There was a sudden scuffling in the wood as Jeffray rode by, a score of black pigs running squeaking and grunting amid the dead leaves and bracken. Close to the road, under the shadow of a great beech, sat an old woman with her chin near her knees, her nose a red hook above her lipless mouth. Behind the crone, and leaning against the trunk of the tree, stood a girl in a green gown and scarlet stays laced up over her full yet girlish bust, her short gown displaying a pair of buckled shoes and neat, gray-stockinged ankles. She wore also a red cloak, the hood, lined with rabbit-skin, turned back upon her shoulders. Jeffray glanced at the pair as he reined in to avoid riding down a couple of pigs that were grunting and scurrying about the road. The girl in the red cloak was a tall wench with coal-black hair, petulant, full lips, cheeks tanned a rich red, a color that would have made the ladies of St. James’s appear pale and dim. Her eyes were of a hard and crude blue, looking almost fierce under their straight black brows. There was a haughty and intractable air about her. The sensuous curve of her strong figure seemed to suggest the agility and strength of a beautiful savage. The old woman had clambered up and was laying her stick across the backs of the pigs with a verve that did her hardihood credit. The girl by the tree stood motionless, as though in no mood for playing under-swine-herd to the old lady. She was staring boldly at Jeffray, with no play of emotion upon her face, no softening of her large and petulant mouth. She looked, indeed, like a child of the wild woods, taught to rely solely upon her senses, and those primitive instincts that the forest life had developed. The old woman dropped a courtesy to Jeffray as he rode on, but the girl by the tree favored him only with her barbaric stare. The storm wind was rising. It came crying through the wood like the massed trumpet-blasts of some black-bannered host. Jeffray drew his cloak about him, whipped up his horse, and held on for Rodenham. He still saw the hard blue eyes, the full, petulant lips, the black hair falling desirously about the ill-tempered and glowing face. He thought of Miss Jilian Hardacre’s rouged cheeks and simpering gray eyes. Surely the baronet’s daughter needed more blood under her delicate skin when even this forest wench made her seem thin and old. II It had begun to snow by the time Jeffray had left Pevensel Forest for the meadow-lands and brown fallows that spoke of civilization. Dusk had fallen, the whirling snow-flakes dimming the red glow in the west, yet filling the twilight with a gray radiance. Richard saw the lights of Rodenham village glimmering faintly in the valley below him. Soon he was riding through his own park with the thickening snow driving like mist amid the trees.