Word came that John Raikes was short of teazel-heads, and Cicely prepared to cut them. She armed her legs with a pair of leggings of raw hide, and covered her fair hair and neck against the sun with a kerchief. She hung a basket about her neck with a strap and put into it two old buckskin gloves and a pair of sheep-shears. She timed herself so as to be up the Scout about the time Arthur was due to return along the Causeway, and set off. Save for herself, the whole village seemed to slumber. The blue-flowering tracts, of a blue so uncertain that of itself you could hardly have told whether it was near or distant, lay high up the sheep-tracks, and as she mounted grasshoppers filled the air with their dry rapid noise. The grass and yellow bents of the lower slopes were slippery as glass; and she rose slowly until she could look down on both slopes of the roof of the little church and see into the square beyond it. Three miles away in the slumbrous heat lay Horwick, its roof-windows making piercing little points of light, and the vista beyond that was a grey shimmer, somewhere in which lay Ford Town and parts she knew nothing of. She tucked her skirt into the tops of her leggings, drew on the gloves, and began to move slowly along the Scout, snipping the slaty-blue teazel-heads as she went. And as she worked, she thought of her husband, and tried to realise how she had come to marry him. It was all a jumble to her yet. In that strange gust of marrying she had answered she hardly knew how, except that, perhaps, of “Yes” and “No,” the “Yes” had come first. Not that she did not love him, as the phrase was, if that was all; but was there no more in it than that? She thought again of his perilous trade. She did not reckon it as goodness or wickedness, as she knew the parson would have done, but on its two chances--impunity or a shameful end. She had never heard of the man who, sent forth against his own tyrannous brother, knew that according to how he fared his meed was to be that of a deliverer or of a fratricide; yet she dimly understood that Arthur stood in a strait scarce less narrow.--Yes, she must love him, or that little shiver, as if of a chill, would not have taken her.... She set her gloved fist to her waist to straighten herself, aching and drowsy with stooping over the teazels. As she did so, her wrist was taken from behind. She had not heard his approach. “Arthur!” she said, and turned her head. It was her cousin. For a moment her smile vanished; then she smiled again, but with a quickening heart. He did not release her wrist. It was of little use to speak to him, and they stood regarding one another at arm’s length. She felt her courage falter; he was trying to daunt her with his madness. The hair of his face glinted like bits of copper wire in the strong sun. “Let me go, Eastwood,” she cried loudly. Still his bulging eyes strove to quell her. “I’ve seen him kiss you!” he muttered hoarsely. “Let me go, Eastwood!” she cried again.