“It’s a bit sudden, happen,” she went on, as he did not speak, “and yet I don’t know as it’s sudden, after all. It’s been coming along for a goodish while, I doubt, and what finished it off was you changing your spot in the yard. It made me feel queer like, after all these years. The folks settin’ round you had all on ’em got homes, an’ there you were settin’ among ’em wi’ none at all. There was Tommy Todd, you’ll think on, as nobody need want, wi’ as good a missis as there is in the country-side. There was Neddy Gibbs—him as is near half-rocked—he’s a rare good home at the back of him as well. Bob Martin and Billy Dent—ay, an’ his brother, Willie George—they’ve all on ’em homes they can gang to if they want. I could see the doors open at their backs, set for ’em to come in, but I couldn’t see owt at the back o’ Thomas Sill. I could set a door wi’ the best on ’em, I’ll be bound! I’m sure an’ certain I’d be fain to try....” But miracles under one’s eyes are the last things one believes. “It’s pity,” he muttered, refusing to look up. “I’m right enough where I be ... you’ve no call to fret. It’s pity ... same as you felt for him....” “It’s nowt o’ the sort,” she exclaimed angrily, and then laughed. “I’ll learn you whether it’s pity if you get talking stuff like yon! If it’s pity, I reckon any lass would do, same as I rather think I said afore. But yon home as I’m wanting for you can’t be made by nobody but me—and—eh, you daft lad—I’m wanting it an all!” It was the shortest lane in the world, just as the day was the longest in all time. Often enough, hurrying home, she had sighed at its length, but now it fled behind her while her feet were still. Every bend as it came was strange to her eyes, and, turning, she saw it new from the other side. The sun slid away from the fields like a curtain silently withdrawn, and up on the higher land the cutter whirred to a corner and was still. In the lane the night came long before it touched the land beyond—the visible, purple night that has no knowledge of the real dark. The roses, paled of their pink, showed whitened starry faces to the sky, shining above the road like blossoms laid on a pool. Only where some big tree leaned across was there any real night, and as they passed beneath it and so out, they lost each other for a moment in the dark, and found each other on the further side, just as in life they had lost each other for a time, and yet come together, after all. They heard the birds stir in sudden flutters and be still. They heard wild things in the hedgerow rustle and be still. Horses came to the fence and reached out shadowy heads, and through continual gates they caught the remnants of the lingering day. Sheep in the hedge-bottoms rose and scuttered away, the sound of their going ghostly in the dark. Cattle, lying heavy on the land, turned unaffrighted eyes at their approach. The night air pressed close, warm and a little damp, and there was dew on the long