An hour or two later, a little covered taxed-cart stopped at Mr Avenel’s cottage, out of which stepped a young man with pale face and spare form, dressed in the Sunday suit of a rustic craftsman; then a homely, but pleasant, honest face, bent down to him smilingly; and two arms, emerging from under covert of a red cloak, extended an infant, which the young man took tenderly. The baby was cross and very sickly; it began to cry. The father hushed, and rocked, and tossed it, with the air of one to whom such a charge was familiar. “He’ll be good when we get in, Mark,” said the young woman, as she extracted from the depths of the cart a large basket containing poultry and home-made bread. “Don’t forget the flowers that the Squire’s gardener gave us,” said Mark the Poet. Without aid from her husband, the wife took down basket and nosegay, settled her cloak, smoothed her gown, and said, “Very odd!—they don’t seem to expect us, Mark. How still the house is! Go and knock; they can’t ha’ gone to bed yet.” Mark knocked at the door—no answer. A light passed rapidly across the windows on the upper floor, but still no one came to his summons. Mark knocked again. A gentleman dressed in clerical costume, now coming from Lansmere Park, on the opposite side of the road, paused at the sound of Mark’s second and more impatient knock, and said civilly— “Are you not the young folks my friend John Avenel told me this morning he expected to visit him?” “Yes, please, Mr Dale,” said Mrs Fairfield, dropping her curtsey. “You remember me! and this is my dear good man!” “What! Mark the poet?” said the curate of Lansmere, with a smile. “Come to write squibs for the election?” “Squibs, sir!” cried Mark indignantly. “Burns wrote squibs,” said the curate mildly. Mark made no answer, but again knocked at the door. This time, a man, whose face, even seen by the starlight, was much flushed, presented himself at the threshold. “Mr Morgan!” exclaimed the curate, in benevolent alarm; “no illness here, I hope?” “Cott! it is you, Mr Dale! Come in, come in; I want a word with you. But who the teuce are these people?” “Sir,” said Mark, pushing through the doorway, “my name is Fairfield, and my wife is Mr Avenel’s daughter!” “Oh, Jane—and her baby too! Cood—cood! Come in; but be quiet, can’t you? Still, still—still as death!” The party entered, the door closed; the moon rose, and shone calmly on the pale silent house, on the sleeping flowers of the little garden, on the old pollard with its hollow core. The horse in the taxed-cart dozed, unheeded; the light still at times flitted across the upper windows. These were the only signs of life, except when a bat, now and then attracted by the light that passed across the windows, brushed against the panes, and then, dipping downwards, struck up against the nose of the slumbering horse, and darted merrily after the moth that fluttered round the raven’s nest in the old pollard. CHAPTER XVIII.