Thrusting his hand inside his waistcoat he brought out a few young fir shoots, green and tender, and deliciously aromatic as he bruised them with his strong fingers. “Smell!” he exclaimed, thrusting them suddenly under Alice’s pretty little freckled nose. She sniffed, and remarked without enthusiasm that it was a nice smell enough. “There’s n’ar another like it,” said Adam gruffly; and replacing them in his bosom he strode away to attend to the wants of the pigs. Decidedly the new man-of-all-work at the Three Choughs was a queer fellow; all who came to the place agreed in this estimate of him. He worked well, but yet, as Mrs. Cluett frequently averred, as if “he didn’t have no heart in it”; he was steady, civil, and obliging enough, but so silent, so unaccountably silent, that the regular visitors to the little inn could make nothing of him. The only person who could ever induce him to talk was Alice Cluett, and then it was at rare moments, and upon odd, and, to her, uninteresting topics. One evening he called out to her excitedly as she was crossing the little yard, declaring that he smelt the dew. Alice paused beside him, inhaling the sweet air of the spring dusk with inquiring nostrils. “They’ve a-been mowin’ over t’ Rectory to-day,” said she, “I see’d gardener gettin’ the machine out--’tis the first time this spring. ’Tis the cut grass what you do smell I do ’low.” “Nay,” cried Adam eagerly, “’tis the dew. Who’s to know it so well as me, my maid? Haven’t I stood and smelt it time and again yonder in the woods at Chudbury? ’Tis the dew on the young leaves and the noo grass. I used to tramp it down, and then stan’ still to smell it. The Warren must be lookin’ fine now.” Even in the dusk she could see his eyes dilate, and that tell-tale mouth of his curl upwards. “And there’s scarce a tree to be seen here,” he sighed presently. “Lard,” said practical Alice, “what a man you be, Adam! There’s plenty o’ things more worth lookin’ at than trees, I d’ ’low. There’s fields wi’ the crops comin’ on so nice, and the river, and the road wi’ all the folks’ traps an’ carts and wagons, and there’s the gardens wi’ flowers and ’taters and everything, and there’s men and women, an’--an’ maids,” she added, tilting her chin saucily. Adam brought back his eyes from the distant vision upon which they had been feasting to another vision nearer at hand, and his face relaxed. “Ah, there’s maids,” he agreed. “I never knowed any maid afore I knowed you, Alice. There’s times when----” He broke off suddenly. “There’s times when--what?” she inquired with interest. “I could a’most be glad sometimes that I did come away from the Warren,” said he. “I’m glad to know ye, Alice.” “Oh, and are ye?” rejoined she with a somewhat tremulous laugh.