, that was 
 wdiere he shouldn't have been." 
 
 " Well, 'twas his native home, come to 
 that ; and where else could we expect him to 
 be ? I don't care who the man is, snails and
 
 198 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 caterpillars always will lurk in close to the 
 stump of cabbages in that tantalising way." 
 
 " He wasn't alive, I suppose ? " said Giles, 
 with a shudder on Grace's account. 
 
 *' Oh, no. He was well boiled. I warrant 
 him well boiled. God forbid that a live snail 
 should be seed on any plate of victuals that's 
 served by Robert Creedle. . . . But Lord, 
 there ; I don't mind 'em myself — them green 
 ones ; for they were born on cabbage, and 
 they've lived on cabbage, so they must be 
 inade of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed 
 little lady, she didn't say a word about it ; 
 though 'twould have made good small con- 
 versation as to the nater of such creatures ; 
 especially as wit ran short among us 
 sometimes." 
 
 " Oh, yes — 'tis all over ! " murmured Giles 
 to himself, shaking his head over the gloom- 
 ing plain of embers, and lining his forehead 
 more than ever. " Do you know, Robert,"
 
 X. THE WOODLANDERS. 199 
 
 he said, '' that she's been accustomed to 
 servants and everything superfine these 
 many years ? How, then, could she stand 
 our ways ? " 
 
 *' Well, all I can say is, then, that she 
 ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere. They 
 shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous 
 high, or else bachelor-men shouldn't give 
 randys, or if they do give 'em, only to 
 their own race." 
 
 *' Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, 
 rising and yawning a sigh.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 '* 'Tis a pity — a thousand pities ! " her 
 father kept saying next morning at 
 breakfast, Grace being still in her 
 bedroom. 
 
 Here was the fact, which could not be 
 disguised : since seeing what an immense 
 change her last twelve months of absence 
 had produced in his daughter, after the 
 heavy sum per annum that he had been 
 spending for several years upon her educa- 
 tion, he was reluctant to let her marry 
 Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as 
 woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and
 
 CH. XL THE WOODLANDERS. 201 
 
 what-not, even were she wilhng to marry 
 him herself. 
 
 But how could he, with any self-respect, 
 obstruct Winterborne's suit at this stage, and 
 nullify a scheme he had laboured to promote — 
 was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this 
 moment ? A crisis was approaching, mainly 
 as a result of his contrivances ; and it would 
 have to be met. 
 
 " She will be his wife, if you don't upset 
 her notion that she's bound to accept him as 
 an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. 
 ** Bless you, she'll soon shake down here in 
 Hintock and be content with Giles's way of 
 living, which he'll improve with what money 
 she'll have from you. 'Tis the strangeness 
 after her orenteel life that makes her feel 
 uncomfortable at first. Why, when / saw 
 Hintock the first time I thought I never 
 could like it. But things gradually get 
 familiar, and stone floors seem not so very
 
 202 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 cold and hard, and the hooting of owls not 
 so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very 
 lonely, after a while." 
 
 '' Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I 
 know Grace will gradually sink down to our 
 level again, and catch our manners and w^ay 
 of speaking, and feel a drowsy content in 
 being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the 
 thought of dragging down to that old level 
 as promising a piece of maidenhood as ever 
 lived — fit to ornament a palace wi', that I've 
 taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her 
 white hands getting redder every day, and 
 her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl 
 In talking, and her bounding walk becoming 
 the regular HIntock shall-and-wamble." 
 
 " She may shall ; but she'll never wamble," 
 replied his wife decisively. 
 
 When Grace came down stairs he com- 
 plained of her lying in bed so late ; not so 
 much moved by a particular objection to that
 
 XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 203 
 
 form of indulgence as discomposed by these 
 other reflections. 
 
 The corners of her pretty mouth dropped 
 a Httle down. " You used to complain with 
 justice when I was a girl," she said ; '' but 
 I am a woman now, and can judge for 
 myself. .... But It Is not that ; It is 
 something else!" Instead of sitting down 
 she went outside the door. 
 
 He was sorry. The petulance that 
 relatives show towards each other is In 
 truth directed ao-alnst that Intancrlble Cause 
 
 o o 
 
 'which has shaped the situation no less for 
 the offenders than the offended, but Is too 
 elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor 
 humanity in irritated mood. Melbury fol- 
 lowed her. She had rambled on to the 
 paddock, where the white frost lay, making 
 the grass rustle like paper-shavings under 
 their feet ; and where starllni^s In flocks of 
 twenties and thirties were walking: about,
 
 204 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 watched by a comfortable family of sparrows 
 perched in a line along the string-course of 
 the chimney, and preening themselves in the 
 rays of the sun. 
 
 '' Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. 
 " And as to Giles, use your own mind. 
 Whatever pleases you will please me." 
 
 " I am promised to him, father ; and I 
 cannot help thinking that in honour I ought 
 to marry him, whenever I do marry." 
 
 He had a strong suspicion that somewhere 
 in the bottom of her heart there pulsed an 
 old simple indigenous feeling favourable to 
 Giles, though it had become overlaid with 
 implanted tastes. " Very well," he said. 
 '' But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come 
 in to breakfast. What did you think of the 
 inside of Hintock House the other day ? " 
 
 '' I liked it much." 
 
 " Different from friend Winterborne's ? " 
 
 She said nothing ; but he who knew her
 
 XJ. THE WOODLAXDERS. 205 
 
 was aware that she meant by her silence to 
 reproach him with drawing cruel com- 
 parisons. 
 
 " Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come 
 again — when, did you say ? " 
 
 '' She thought Tuesday ; but would send 
 the day before to let me know if It suited 
 her." And with this subject upon their lips 
 they entered to breakfast. 
 
 Tuesday came, but no message from 
 ]\Irs. Charmond. Xor was there any on 
 Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by 
 v;ithout a sign, and It looked suspiciously 
 as If ^Irs. Charmond was not Q^olne further 
 
 o o 
 
 in the direction of " taking up " Grace 
 at present. 
 
 Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately 
 after his daughter's two Indubitable successes 
 with Mrs. Charmond — the interview in the 
 wood and the visit to the House — she had 
 attended Winterborne's party. Xo doubt
 
 2o6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 the out-and-out joviality of that gathering 
 had made it a topic in the neighbourhood, 
 and that every one present as guests had 
 been widely spoken of — Grace, with her 
 exceptional qualities, above all. What then 
 so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should 
 have heard the village news, and become 
 quite disappointed in her expectations of 
 Grace at finding she kept such company ? 
 
 Full of this /^Jj/ Jioc argument, Mr. Melbury 
 overlooked the infinite throng of other 
 possible reasons and unreasons for a woman 
 changing her mind. For instance, while 
 knowing that his Grace was attractive, he 
 quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also 
 great pretensions to beauty. 
 
 So it was settled in his mind that her 
 sudden mingling with the villagers at the 
 unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her 
 most crrievous loss, as he deemed it, in the 
 direction of Hintock House.
 
 XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 207 
 
 " 'Tis a great sacrifice ! " he would repeat 
 to himself. " I am ruininor her for conscience' 
 sake ! " 
 
 It was one morning later on, while these 
 things were agitating his mind, that some- 
 thing darkened the window just as they 
 finished breakfast. Looking up they saw 
 Giles in person, mounted on horseback, and 
 straining his neck forward, as he had been 
 doing for some time, to catch their attention 
 throuQ^h the window. Grace had been the 
 first to see him, and Involuntarily exclaimed, 
 " There he Is — and a new horse ! " 
 
 On their faces, as they regarded Giles, 
 were written their suspended thoughts and 
 compound feelings concerning him, could he 
 have read them through those old panes. 
 But he saw nothing : his features just now 
 were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile 
 at some other Idea. So they rose from 
 breakfast and went to the door, Grace with
 
 2o8 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a 
 reverie, Mrs. IMelbury placid and inquiring. 
 
 "We have come out to look at your 
 horse," she said. 
 
 It could be seen that he was pleased at 
 their attention, and explained that he had 
 ridden a mile or two to try the animal's 
 paces. " I bought her," he added, with 
 warmth so severely repressed as to seem 
 indifference, '' because she has been used 
 to carry a lady." 
 
 Still ]\Ir. IMelbury did not brighten. Mrs. 
 Melbury said, " And is she quiet ? " 
 
 Winterborne assured her that there was 
 no doubt of it. '' 1 took care of that. She's 
 fifteen, and very clever for her age." 
 
 "Well, get off and come in," said Melbury 
 brusquely ; and Giles dismounted accordingly. 
 
 This event was the concrete result of 
 Winterborne's thoughts during the past 
 week or two. The want of success with his
 
 XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 209 
 
 evening-party he had accepted in as philo- 
 sophic a mood as he was capable of ; but 
 there had been enthusiasm enough left in 
 him one day at Sherton Abbas market to 
 purchase this mare, which had belonged to a 
 neighbouring parson with several daughters, 
 and was offered him to carry either a gentle- 
 man or a lady, and to do odd jobs of carting 
 and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging 
 quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a 
 means of reinstating himself in Melbury's 
 good opinion as a man of considerateness, 
 by throwing out equestrian possibilities to 
 Grace. 
 
 The latter looked at him with intensified 
 interest this morning, in the mood which is 
 altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and 
 which, when reduced into plain words, seems 
 as impossible as the penetrability of matter 
 — that of entertaining a tender pity for the 
 object of her own unnecessary coldness. 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2IO THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 The Imperturbable poise which marked 
 Winterborne in sfeneral was enhvened now 
 by a freshness and animation that set a 
 brightness In his eye and on his cheek. 
 Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some 
 breakfast, and he pleasurably repHed that 
 he would join them, not perceiving that they 
 had all finished the meal, and that the note 
 piped by the kettle denoted It to be nearly 
 empty ; so that fresh water had to be 
 brought in, and a general renovation of the 
 table carried out. Neither did he know, 
 so full was he of his tender ulterior object 
 in buying that horse, how the morning was 
 slipping away, nor how he was keeplne the 
 family from dispersing about their duties. 
 
 Then he told throucrhout the humorous 
 story of the horse's purchase, looking par- 
 ticularly grim at some fixed object in the 
 room, a way he ahvays looked when he 
 narrated anything that amused him. While
 
 XI. THE WOODLANDERS. 211 
 
 he was still thinkincr of the scene he had 
 
 o 
 
 described, Grace rose and said, " I have to 
 go and help my mother now, Mr. Winter- 
 borne." 
 
 ** H'm ?" he ejaculated, turning his eyes 
 suddenly upon her. 
 
 She repeated her words with a slight 
 blush of awkwardness ; whereupon Giles, 
 becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, 
 jumped up, saying, " To be sure, to be 
 sure ! " and wished them quickly good 
 morning. 
 
 Nevertheless he had upon the whole 
 strengthened his position, with her at least. 
 Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father 
 saw with some regret) already the homeliness 
 of Hintock life was fast becominQf effaced 
 from her observation as a singularity ; as 
 the momentary strangeness of a face 
 from which we have for years been separ- 
 ated insensibly passes off with renewed 
 
 p 2
 
 12 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. xi 
 
 intercourse, and tones itself down into 
 Jentity with the Hneaments of the past. 
 
 Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house 
 still unreconciled to the sacrifice of the gem 
 he had been at such pains in mounting. 
 He fain could hope, in the secret nether 
 chamber of his mind, that something would 
 happen, before the balance of her feeling 
 had quite turned in Winterborne's favour, 
 to relieve his conscience and preserve her 
 on her elevated plane.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It was a day of rather bright weather 
 for the season. Miss Melbury went out 
 for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful 
 father, having an hour's leisure, offered to 
 walk with her. 
 
 The breeze was fresh and quite steady, 
 filtering itself through the denuded mass of 
 twigs without swaying them, but making 
 the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks 
 scratch its underlying neighbour restlessly. 
 Grace's lips sucked in this native air of 
 hers like milk. They soon reached a place 
 where the wood ran down into a corner,
 
 214 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 and went outside it towards comparatively 
 open ground. Having looked round about, 
 they were intending to re-enter the copse 
 when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging 
 brush, trotted past them tamely as a 
 domestic cat, and disappeared amid some 
 dead fern. They walked on, her father 
 merely observing, after watching the animal, 
 " They are hunting somewhere near." 
 
 Further up they saw in the mid-distance 
 the hounds running hither and thither, as if 
 the scent lay cold that day. Soon divers 
 members of the hunt appeared on the scene, 
 and it was evident from their movements 
 that the chase had been stultified by general 
 puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of 
 the intended victim. In a minute a gentle- 
 man farmer panting with Actseonic excitement, 
 rode up to the two pedestrians, and Grace 
 being a few steps in advance he addressed 
 her, asking if she had seen the fox.
 
 XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 215 
 
 "Yes," said she. "I saw him some time 
 ago — just out there." 
 
 " Did you cry Halloo ? " 
 
 '' I said nothing." 
 
 " Then why the devil didn't you, or get 
 the old buffer to do it for you ? " said the 
 man as he cantered away. 
 
 She looked rather disconcerted at this 
 reply, and observing her father's face saw 
 that it was quite red. 
 
 " He ought not to have spoken to ye like 
 that ! " said the old man in the tone of one 
 whose heart was bruised, though it was not 
 by the epithet applied to himself. "And he 
 wouldn't if he had been a eentleman. 'Twas 
 not the language to use to a woman of any 
 niceness. You so well read and cultivated — 
 how could he expect ye to go shouting a view- 
 halloo like a farm tomboy ! Hasn't it cost 
 me near a hundred a year to lift you out of 
 all that, so as to show an example to the
 
 2i6 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 neighbourhood of what a woman can be ? 
 Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it ? 'Twas 
 because / was in your company. If a black- 
 coated squire or pa'son had been walking 
 with you instead of me he wouldn't have 
 spoken so." 
 
 ** No, no, father ; there's nothing in you 
 rouQ^h or ill-mannered ! " 
 
 '' I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and 
 I've noticed it many times, that a woman 
 takes her colour from the man she's walking 
 with. The w^oman who looks an unquestion- 
 able lady when she's with a polished-up 
 fellow, looks a tawdry imitation article when 
 she's bobbing and nobbing with a homely 
 blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for 
 long, or at least your children sha'n't. You 
 shall have somebody to walk with you who 
 looks more of a dandy than I — please God 
 you shall ! " 
 
 " But, my dear father," she said, much
 
 XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 217 
 
 distressed, " I don't mind at all. I don't 
 wish for more honour than I already have ! " 
 
 " A perplexing and ticklish possession is 
 a daughter," according to a Greek poet, and 
 to nobody was one ever more so than to 
 Melbury. As for Grace, she began to feel 
 troubled ; she did not perhaps wish, there 
 and then, to unambitiously devote her life 
 to Giles Winterborne, but she was more 
 and more uneasy at being the social hope 
 of the family. 
 
 "You would like to have more honour, 
 if it pleases me ? " asked her father in con- 
 tinuation of the subject. 
 
 Despite her feeling she assented to this. 
 His reasoninor had been not without wei^rht 
 upon her. 
 
 '' Grace," he said, just before they had 
 reached the house, " if it costs me my life 
 you shall marry well ! To-day has shown 
 me that whatever a young woman's niceness,
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 she stands for nothing alone. You shall 
 marry well." 
 
 He breathed heavily, and his breathing 
 was caught up by the breeze, w^hich seemed 
 to sigh a soft remonstrance. 
 
 She looked calmly at him. '* And how 
 about j\Ir. Winterborne ? " she asked. " I 
 mention it, father, not as a matter of senti- 
 ment, but as a question of keeping faith." 
 
 The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a 
 moment. " I don't know — I don't know," 
 he said. " 'Tis a trvino: strait. Well, well ; 
 there's no hurry. We'll wait and see how 
 he gets on." 
 
 That eveninfj he called her into his room, 
 a snug little apartment behind the large 
 parlour. It had at one time been part of the 
 bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven 
 in the wall ; but Mr. Melbury in turning it 
 into an ofhce had built into the cavity an iron
 
 XII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 219 
 
 safe, which he used for holdincr his private 
 papers. The door of the safe was now open, 
 and his kevs were hancfinsf from it. 
 
 '* Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," 
 he said. '' You may amuse yourself by look- 
 ing over these." He threw out a heap of 
 papers before her. 
 
 " What are they ? " she asked. 
 
 ''Securities of various sorts." He un- 
 folded them one by one. " Papers worth so 
 much money each. Xow here's a lot of 
 turnpike bonds, for one thing. Would you 
 think that each of these pieces of paper is 
 worth two hundred pounds ? " 
 
 '' No, indeed, if you didn't say so." 
 
 " 'Tis so then. Now here are papers of 
 another sort. They are for difterent sums 
 in the three per cents. Now these are 
 Port-Breedy Harbour bonds. We have 
 a great stake in that harbour, you know, 
 because I send oft' timber there. Open
 
 220 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 the rest at your pleasure. They'll interest 
 ye." 
 
 " Yes, I will, some day," said she rising. 
 
 " Nonsense, open them now. You ought 
 to learn a little of such matters. A young 
 lady of education should not be ignorant of 
 money affairs altogether. Suppose you 
 should be left a widow some day, with your 
 husband's title deeds and investments thrown 
 upon your hands " 
 
 ** Don't say that, father. Title deeds ; it 
 sounds so vain ! " 
 
 "It does not. Come to that, I have title 
 deeds myself. There, that piece of parch- 
 ment represents houses in Sherton Abbas." 
 
 " Yes, but — " She hesitated, looked at 
 the fire, and w^ent on in a low voice, "If 
 what has been arranged about me should 
 come to anything, my sphere will be quite 
 a middling one." 
 
 "Your sphere ought not to be middling,"
 
 XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 221 
 
 he exclaimed. " You said you never felt 
 more at home, more in your element, any- 
 where than you did that afternoon with Mrs. 
 Charmond, when she showed you her house, 
 and all her knick-knacks, and made you stay 
 to tea so nicely in her drawing-room, surely 
 you did ! " 
 
 " Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace. 
 
 "Was it true ?" 
 
 '' Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeline 
 is less strong now, perhaps." 
 
 " Ah ! Now, though you don't see it, your 
 feeling at the time was the right one, because 
 your mind and body were just in full and 
 fresh cultivation, so that Qroino- there with her 
 was like meeting like. Since then you've 
 been staying with us, and have fallen back a 
 little, and so you don't feel your place so 
 strongly. Now do as I tell you, and look over 
 these papers, and see what you'll be worth 
 some day. For they'll all be yours, you
 
 222 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 know ; Avho have I got to leave 'em to but 
 you ? Perhaps when your education is 
 backed up by what these papers represent, 
 and that backed up by another such a set and 
 their owner, men such as that fellow was this 
 morning may think you a little more than a 
 buffer's girl." 
 
 So she did as commanded, and opened 
 each of the folded representatives of hard 
 cash that her father put before her. To sow 
 in her heart cravings for social position was 
 obviously his strong desire, though in direct 
 antagonism to a better feeling which had 
 hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, 
 only succumbed that morning during the 
 ramble. 
 
 She wished that she was not his worldly 
 hope ; the responsibility of such a position 
 was too crreat. She had made it for herself 
 mainly by her appearance and attractive 
 behaviour to him since her return. '* If I
 
 XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 223 
 
 had only come home in a shabby dress, and 
 tried to speak roughly, this might not have 
 happened," she thought. She deplored less 
 the fact, however, than the contingencies 
 
 Her father then insisted upon her looking 
 over his cheque book and reading the 
 counterfoils. This also she obediently did, 
 and at last came to two or three which had 
 been drawn to defray some of the late ex- 
 penses of her clothes, board, and education. 
 
 " I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses 
 and waggons and corn ! " she said, looking 
 up sorrily. 
 
 '' I didn't want you to look at those ; I 
 merely meant to give you an idea of my 
 investment transactions. But if you do cost 
 as much as they, never mind. You'll yield 
 a better return." 
 
 " Don't think of me like that ! " she 
 begged. " A mere chattel." 
 
 " A what ? Oh, a dictionary word. Well,
 
 224 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 as that's in your line I don't forbid it, even if 
 it tells against me," he said good-humouredly. 
 And he looked her proudly up and down. 
 
 A few minutes later G rammer Oliver 
 came to tell them that supper was ready, 
 and in orivinor the information she added 
 incidentally, '' So we shall soon lose the 
 mistress of Hintock House for some time, 
 I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, she's going 
 off to foreign parts to-morrow, for the rest 
 of the winter months ; and be-chok'd if I 
 don't W'ish I could do the same, for my 
 wind-pipe is furred like a flue." 
 
 When the old woman had left the room, 
 Melbury turned to his daughter and said, 
 " So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, 
 and your chance of keeping her company 
 and writing her travels is quite gone 
 from ye ! " 
 
 Grace said nothing. 
 
 " Now," he w^ent on emphatically, " 'tis
 
 XII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 225 
 
 Winterborne's affair has done this. Oh yes, 
 'tis. So let me say one word. Promise me 
 that you will not meet him again without 
 my knowledge." 
 
 " I never do meet him, father, either 
 without your knowledge or with It." 
 
 " So much the better. I don't like the 
 look of this at all. And I say it not out 
 of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out 
 of tenderness to you. For how could a 
 woman, brought up delicately as you have 
 been, bear the roughness of a life with 
 him ? " 
 
 She sighed ; it was a sigh of sympathy 
 with Giles, complicated by a sense of the 
 intractability of circumstances. 
 
 At that same hour, and almost at that 
 same minute, there was a conversation 
 about Winterborne in progress In the village 
 street, opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP, 
 
 Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert Creedle 
 had accidentally met. 
 
 The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had 
 heard what was all over the parish, the skin 
 of his face being drawn two ways on the 
 matter — towards brightness in respect of it 
 as news, and towards concern in respect of 
 its bearings. 
 
 ''Why that poor little lonesome thing, 
 Marty South, is likely to lose her father. 
 He was almost well, but is much worse 
 again ; a man all skin and grief he ever 
 were ; and If he leave Little Hintock for a 
 better land, won't it make some difference 
 to your good man Winterborne, neighbour 
 Creedle ? " 
 
 "Can I be a prophet in Hintock?" said 
 Creedle. " I was only shaping of such a 
 thing yesterday in my poor long-seeing 
 way! It is upon John South's life that all 
 Mr. Winterborne's houses hang. If so be
 
 XII. THE WOODLANDERS. 227 
 
 South die and so make his decease, there- 
 upon the law ordains that the houses fall 
 without the least chance of absolution into 
 Her hands at the House. I told him so ; 
 but the words of the faithful be only as 
 wind ! " 
 
 O 2
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The news was true. The life — the one 
 fragile life — that had been used as a 
 measuring-tape of time by law, was in 
 danger of being frayed away. It was the 
 last of a group of lives which had served 
 this purpose, at the end of whose breathings 
 the small homestead occupied by South 
 himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne, 
 and half a dozen others that had been in the 
 possession of various Hintock village families 
 for the previous hundred years, and were 
 now Winterborne's, would fall in and become 
 part of the encompassing estate.
 
 CH. XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 229 
 
 Winterborne walked up and down his 
 garden next day thinking of the contingency. 
 The sense that the paths he was pacing, the 
 cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, 
 cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, weather- 
 cock, were all slipping away over his head 
 and beneath his feet as if they were painted 
 on a magic lantern slide, was curious. In 
 spite of John South's late indisposition he 
 had not anticipated danger. 
 
 Whilst he was here in the garden some- 
 body came to fetch him. It was Marty 
 herself, and she showed her distress by her 
 unconsciousness of a cropped poll. 
 
 " Father is still so much troubled in his 
 mind about that tree," she said. ''You 
 know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne ? 
 the tall one in front of the house that he 
 thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you 
 come and see if you can persuade him out 
 oi^ his notion ? I can do nothing."
 
 230 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 He accompanied her to the cottage, and 
 she conducted him up stairs. John South 
 was pillowed up in a chair between the bed 
 and the window, exactly opposite the latter, 
 towards which his face was turned. 
 
 '' Ah, neighbour Winterborne," he said. 
 " I wouldn't have minded if my life had 
 only been my own to lose ; I don't vallie it 
 in much of itself, and can let it go if 'tis 
 required of me. But to think what 'tis worth 
 to you, a young man rising in life, that do 
 trouble me ! It seems a trick of dishonesty 
 towards ye to go off at fifty-five ! I could 
 bear up, I know I could, if it were not for 
 the tree — yes, the tree 'tis that's killing me. 
 There he stands, threatening my life every 
 minute that the wind do blow. He'll come 
 down upon us, and squat us dead ; and what 
 will ye do when the life on your property 
 is taken away ! " 
 
 " Never you mind me — that's of no
 
 xm. THE WOODLANDERS. 231 
 
 consequence," said Giles. '' Think of yourself 
 alone." 
 
 He looked out of the window in the 
 direction of the woodman's gaze. The tree 
 was a tall elm, familiar to him from child- 
 hood, which stood at a distance of two- 
 thirds its own heio^ht from the front of 
 South's dwellincr. Whenever the wind blew, 
 as it did now, the tree rocked, naturally 
 enough ; and the sight of its motion, and 
 sound of its sighs, had gradually bred the 
 terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind. 
 Thus he would sit all day, in spite of per- 
 suasion, watching its every sway, and listen- 
 ing to the melancholy Gregorian melodies 
 which the air wrung out of it. This fear 
 it apparently was, rather than any organic 
 disease, which was eating away the health 
 of John South. 
 
 As the tree waved South waved his head, 
 making it his fugleman with abject obudi-
 
 232 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 ence. " Ah, when it was quite a small tree," 
 he said, ''and I was a little boy, I thought 
 one day of chopping it off with my hook to 
 make a clothes-line prop with. But I put 
 off doing it, and then I again thought that 
 I would ; but I forgot it, and didn't. And 
 at last it got too big, and now 'tis my 
 enemy, and will be the death of me. Little 
 did I think, when I let that sapling stay, 
 that a time would come when it would 
 torment me, and dash me into my grave." 
 
 '' No, no," said Winterborne and Marty 
 soothingly. But they thought it possible 
 that it might hasten him into his grave, 
 though in another way than by falling. 
 
 '' I tell you what," added Winterborne ; 
 '' I'll climb up this afternoon, and shroud 
 off the lower boughs, and then it won't 
 be so heavy, and the wind won't affect 
 it so." 
 
 " She won't allow it — a strange woman
 
 xm. THE WOODLAXDERS. 233 
 
 come from nobody knows where — she 
 won't have it done." 
 
 *• You mean Mrs. Charmond ? Oh, she 
 doesn't know there's such a tree on her 
 estate. Besides, shrouding is not felHng, 
 and I'll risk that much." 
 
 He went out, and when afternoon came 
 he returned, took a bill-hook from the 
 shed, and with a ladder climbed into the 
 lower part of the tree, where he began 
 lopping off — ''shrouding" as they called 
 it at Hintock — the lowest bouo-hs. Each 
 of these quivered under his attack, bent, 
 cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having 
 cut away the lowest tier he stepped off 
 the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, 
 and attacked those at the next level. Thus 
 he ascended with the progress of his work 
 far above the top of the ladder, cutting 
 away his perches as he v.^ent, and Icaving 
 nothing but a bare stem below him.
 
 2M THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 The work was troublesome, for the tree 
 was large. The afternoon wore on, turning 
 dark and misty about four o'clock. From 
 time to time Giles cast his eyes across 
 towards the bedroom-window of South, 
 where, by the flickering fire in the 
 chamber, he could see the old man watch- 
 ing him, sitting motionless with a hand 
 upon each arm of the chair. Beside him. 
 sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards 
 the skyey field of his operations. 
 
 A curious question suddenly occurred to 
 Winterborne, and he stopped his chopping. 
 He was operating on another person's 
 property to prolong the years of a lease 
 by whose termination that person would 
 considerably benefit. In that aspect of 
 the case he doubted if he ought to go on. 
 On the other hand he was working to save 
 a man's life, and this seemed to empower 
 him to adopt arbitrary measures.
 
 XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 235 
 
 The wind had died down to a calm, 
 and while he was weighing the circum- 
 stances he saw cominor alonof the road 
 through the increasing mist a figure which, 
 indistinct as it was, he knew well. It 
 was Grace Melbury, on her way out from 
 the house, probably for a short evening 
 walk before dark. He arranged himself 
 for a greeting from her, since she could 
 hardly avoid passing immediately beneath 
 the tree. 
 
 But Grace, though she looked up and 
 saw him, was just at that time too full of 
 the words of her father to give him any 
 encouragement. The years-long regard 
 that she had had for him was not kindled 
 by her return into a flame of sufficient 
 brilliancy to make her rebellious. Think- 
 inor that she might not see him, he cried, 
 " Miss Melbury, here I am." 
 
 She turned up her head again. She
 
 236 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 was near enough to see the expression of 
 his face, and the nails in his soles, silver- 
 bright with constant walking. But she 
 did not reply ; and dropping her glance 
 again went on. 
 
 Winterborne's face grew strange ; he 
 mused, and proceeded automatically with 
 his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone 
 far. She had reached a gate, whereon 
 she had leant sadly, and whispered to 
 herself, '' What shall I do ? " 
 
 A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed 
 her w-alk, passing under the tree again on 
 her return. Again he addressed her. 
 '' Grace," he said, when she was close to 
 the trunk, ''speak to me." She gazed 
 straight up, shook her head without 
 stopping, and went on to a little distance, 
 where she stood observing him from 
 behind the hedge. 
 
 Her coldness had been kindly meant.
 
 XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 237 
 
 If it was to be done, she had said to 
 herself, it should be begun at once. 
 While she stood out of observation Giles 
 seemed to recognise her meaning • with 
 a sudden start he worked on, climbing 
 higher into the sky, and cutting himself 
 off more and more from all intercourse 
 with the sublunary world. At last he 
 had worked himself so high up the elm, 
 and the mist had so thickened, that he 
 could only just be discerned as a dark 
 grey spot on the light grey zenith ; he 
 would have been altogether out of notice 
 but for the stroke of his bill-hook, and 
 the flight of a bough downward, and its 
 crash upon the hedge at intervals. 
 
 It was not to be done thus, after all : 
 plainness and candour were best. She 
 went back a third time ; he did not see 
 her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at 
 his unconscious figure, loth to put an end
 
 238 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 to any kind of hope that might hve on 
 in him still. 
 
 "Giles — Mr. Winterborne." she said. 
 
 His work so rustled the boughs that 
 he did not hear. 
 
 *' Mr. Winterborne!" she cried again, 
 and this time he stopped, looked down, 
 and replied. 
 
 *' My silence just now was not accident," 
 she said in an unequal voice. " My father 
 says it is better for us not to think too 
 much of that — engagement, or understand- 
 ing, between us, that you know of. I, 
 too, think that upon the whole he is right. 
 But we are friends, you know, Giles, and 
 almost relations." 
 
 ''\^ery well," he answered, in an en- 
 feebled voice which barely reached down 
 the tree. " I have nothing to say, Grace — 
 I cannot say anything till I've thought a 
 while ! "
 
 XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 259 
 
 She added, with emotion in her tone, 
 " For myself I would have married you — 
 some day — I think. But I give way, for 
 I see it would be unwise.'' 
 
 He made no reply, but sat back upon 
 a bough, placed his elbow in a fork, and 
 rested his head upon his hand. Thus he 
 remained till the fog and the night had 
 completely inclosed him from her view. 
 
 Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a 
 tense pause between, and moved onward, 
 her heart feeling uncomfortably big and 
 heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, 
 instead of remaining still, immediately come 
 down from the tree to her, would she 
 have continued in that filial, acquiescent 
 frame of mind which she had announced 
 to him as final ? If it be true, as women 
 themselves have declared, that one of 
 their sex is never so much inclined to 
 throw in her lot with a man for good and
 
 240 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 all as hve minutes after she has told him 
 such a thing cannot be, the probabilities 
 are that something might have been clone 
 by the appearance of Winterborne on the 
 ground beside Grace. But he continued 
 motionless and silent in that gloomy 
 Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, 
 and she proceeded on her way. 
 
 The spot seemed now to be quite 
 deserted. The lifjht from South's window 
 made rays on the fog, but did not reach 
 the tree. A quarter of an hour passed, 
 and all was blackness overhead. Giles 
 had not yet come down. 
 
 Then the tree seemed to shiver, then 
 to heave a sieh : a movement was audible, 
 and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly 
 to the ground. He had thought the matter 
 out ; and having returned the ladder and 
 bill-hook to their places, pursued his way 
 homeward. He would not allow this
 
 XIII. THE WOODLAXDERS. 241 
 
 incident to affect his outer conduct any 
 more than the dano-er to his leaseholds 
 had done, and went to bed as usual. 
 
 Two simultaneous troubles do not always 
 make a double trouble ; and thus it came 
 to pass that Giles's practical anxiety about 
 his houses, which would have been enough 
 to keep him awake half the night at any 
 other time, was displaced and not re- 
 inforced by his sentimental trouble about 
 Grace Melbury. This severance was in 
 truth more like a burial of her than a 
 rupture with her, but he did not realise 
 so much at present ; even when he arose 
 in the morning he felt quite moody and 
 stern ; as vet the second note in the eamut 
 of such emotions, a distractinof regret for 
 his loss, had not made itself heard. 
 
 A load of oak timber was to be sent 
 away that morning to a builder whose works 
 were in a town many miles off. The trunks 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 2+2 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 were chained down to a heavy timber car- 
 riage with enormous red wheels, and four of 
 the most powerful of Melbury's horses were 
 harnessed in front to draw them. 
 
 The horses wore their bells that day. 
 There were sixteen to the team, carried on 
 a frame above each animal's shoulders, and 
 tuned to scale, so as to form two octaves, 
 running from the highest note on the right 
 or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the 
 left or near-side of the shaft-horse. Melbury 
 was amono; the last to retain horse-bells in 
 that neighbourhood ; for living at Little 
 Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as 
 narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, 
 these sound-signals were still as useful to 
 him and his neighbours as they had ever 
 been in former times. Much backing was 
 saved in the course of a year by the warning 
 notes they cast ahead ; moreover the tones 
 of all the teams in the district being known
 
 XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 243 
 
 to the carters of each, they could tell a long 
 way off on a dark night whether they were 
 about to encounter friends or strangers. 
 
 The fog of the previous evening still 
 lingered so heavily over the woods that the 
 morning could not penetrate the trees till 
 long after Its time. The load being a 
 ponderous one. the lane crooked, and the 
 air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he 
 often did, to accompany the team as far as 
 the corner, where It would turn Into a 
 wider road. 
 
 So they rumbled on, shaking the founda- 
 tions of the roadside cottages by the weight 
 of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming 
 harmoniously over all, till they had risen out 
 of the valley and were descending towards 
 the more open route, the sparks rising from 
 their creaking skid and nearly setting fire 
 to the dead leaves alongside. 
 
 Then occurred one of the very Incidents 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 against which the bells were an endeavour 
 to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their 
 eyes, quite close to them, the two lamps of 
 a carriage, haloed by the fog. Its approach 
 had been quite unheard by reason of their 
 own noise. The carriaQ;e was a covered 
 one, while behind it could be discerned 
 another vehicle laden with luggage. 
 
 Winterborne went to the head of the 
 team, and heard the coachman telling the 
 carter that he must turn back. The carter 
 declared that this was impossible. 
 
 " You can turn if you unhitch your string- 
 horses," said the coachman. 
 
 "It is much easier for you to turn than 
 for us," said Winterborne. " We've five 
 ton of timber on these wheels if we've 
 an ounce." 
 
 *' But I've another carriage with luggage 
 at my back." 
 
 Winterborne admitted the strength of the
 
 XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 245 
 
 argument. " But even with that," he said, 
 " you can back better than we. And you 
 ought to, for you could hear our bells 
 half a mile off." 
 
 '' And you could see our lights." 
 *'We couldn't, because of the fog." 
 " Well, our time's precious," said the 
 coachman haughtily. " You are only going 
 to some trumpery little village or other in 
 the neighbourhood, while we are going 
 straight to Italy." 
 
 " Driving all the way, I suppose ? " said 
 Winterborne sarcastically. 
 
 The contention continued in these terms 
 till a voice from the interior of the carriage 
 inquired what w^as the matter. It was a 
 lady's voice. 
 
 She was briefly informed of the timber 
 people's obstinacy ; and then Giles could 
 hear her telling the footman to direct the 
 timber people to turn their horses' heads.
 
 246 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 The message was brought, and Winter- 
 borne sent the bearer back to say that he 
 begged the lady's pardon, but that he could 
 not do as she requested ; that though he 
 would not assert it to be impossible, it was 
 impossible by comparison with the slight 
 difficulty to her party to back their light 
 carriages. As fate would have it, the in- 
 cident wath Grace Melbury on the previous 
 day made Giles less gentle than he might 
 otherwise have shown himself, his confidence 
 in the sex being rudely shaken. 
 
 In fine, nothing could move him, and the 
 carriages were compelled to back till they 
 reached one of the sidings or turn-outs con- 
 structed in the bank for the purpose. Then 
 the team came on ponderously, and the 
 clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed 
 the discomfited carriages tilted up against 
 the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone 
 to the team's progress — a tone which, in
 
 XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 247 
 
 point of fact, did not at all attach to its 
 conductor's feelings. 
 
 Giles walked behind the timber, and just 
 as he had got past the yet stationary car- 
 riages he heard a soft voice say, ''Who is 
 that rude man ? Not Melbury ? " The 
 sex of the speaker was so prominent in 
 the voice that Winterborne felt a pang of 
 regret. 
 
 " No, ma'am. A younger man, in a 
 smaller way of business in Little Hintock. 
 Winterborne is his name." 
 
 Thus they parted company. "Why, Mr. 
 Winterborne," said the waggoner when they 
 were out of hearing, " that was she — Mrs. 
 Charmond ! Who'd ha' thought it ? Wlrdt 
 in the world can a woman that does nothing 
 be cock-watching out here at this time o' 
 day for ? Oh, going to Italy^ — yes, to be 
 sure, I heard she was going abroad. She 
 can't endure the winter here."
 
 248 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 Winterborne was vexed at the incident ; 
 the more so that he knew Mr. Melbury, in 
 his adoration of Hintock House, would be 
 the first to blame him, if it became known. 
 He accompanied the load to the end of the 
 lane, and then turned back with an intention 
 to call at South's to learn the result of the 
 experiment of the preceding evening. 
 
 It chanced that a few minutes before this 
 time Grace Melbury, who now rose soon 
 enough to breakfast with her father, in spite 
 of the unwontedness of the hour, had been 
 commissioned by him to make the same in- 
 quiry at South's. Marty had been standing 
 at the door when Miss Melbury arrived. 
 Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. 
 Charmond's carriages, released from the ob- 
 struction up the lane, came bowling along, 
 and the two girls turned to regard the 
 spectacle. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but
 
 XIII. THE WOODLANDERS. 249 
 
 there was sufficient light for them to discern 
 her outHne between the carriage windows. 
 A noticeable feature in her tourmire was a 
 magnificent mass of braided locks. 
 
 " How well she looks this morning!" said 
 Grace, forgetting Mrs. Charmond's slight in 
 her generous admiration. ''Her hair so 
 becomes her worn that way. I have never 
 seen any more beautiful ! " 
 
 ** Nor have I, miss," said Marty drily, 
 and unconsciously stroking her crown. 
 
 Grace watched the carriages with lingering 
 regret till they were out of sight. She then 
 learnt of Marty that South was no better. 
 Before she had come away Winterborne 
 approached the house, but seeing that one 
 of the two girls standing on the door- 
 step was Grace he suddenly turned back 
 again, and sought the shelter of his own 
 home till she should have gone away.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The encounter with the carnages forced 
 Winterborne's mind back ao-ain to the 
 houses of his which would fall into Mrs. 
 Charmond's possession in the event of 
 South's death. He marvelled what could 
 have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and 
 other village people, to exchange their old 
 copyholds for life-leases. And he was much 
 struck with his father's negligence in not 
 insuring South's life. 
 
 After breakfast he went up stairs, turned 
 over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas 
 bag which lay between the mattress and
 
 CH. XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 251 
 
 the sacking. In this he kept his leases, 
 which had remained there unopened ever 
 since his father's death. It was the usual 
 hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such 
 documents. Winterborne sat down on the 
 bed, and looked them over. They were 
 ordinary leases for three lives, which a 
 member of the South family, some fifty 
 years before this time, had accepted of the 
 lord of the manor in lieu of certain copy- 
 holds and other rights, in consideration of 
 having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by 
 the said lord. They had come into his 
 father's possession chiefly through his 
 mother, who was a South. 
 
 Pinned to the corner of one of the in- 
 dentures was a letter, which Winterborne 
 had never seen before. It bore a remote 
 date, the handwriting being that of some 
 solicitor or agent, and the signature the 
 landholder's. It was to the effect that at
 
 252 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 any time before the last of the stated Hves 
 should drop Mr. John Winterborne, or his 
 representative, should have the privilege 
 of adding his own and his son's life to the 
 life remaining on payment of a merely 
 nominal sum ; the concession being in con- 
 sequence of the elder Winterborne's consent 
 to demolish one of the houses and relin- 
 quish its site, which stood at an awkward 
 corner of the lane, and impeded the w^ay. 
 
 The house had been pulled down )ears 
 before. Why Giles's father had not taken 
 advantage of his privilege to insert his own 
 and his son's lives it was impossible to say. 
 In all likelihood death alone had hindered 
 him in the execution of that project, the 
 elder Winterborne havino^ been a man 
 w^ho took much pleasure in dealing with 
 house property, in his small way. 
 
 Since one of the Souths still survived 
 there was not much doubt that Giles could
 
 XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 253 
 
 do what his father had left undone, as far 
 as his own life was concerned. This possi- 
 bility cheered him much ; for by those 
 houses hung many things. Melbury's 
 doubt of the vouno^ man's fitness to be 
 the husband of Grace had been based not a 
 little on the precariousness of his holdings 
 in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved 
 to attend to the business at once, the fine 
 for renewal belno: a sum that he could 
 easily muster. 
 
 His scheme, however, could not be 
 carried out In a day ; and meanwhile he 
 would run up to South's as he had Intended 
 to do, to learn the result of the experiment 
 with the tree. 
 
 Marty met him at the door. " Well, 
 Marty," he said ; and was surprised to read 
 In her face that the case was not so hopeful 
 as he had imagined. 
 
 *' I am sorry for your labour," she said.
 
 254 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 "It is all lost. He says the tree seems 
 taller than ever." 
 
 WInterborne looked round at it. Taller 
 the tree certainly did seem, the gauntness 
 of its now naked stem being more marked 
 than before. 
 
 "It quite terrified him when he first saw 
 what you had done to it this morning," she 
 added. "He declares it will come down 
 upon us and cleave us, like ' the sword of 
 the Lord and of Gideon.' " 
 
 " Well ; can I do anything else ? " asked 
 he. 
 
 '' The doctor says the tree ought to be 
 cut down." 
 
 "Oh — you've had the doctor?" 
 
 " I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond 
 before she left heard that father was ill, 
 and told him to attend him at her expense." 
 
 " That was very good of her. And he 
 says it ought to be cut down. We mustn't
 
 XIV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 255 
 
 cut it down without her knowledge, I 
 suppose." 
 
 He went up stairs. There the old man 
 sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if his 
 gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily 
 the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind 
 having sprung up and blown the fog away ; 
 and his eves turned with its wavines. 
 
 They heard footsteps — a man's, but of 
 a lighter weight than usual. " There is 
 Dr. Fitzpiers again," she said, and 
 descended. Presently his tread was heard 
 on the naked stairs. 
 
 ]Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick chamber 
 as a doctor is wont to do on such occasions 
 and pre-eminendy when the room is that 
 of the humble cottager ; looking round 
 towards the patient with that preoccupied 
 gaze which so plainly reveals that he has 
 well-nigh forgotten all about the case and 
 the circumstances since he dismissed them
 
 256 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 from his mind at his last exit from the same 
 apartm.ent. He nodded to Winterborne, 
 who had not seen him since his peep over 
 the hedge at Grace, recalled the case to 
 his thoughts, and went leisurely on to 
 where South sat. 
 
 Edred Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a 
 finely formed, handsome man. His eyes 
 were dark and impressive, and beamed with 
 the light either of energy or of susceptivlty 
 — it was difficult to say which ; It might 
 have been a little of both. That quick, 
 glittering, empirical eye, sharp for the 
 surface of things if for nothing beneath, he 
 had not. But whether his apparent depth 
 of vision were real, or only an artistic 
 accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing 
 but his deeds could reveal. 
 
 His face was rather soft than stern, 
 charming than grand, pale than flushed ; 
 his nose — if a sketch of his features be de
 
 XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 257 
 
 rigueur for a person of his pretensions — 
 was artistically beautiful enough to have 
 been worth modelling by any sculptor not 
 over busy, and was hence devoid of those 
 knottv irreofularities which often mean 
 Dovver ; while the classical curve of his 
 mouth was not without a looseness in its 
 close. Either from his readily appreciative 
 mien, or his reflective manner, his presence 
 bespoke the philosopher rather than the 
 dandy — an effect which was helped by the 
 absence of trinkets or other trivialities from 
 his attire, though this was more finished 
 and up to date than is usually the case 
 among rural practitioners. 
 
 Strict people of the highly respectable 
 class, knowing a little about him by report, 
 said that he seemed likely to err rather in 
 the possession of too many ideas than too 
 few ; to be a dreamy 'ist of some sort, or 
 too deeply steeped in some false kind of 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 158 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 ism. However this may be, it will be seen 
 that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare 
 kind of gentleman and doctor to have 
 descended, as from the clouds, upon Little 
 Hintock. 
 
 *' This is an extraordinary case/' he said 
 at last to Winterborne, after examining 
 South by conversation, look, and touch, 
 and learning that the craze about the elm 
 w^as stronger than ever. " Come dow^n 
 stairs and I'll tell you what I think." 
 
 They accordingly descended, and the 
 doctor continued, '' The tree must be cut 
 down, or I won't answer for his life." 
 
 '' 'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree ; and I sup- 
 pose we must get permission ? " said Giles. 
 
 " Oh — never mind whose tree it is — what's 
 a tree beside a life ! Cut it down. I have 
 not the honour of knowing Mrs. Charmond 
 as yet ; but I am disposed to risk that much 
 with her."
 
 XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 259 
 
 "'Tis timber," rejoined Giles. "They 
 never fell a stick about here without its 
 being marked first,, either by her or the 
 agent." 
 
 " Then we'll inauofurate a new era forth- 
 
 o 
 
 with. How long has he complained of the 
 tree .^ " asked the doctor of iMartv. 
 
 " Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it 
 seems to haunt him like an evil spirit. He 
 says that it is exactly his own age, that it 
 has got human sense, and sprouted up 
 when he was born on purpose to rule him, 
 and keep him as its slave. Others have 
 been like it afore in Hintock." 
 
 They could hear South's voice up stairs. 
 " Oh, he's rocking this way ; he must come ! 
 And then my poor life, that's worth houses 
 upon houses, will be squashed out o' me. 
 Oh ! Oh ! " 
 
 '' That's how he goes on," she added. 
 
 "And he'll never look anywhere else but 
 
 s 2
 
 26o THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 out of the window, and scarcely have the 
 curtains drawn." 
 
 " Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. 
 Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. ** The best 
 plan will be to wait till the evening, when 
 it is dark, or early in the morning before he 
 is aw^ake, so that he doesn't see it fall, for 
 that would terrify him worse than ever. 
 Keep the blind down till I come, and then 
 I'll assure him, and show him that his 
 trouble is over." 
 
 The doctor departed, and they waited till 
 the evening. When it was dusk, and the 
 curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple 
 of woodmen to bring a cross-cut saw ; and 
 the tall threatening tree was soon nearly off 
 at its base. Next morning, before South 
 was awake, they went and lowered it 
 cautiously, in a direction away from the 
 cottage. It was a business difficult to do 
 quite silently, but it was done at last, and
 
 XIV. THE WOODLANDERS. 261 
 
 the elm of the same birth-year as the 
 woodman's lay stretched upon the ground. 
 The weakest idler that passed could now 
 set foot on marks formerly made in the 
 upper forks by the shoes of adventurous 
 climbers only ; once inaccessible nests could 
 be examined microscopically ; and on sway- 
 ing extremities where birds alone had 
 perched the bystanders sat down. 
 
 As soon as it was broad davlio^ht the 
 doctor came, and Winterborne entered the 
 house with him. Marty said that her father 
 was wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be 
 put into his chair. They ascended the stairs, 
 and soon seated him. He began at once to 
 complain of the tree, and the danger to his 
 life, and Winterborne's house property in 
 consequence. 
 
 The doctor signalled to Giles, who went 
 and drew back the printed cotton curtains. 
 '' 'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.
 
 262 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 As soon as the old man saw the vacant 
 patch of sky in place of the branched column 
 so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speech- 
 less ; his eyes rose from their hollows till the 
 whites showed all round, he fell back, and 
 a bluish whiteness overspread him. 
 
 Greatly alarmed they put him on the bed. 
 As soon as he came a little out of his fit, 
 he gasped, '' Oh. it is gone ! — where — 
 where ? " 
 
 His whole system seemed paralysed by 
 amazement. They were thunderstruck at 
 the result of the experiment, and did all 
 they could. Nothing seemed to avail. 
 Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but 
 uselessly. He lingered through the day, 
 and died that evening as the sun went 
 down. 
 
 '' D d if my remedy hasn't killed 
 
 him ! " murmured the doctor. 
 
 Dismissing the subject he went down
 
 XIV. THE. WOODLANDERS. 263 
 
 Stairs. When going out of the house he 
 turned suddenly to Giles and said, "Who 
 was that young lady we looked at over the 
 hedge the other day ? " 
 
 Giles shook his head, as if he did not 
 remember.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 When Melbury heard what had happened 
 he seemed much moved, and walked thought- 
 fully about the premises. On South's own 
 account he was genuinely sorry ; and on 
 Winterborne's he was the more grieved 
 in that this catastrophe had so closely 
 followed the somewhat harsh suggestion to 
 Giles to draw off from his daughter. 
 
 He was quite angry with circumstances 
 for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles a second 
 trouble when the needful one inflicted by 
 himself was all that the proper order of 
 events demanded. *' I told Giles's father
 
 CH. XV. THE WOGDLAXDERS. 265 
 
 when he came into those houses not to 
 spend too much money on Hfehold property 
 held neither for his own Hfe nor his son's," 
 he exclaimed ; " but he wouldn't listen to 
 me. x\nd now Giles has to suffer for it.' 
 
 "Poor Giles!" murmured Grace. 
 
 " Now, Grace, between us two, it is ver)-, 
 very remarkable. It is almost as if I had 
 foreseen this ; and I am thankful for your 
 escape, though I am sincerely sorry for 
 Giles. Had we not dismissed him already 
 we could hardly have found it in our hearts 
 to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful, 
 ril do all I can for him as a friend ; but 
 as a pretender to the position of my son- 
 in-law, that can never be thought of more." 
 
 And yet at that very moment the im- 
 practicability to which poor Winterborne's 
 suit had been reduced was touching Grace's 
 heart to a warmer sentiment on his behalf 
 than she had felt for vears concerninor him.
 
 266 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone 
 In the familiar house which had ceased to 
 be his ; taking a calm If somewhat dismal 
 survey of affairs. The pendulum of the 
 clock bumped every now and then against 
 one side of the case In which It swung, as 
 the muffled drum to his worldlv march. 
 Looking out of the window he could 
 perceive that a paralysis had come over 
 Creedle's occupation of manuring the garden, 
 owing, obviously, to a conviction that they 
 might not be living there long enough to 
 profit by next season's crop. 
 
 He looked at the leases again and the 
 letter attached. There was no doubt that 
 he had lost his houses by an accident which 
 might easily have been circumvented if he 
 had known the true conditions of his holding. 
 The time for performance had now lapsed 
 In strict law ; but why should not the inten- 
 tion be considered by the landholder when
 
 XV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 267 
 
 she became aware of the circumstances, and 
 his moral right to retain the holdings for 
 the term of his life be conceded ? 
 
 His heart sank within him when he per- 
 ceived that, despite all the legal reciprocities 
 and safeguards prepared and written, the 
 upshot of the matter was that It depended 
 upon the mere caprice of the woman he 
 had met the day before In such an un- 
 fortunate way, whether he was to possess 
 his houses for life or no. 
 
 While he was sitting and thinking a step 
 came to the door, and ]\Ielbury appeared, 
 looking very sorry for his position. Winter- 
 borne welcomed him by a word and a nod 
 and went on with his examination of the 
 parchments. His visitor sat down. 
 
 ''Giles," he said, "this Is very awkward, 
 and I am sorry for It. What are you going 
 to do ? " 
 
 Giles informed him of the real state of
 
 268 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 affairs, and how barely he had missed avail- 
 ing himself of his chance of renewal. 
 
 ''What a misfortune! Why was this 
 neglected ? Well, the best thing you can 
 do is to write and tell her all about it, and 
 throw yourself upon her generosity." 
 
 " I would rather not," murmured Giles. 
 
 ** But you must," said Melbury. 
 
 In short, he argued so cogently that Giles 
 allowed himself to be persuaded, and the 
 letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and 
 sent to Hintock House, whence, as he knew, 
 it would at once be forwarded to her. 
 
 Melbury, feeling that he had done so 
 good an action in coming as to extenuate his 
 previous arbitrary conduct, went home ; and 
 Giles was left alone to the suspense of 
 waiting for a reply from the divinity who 
 shaped the ends of the Hintock population. 
 By this time all the villagers knew of the 
 ircumstances, and being well-nigh like one
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 269 
 
 family a keen interest was the result all 
 round. 
 
 Everybody thought of Giles ; nobody 
 thought of Marty. Had any of them 
 looked in upon her during those moonlight 
 nights which preceded the burial of her 
 father thev would have seen the eirl abso- 
 lutely alone in the house with the dead man. 
 Her own chamber beinor nearest the stairs, 
 the coffin had been placed there for con- 
 venience ; and at a certain hour of the 
 night, when the moon arrived opposite the 
 window, its beams streamed across the still 
 profile of South, sublimed by the august 
 presence of death, and onward a few feet 
 further upon the face of his daughter, lying 
 in her little bed in the stillness of a repose 
 almost as dignified as that of her com- 
 panion — the repose of a guileless soul that 
 had nothing more left on earth to lose, 
 except a life which she did not over-value.
 
 70 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 South was burled, and a week passed, and 
 Winterborne watched for a reply from Mrs. 
 Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as 
 to its tenour ; but Winterborne had not told 
 him of the encounter w^ith her carriage, 
 when, if ever he had heard an affronted 
 tone on a woman's lips, he had heard it 
 on hers. 
 
 The postman's time for passing was just 
 after Melbury's men had assembled in the 
 spar-house ; and Winterborne, w^ho when 
 not busy on his own account would lend 
 assistance there, used to go out into the 
 lane every morning and meet the postman 
 at the end of one of the green rides through 
 the hazel-copse, in the straight stretch of 
 which his laden figure could be seen a long 
 w^ay off. Grace also was very anxious ; 
 more anxious than her father, more perhaps 
 than Winterborne himself This anxiety 
 led her into the spar-house on some pretext
 
 XV. THE WOODLAXDERS. 271 
 
 or Other almost every morning whilst they 
 were awaltinor the answer. 
 
 Eleven times had Winterborne gone to 
 that corner of the ride, and looked up its 
 long straight slope through the wet greys of 
 winter dawn. But though the postman's 
 bowed figure loomed In view pretty regu- 
 larly, he brought nothing for Giles. On the 
 twelfth day the man of missives, while yet 
 in the extreme distance, held up his hand, 
 and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He 
 took It into the spar-house before he broke 
 the seal, and those who were there gathered 
 round him while he read, Grace lookincr in 
 at the door. 
 
 The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond 
 herself, but from her agent at Sherton. 
 Winterborne glanced it over and looked up. 
 
 " It's all over," he said. 
 
 '' Ah ! " said they all together. 
 
 " Her lawver is instructed to sav that Mrs.
 
 272 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 Charmond sees no reason for disturbing the 
 natural course of things, particularly as she 
 contemplates pulling the houses down," he 
 said quietly. 
 
 " Only think of that ! " said several. 
 
 Winterborne had turned away, and said 
 vehemently to himself, "Then let her pull 
 "em down, and be d d to her ! " 
 
 Creedle looked at him with a face of seven 
 sorrows, saying, ' ' Ah, 'twas that sperrit that 
 lost 'em for ye, maister ! " 
 
 Winterborne subdued his feelings, and 
 from that hour, whatever they were, kept 
 them entirely to himself. Yet whatever the 
 value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, 
 it is apt to express more than talkativeness 
 when he dwells amono^ friends. The countrv- 
 man, who is obliged to judge the time of day 
 from changes in external nature, sees a 
 thousand successive tints and traits in the 
 landscape which are never discerned by him
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 273 
 
 who hears the regular chime of a clock, 
 because they are never in request. In like 
 manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn 
 comrade. The infinitesimal movement of 
 muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which 
 when accompanied by a voice goes unre- 
 garded, is watched and translated in the 
 lack of it, till virtually the whole surrounding 
 circle of familiars is charged with the re- 
 served one's moods and meanings. 
 
 So with Winterborne and his neighbours 
 after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his 
 tongue ; and they observed him, and knew 
 that he was discomposed. 
 
 Encountering Alelburyone day, his manner 
 was that of a man who abandoned all claims. 
 " I am glad to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he 
 said, in a low voice, whose quality he endea- 
 voured to make as practical as possible. '' I 
 am afraid I shall not after this be able to 
 keep that mare I bought for the use of — a 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 possible wife, and as I don't care to sell her, 
 I should like, if you don't object, to give 
 her to Miss Melbury. The horse is very 
 quiet, and would be quite safe for her." 
 
 Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. 
 " You sha'n't hurt your pocket like that on 
 our account, Giles. Grace shall have the 
 horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for 
 her, and any expense you may have been 
 put to for her keep." 
 
 He would not hear of any other terms, 
 and thus it was arranged. They were now 
 opposite Melbury's house, and the timber- 
 merchant pressed Winterborne to enter, 
 Grace being out of the way. 
 
 '' Pull round the settle, Giles," said the 
 timber-merchant as soon as they were 
 within. " I should like to have a serious 
 talk with you." 
 
 Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne 
 frankly, and in quite a friendly way. He
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 275 
 
 declared that he did not Hke to be hard on a 
 man when he was in difficulty ; but he really 
 did not see how Winterborne could marry his 
 daughter now, without even a house to take 
 her to. 
 
 Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness 
 of his situation, but from a momentary gasp 
 of hope — a feeling that he would like to know 
 Grace's mind from her own lips, he did not 
 speak out positively even then. He accord- 
 ingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went 
 home to consider whether he would seek to 
 bring about a meeting with her. 
 
 In the evening while he sat quietly ponder- 
 ing he fancied that he heard a scraping on 
 the wall outside his house. The boughs of a 
 monthly rose which grew there made such a 
 noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring 
 he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. 
 He took up the candle and went out. 
 Nobody was near. As he turned the light 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 flickered on the whitewashed rough-cast of 
 the front, and he saw words written thereon 
 in charcoal, which he read as follows : — 
 
 "Oh, Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place, 
 And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace." 
 
 Giles went indoors. He had his suspicions 
 as to the scrawler of those lines, but he could 
 not be sure. What filled his heart far more 
 than curiosity about their authorship was a 
 terrible belief that they were turning out to 
 be true, try to regain Grace as he might. 
 They decided the question for him. He sat 
 down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, 
 stating that he shared to the full Melbury's 
 view of his own and his daughter's promise, 
 made some years before ; he wished that it 
 should be considered as cancelled, and they 
 themselves quite released from any obligation 
 on account of it. 
 
 Having fastened up this their plenary
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 277 
 
 absolution, he determined to get It out of 
 his hands, and have done with It ; to which 
 end he went off to ]\Ielbury's at once. It 
 was now so late that the family had all 
 retired ; he crept up to the house, thrust 
 the note under the door, and stole away as 
 silently as he had come. 
 
 Melbury himself was the first to rise the 
 next morning, and when he had read the 
 letter his relief was great, for he knew that 
 Giles could have made matters unpleasant if 
 he had chosen to work upon Grace. " \^ery 
 honourable of Giles, very honourable," he 
 kept saying to himself. " I shall not forget 
 him. Now to keep her up to her own true 
 level." 
 
 It happened that Grace went out for an 
 early ramble that morning, and to go In her 
 customary direction she could not avoid pass- 
 ing Winterborne's house. The morning sun 
 was shining flat upon Its white surface, and
 
 278 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 the words, which still remained, were imme- 
 diately visible to her. She read them. Her 
 face flushed to crimson. She could see Giles 
 and Creedle talking together at the back ; the 
 charred spar-gad with which the lines had 
 been written lay on the ground beneath the 
 wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne 
 would observe her action, she quickly went 
 up to the wall, rubbed out " lose " and in- 
 serted " keep " in its stead. Then she made 
 the best of her way home without looking 
 behind her. Giles could draw an inference 
 now if he chose. 
 
 There could not be the least doubt that 
 gentle Grace was warming to more sympathy 
 with, and interest in, Winterborne than ever 
 she had done while he was her promised 
 lover ; that since his misfortune those social 
 shortcomings of his, which contrasted so 
 awkwardly w^ith her later experiences of 
 life, had become obscured by the generous
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 279 
 
 revival of an old romantic attachment to him. 
 Though mentally trained and tilled into 
 foreignness of view, as compared with her 
 youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious 
 girl, and might, if left to herself, have de- 
 clined upon Winterborne without much 
 discontent. Her feelings just now were 
 so far from latent that the writing on 
 the w^all had quickened her to an unusual 
 rashness. 
 
 Havinof returned from her walk she sat 
 at breakfast silently. When her stepmother 
 had left the room she said to her father, " I 
 have made up my mind that I should like 
 my engagement to Giles to continue." 
 
 Melbury looked much surprised. 
 
 '' Nonsense," he said sharply. *' You don't 
 know what you are talking about. Look 
 here." 
 
 He handed across to her the letter 
 received from Giles.
 
 28o THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 She read it and said no more. Could he 
 have seen her write on the wall ? She did 
 not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it 
 this way, and there was nothing to do but 
 to acquiesce. 
 
 It was a few hours after this that Winter- 
 borne who, curiously enough, had not 
 perceived Grace writing, was clearing away 
 the tree from the front of South's late 
 dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her 
 doorway, a slim figure in meagre black, 
 almost w^ithout womanly contours as yet. 
 He went up to her and said : 
 
 '* Marty, why did you wTite that on my 
 wall last night .'* It was you, you know." 
 
 '' Because it was the truth." 
 
 '' Having prophesied one thing, why did 
 you alter it to another ? Your predictions 
 can't be worth much." 
 
 '' I have not altered it." 
 
 " But you have."
 
 XV. THE WOODLANDERS. 28] 
 
 '^ No." 
 
 " It is altered. Go and see." 
 
 She went, and read that in spite of losing 
 his dwelling-place he would keep his Grace. 
 Marty came back surprised. 
 
 *' Well," she said. "Who can have 
 made such nonsense of it?" 
 
 " Who indeed ? " said he. 
 
 " I have rubbed it all out, as the point 
 of it is quite gone." 
 
 '' You'd no business to rub it out ; I 
 meant to let it stay a little longer." 
 
 "Some idle boy altered it no doubt," 
 she murmured. 
 
 As this seemed very probable Winter- 
 borne said no more, and dismissed the 
 matter from his mind. 
 
 From this day of his life onward for a 
 considerable time Winterborne, thou^rh not 
 absolutely out of his house as yet, retired 
 into the background of human life and
 
 282 THE WOODLANDERS. CH. xv. 
 
 action thereabout — a feat not particularly 
 difficult of performance anywhere when the 
 doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. 
 Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her 
 write, made no further sign, and the frail 
 barque of fidelity that she had thus timidly 
 launched was stranded and lost.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the 
 hill, in a house of much less pretension, 
 both as to architecture and as to maQ^nitude, 
 than the timber merchant's. The latter had 
 without doubt been once the manorial 
 residence appertaining to the snug and 
 modest domain of Little Hintock, of which 
 the boundaries were now lost by its absorp- 
 tion into the adjoining estate of Mrs. 
 Charmond. Though the ^lelburys them- 
 selves were unaware of the fact, there was 
 every reason to believe — at least so the 
 parson said — that the owners of that little
 
 284 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 manor had been Melbury s own ancestors, 
 the family name occurring in numerous 
 documents relating to transfers of land about 
 the time of the civil wars. 
 
 Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, 
 was small, box-like, and comparatively 
 modern. It had been occupied, and was in 
 part occupied still, by a retired farmer and 
 his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival in 
 quest of a home, had accommodated him by 
 receding from their front rooms into the 
 
 o 
 
 kitchen quarter, w^hence they administered 
 to his wants, and emerged at regular inter- 
 vals to receive from him a not unwelcome 
 addition to their income. 
 
 The cottage and its garden were so re- 
 gular in their plan that they might have 
 been laid out by a Dutch designer of the 
 time of William and Mary. In a low, dense 
 hedge was a door, over which the hedge 
 formed an arch, and from the Inside of the
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 285 
 
 door a straight path, bordered with chpped 
 box, ran up the slope of the garden to the 
 porch, which was exactly in the middle of 
 the house-front, with two windows on each 
 side. Right and left of the path were first 
 a bed of gooseberry-bushes ; next of cur- 
 rant ; next of raspberry ; next of strawberry ; 
 next of old-fashioned flowers ; at the corners 
 opposite the porch being spheres of box re- 
 sembling a pair of school globes. Over the 
 roof of the house could be seen the orchard 
 on yet higher ground, and behind the 
 orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the 
 crest of the hill. 
 
 Opposite the garden door and visible 
 from the parlour window w'as a swing-gate 
 leading into a field, across w-hich there ran 
 a footpath. The swing-gate had just been 
 re-painted, and on one fine afternoon, before 
 the paint was dry, and while gnats stuck 
 dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in
 
 286 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 his room abstractedly looking out at the 
 different pedestrians who passed along that 
 route. Being of a philosophical stamp he 
 perceived that the character of each of 
 these travellers exhibited itself in a some- 
 what amusing manner by his or her method 
 of handling the gate. 
 
 As regarded the men there was not much 
 variety : they gave the gate a kick and 
 passed through. The women were more 
 contrasting. To them the sticky wood work 
 was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a 
 treachery, as the case might be. 
 
 The first that he noticed was a bouncinQ- 
 young woman with her skirts tucked up and 
 her hair wild. Fitzpiers knew her as Suke 
 Damson. She grasped the gate without 
 looking, giving it a supplementary push with 
 her shoulder, when the white imprint drew 
 from her an exclamation in language not 
 too refined. She went to the green bank,
 
 XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 287 
 
 sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, 
 cursing the while. 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha!" laucrhed the doctor. 
 
 The next was a girl with her hair cropped 
 short, in whom the surgeon recognised the 
 daughter of his late patient, the woodman 
 South. jNIoreover a black bonnet that she 
 wore by way of mourning unpleasantly re- 
 minded him that he had ordered a tree 
 felling which had caused her parent's death. 
 She walked in thought, and not recklessly ; 
 but her preoccupation led her to grasp 
 without suspicion the bar of the gate, and 
 touch it with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorr\- 
 that she should have soiled that new black 
 frock, poor as it was, for it was probabl)- 
 her only one. She looked at her hand and 
 arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off 
 the disfigurement with an unmoved face, 
 and as if without abandonincj her oricrinal 
 thoughts. Thus she went on her way.
 
 288 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Then there came over the green quite a 
 different sort of personage. She walked as 
 delicately as If she had been bred In town, 
 and as firmly as If she had been bred In 
 the country ; she seemed one who dimly 
 knew her appearance to be attractive, but 
 who retained some of the charm of Ig- 
 norance by forgetting self In a general 
 penslveness. She approached the gate. 
 
 To let such a creature touch It even with 
 the tip of her glove was to FItzpIers almost 
 like letting her proceed to tragical self- 
 destruction. He jumped up and looked for 
 his hat, but was unable to find the right one ; 
 glancing again out of the w^Indow he saw 
 that he was too late. Having come up she 
 looked at the gate, picked up a little stick, 
 and using it as a bayonet pushed open the 
 obstacle without touching It at all. 
 
 He steadily watched her out of sight, 
 recognising her as the very young lady
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 289 
 
 whom he had seen once before and been 
 unable to Identify. Whose could that emo- 
 tional face be ? All the others he had seen 
 in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their 
 crude rusticity ; the contrast offered by this 
 suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. 
 
 Precisely these thoughts had occurred to 
 him at the first time of seeing her ; but he 
 now went a little further with them, and 
 considered that as there had been no car- 
 riage lately in that spot she could not have 
 come a very long distance. She must be 
 somebody staying at Hintock House — pos- 
 sibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had 
 heard so much — at any rate an inmate ; 
 and this probability was sufficient to set a 
 mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat 
 dull sky. 
 
 Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had 
 been perusing. It happened to be that of 
 a German metaphysician, for the doctor was 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 not a practical man, except by fits, and 
 much preferred the ideal world to the real, 
 and the discovery of principles to their 
 application. The young lady remained In 
 his thouo^hts. He mlg^ht have followed her ; 
 
 o o 
 
 but he was not constitutionally active, and 
 preferred a conjectural pursuit. However, 
 when he went out for a ramble just before 
 dusk he insensibly took the direction of 
 HIntock House, which was the way Grace 
 had been walkinof, her mind havlnof run on 
 Mrs. Charmond that day ; though she had 
 returned long since by another route. 
 
 Fitzpiers reached the edge of the glen, 
 overlooking the manor-house. The shutters 
 were shut, and only one chimney smoked. 
 The mere aspect of the place was enough 
 to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had 
 gone away, and that nobody else was stay- 
 ing there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disap- 
 pointment that the young lady was not
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 291 
 
 Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so 
 much ; and without pausing longer to gaze 
 at a carcase from which the spirit had flown 
 he bent his steps homeward. 
 
 Later in the evening Fitzpiers was sum- 
 moned to visit a cottage -patient about two 
 miles distant. Like the majority of young 
 practitioners in his vicinity he was far from 
 having assumed the dignity of being driven 
 his rounds by a servant in a brougham 
 that flashed the sunlight like a mirror ; his 
 way of getting about was by means of a 
 gig which he drove himself, hitching the 
 rein of the horse to the gate-post, shutter- 
 hook, or garden - paling of the domicile 
 under visitation, or giving pennies to little 
 boys to hold the animal during his stay — 
 pennies which were well earned when the 
 cases to be attended were of a certain 
 cheerful kind that wore out the patience of 
 the little boys. 
 
 u 2
 
 »92 THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 On this account of travelling alone the 
 night-journeys which Fitzpiers had fre- 
 quently to take were dismal enough, an 
 apparent perversity in nature ruling that 
 whenever there was to be a birth in a par- 
 ticularly inaccessible and lonely place that 
 event should occur in the night. The sur- 
 geon, having been of late years a town 
 man, hated the solitary midnight woodland 
 He was not altogether skilful with the 
 reins, and it often occurred to his mind 
 that if in some remote depths of the trees 
 an accident were to happen, his being alone 
 might be the death of him. Hence he 
 made a practice of picking up any country- 
 man or lad w^hom he chanced to pass by, 
 and under the disguise of treating him to 
 a nice drive obtained his companionship on 
 the journey, and his convenient assistance 
 in opening gates. 
 
 The doctor had started on his way out
 
 XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 293 
 
 of the village on the night in question when 
 the light of his lamps fell upon the musing 
 form of Winterborne, walking leisurely along, 
 as if he had no object in life. Winterborne 
 was a better class of companion than the 
 doctor usually could get, and he at once 
 pulled up and asked him if he would 
 like a drive through the wood that fine 
 night. 
 
 Giles seemed rather surprised at the 
 doctor's friendliness, but said that he had 
 no objection, and accordingly mounted 
 beside JMr. Fitzpiers. 
 
 They drove along under the black 
 boughs which formed a network upon the 
 stars. Looking up as they passed under a 
 horizontal bough they sometimes saw objects 
 like large tadpoles lodged diametrically 
 across it, which Giles explained to be 
 pheasants at roost ; and they sometimes 
 heard the report of a gun, which reminded
 
 »94 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 him that others knew what those tadpole 
 shapes represented as well as he. 
 
 Presently the doctor said what he had 
 been going to say for some time : 
 
 " Is there a young lady staying in this 
 neighbourhood — a very attractive girl — 
 w^ith a little white boa round her neck, 
 and white fur round her gloves ? " 
 
 Winterborne, of course, knew in a 
 moment that Grace, whom he had caught 
 the doctor peering at, was represented by 
 these accessories. With a wary grimness 
 induced by the circumstances, he evaded 
 an answer by saying, " I saw a young 
 lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other 
 day ; perhaps it was she." 
 
 " It might have been," said Fitzpiers. 
 '' She is quite a gentlewoman — the one I 
 mean. She cannot be a permanent resi- 
 dent in Hintock, or I should have seen 
 her before. Nor does she look like one."
 
 XVI. THE WOODLAXDERS. 295 
 
 *' She is not stavinc/ at Hintock House?" 
 
 *' No ; It Is closed.*' 
 
 ** Then perhaps she Is staying at one 
 of the cottages, or farmhouses ? " 
 
 '* Oh no — you mistake. She was a 
 different sort of girl altogether." As Giles 
 was nobody FItzpIers treated him accord- 
 ingly, and rhapsodised to the night in 
 continuation : 
 
 " She mov^ed upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
 A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
 One impulse of her being— in her lightness 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, 
 Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue. 
 To nourish some far desert : she did seem 
 Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, 
 Like the bright shade of some immortal dream 
 Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark 
 stream." 
 
 The charm of the lines seemed to 
 Winterborne to be somehow the resuh 
 of his lost Love's charms upon Fitzplers. 
 
 *' You seem to be mightily In love with
 
 ig6 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 her, sir," he said, with a sensation of heart- 
 sickness, and more than ever resolved not 
 to mention Grace by name. 
 
 '' Oh, no — I am not that, Winterborne ; 
 people living insulated, as I do by the 
 solitude of this place, get charged with 
 emotive fluid like a Leyden jar with 
 electric, for want of some conductor at 
 hand to disperse it. Human love is a 
 subjective thing — the essence itself of man, 
 as that great thinker Spinoza the philoso- 
 pher says — 2j)sa Jioniinis essentia — it is joy 
 accompanied by an idea which we project 
 against any suitable object in the line of 
 our vision, just as the rainbow iris is 
 projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree 
 indifferently. So that if any other young 
 lady had appeared instead of the one who 
 did appear. I should have felt just the 
 same interest in her, and have quoted 
 precisely the same lines from Shelley about
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 297 
 
 her, as about this one I saw. Such 
 miserable creatures of circumstance are 
 we all!" 
 
 " Well, it is what we call being in 
 love down in these parts, whether or no," 
 said W'interborne. 
 
 " You are riQ^ht enouc^h if vou admit 
 that I am in love with something in my 
 own head, and no thing-in-itself outside 
 it at all." 
 
 " Is it part of a country doctor's duties 
 to learn that view of things, may I ask, 
 sir ? " said W'interborne, adopting the 
 Socratic elpojveia with such well-assumed 
 simplicity that Fitzpiers answered readily — 
 
 " Oh, no. The real truth is, Winter- 
 borne, that medical practice in places like 
 this is a very rule of thumb matter ; a 
 bottle of bitter stuff for this and that old 
 woman — the bitterer the better — com- 
 pounded from a few simple stereotyped
 
 298 THE WOODLANDERS. CHAP. 
 
 prescriptions ; occasional attendance at 
 births, where mere presence is almost 
 sufficient, so healthy and strong are the 
 people ; and a lance for an abscess now 
 and then. Investigation and experiment 
 cannot be carried pn without more 
 appliances than one has here — though I 
 have attempted a little." 
 
 Giles did not enter into this view of 
 the case ; what he had been struck with 
 was the curious parallelism between Mr. 
 Fitzpiers's manner and Grace's, as shown 
 by the fact of both of them straying into 
 a subject of discourse so engrossing to 
 themselves that it made them forget it 
 was foreign to him. 
 
 Nothing further passed between himself 
 and the doctor in relation to Grace till 
 they were on their way back. They had 
 stopped at a wayside inn for a glass 
 of brandy-and-cider hot, and when they
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 299 
 
 were again in motion Fitzpiers, possibly 
 a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the 
 subject by saying, " I should like very 
 much to know who that young lady was.'' 
 
 ''What difterence can it make, if she's 
 only the tree your rainbow falls on ? " 
 
 - Ha, ha ! True." 
 
 " You have no wife, sir ? " 
 
 *' I have no wife ; and no idea of one. 
 I hope to do better things than marry 
 and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is 
 well for a medical man to be married ; 
 and sometimes, begad, 'twould be pleasant 
 enough in this place, with the wind roar- 
 ing round the house, and the rain and the 
 boughs beating against it. I hear that 
 you lost your lifeholds by the death of 
 South ? " 
 
 " I did. I lost by that in more ways 
 than one." 
 
 They had reached the top of Hintock
 
 -,oo THE WOODLANDERS. chap. 
 
 Lane or Street, if it could be called such 
 where three-quarters of the roadside con- 
 sisted of copse and orchard. One of the 
 tirst houses to be passed was Melbury's. 
 A light was shining from a bedroom window 
 facing lengthwise of the lane. Winterborne 
 glanced at it, and saw what was coming. 
 He had withheld an answer to the doctor's 
 inquiry, to hinder his knowledge of Grace. 
 But " who hath gathered the wind in his 
 fists ? who hath bound the waters in a 
 Q;arment ? " — he could not hinder what was 
 doomed to arrive, and might just as well 
 have been outspoken. As they came up 
 to the house Grace's figure was distinctly 
 visible, drawing the two white curtains 
 toofether w^hich were used here instead of 
 blinds. 
 
 ''Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers. 
 " How in the name of Heaven does she 
 come there ? "
 
 XVI. THE WOODLANDERS. 301 
 
 "In the most natural way in the world. 
 It is her home. Mr. Melbury is her 
 father." 
 
 " Indeed — indeed — indeed I How comes 
 he to have a daughter of that sort ? " 
 
 Winterborne laughed coldly. '' Won't 
 money do anything," he said, " if you've 
 promising material to work upon ? Why 
 shouldn't a Hintock girl, taken early from 
 home, and put under proper instruction, 
 become as finished as any other young 
 lady, if she's got brains and good looks 
 to begin with ? " 
 
 " No reason at all why she shouldn't, 
 murmured the surgeon with reflective dis- 
 appointment. '' Only I didn't anticipate 
 quite that kind of origin for her." 
 
 ''And you think an inch or two less of 
 her now." There was a little tremor in 
 Winterborne's voice as he spoke. 
 
 "Well," said the doctor with recovered
 
 302 THE WOODLANDERS. ch. xvi. 
 
 warmth ; "I am not so sure that I think 
 less of her. At first it was a sort of 
 blow ; but dammy, I'll stick up for her. 
 She's charming, every inch of her ! " 
 
 '' So she is," said Winterborne. . . . '' But 
 not for me ! " 
 
 From this ambiguous expression of the 
 reticent woodlander, Dr. Fitzpiers inferred 
 that Giles disliked Miss Melbury, possibly 
 for some haughtiness in her bearing towards 
 him, and had, on that account, withheld her 
 name. The supposition did not tend to 
 diminish his admiration for her. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 f 
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
 
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