MAY came, sweet, fair and smiling. The crops bade fair to be good, and we looked forward to hay-making time with every assurance of a rich harvest. Everything was quiet as quiet could be. Of George I saw nothing at all. True I did not seek him, rather I shrank from meeting him. Our household settled down into its accustomed ways, and, such is the elasticity of the human mind, I began to look back upon the winter months as a troubled dream, only an occasional twinge in my right arm giving me a sharp reminder of the days I slung a hammer and pounded at the massive door of Rawfolds. I was wondrous happy. Health returned to my frame like the sap to the branch, and my heart was filled with all the sweet delight of love given and returned. There was no troth plighted as yet between Mary and me, but there grew up between us an unspoken acknowledgment of our love that bettered words. Faith was still with us, and as the weeks grew to months her melancholy melted away and a pensive content took its place. You did not find her singing like a lark, carolling the live-long day, as you did Mary, but there was about her an air of serene restfulness and calm that won all our hearts. With Mr. Webster she was an especial favourite, and she began, to his great delight, to teach a class in the Sunday school at Powle Moor. Faith was a rare scholar, tho' not, of course, learned in foreign tongues like John had been. She could write a beautiful hand and draw beautiful designs of birds and flowers and faces, which she wove in a marvellous way into the flourishes in her copy-books. And her figures and summing were like print. She taught the girls at the Powle to read and write, and she taught them so well that the boys rose in revolt and demanded that they too should join Miss Booth's class. It was a sight to see her leaving chapel of a Sunday afternoon. The scholars, boys and girls both, would wait till service was done that they might walk homewards with Miss Faith, and it was as sweet a sight as ever gladdened the eye of man to see her crossing the fields by the narrow lanes through the waving, nodding, rustling grass, that now began to sigh its own dirge, for hay-time drew near, a crowd of children in her train, a toddling urchin on either side clutching with chubby hand the folds of her skirt, and an advanced guard of sturdy lads marching on in front prepared to face imaginary lions and tigers in defence of their beloved teacher. Little Joe Gledhill and Jim Sugden fought a battle royal on Wimberlee because Faith had kissed Joe, whereas she had only given a lollipop to Jim, and on the strength of the kiss Joe went about bragging that when he was a man he should wed Faith and live happy ever after, the envy of all the boys in Slaithwaite, Lingards and Outlane.