Farmer Fowler watched the retreating figure idly; it was true she was a shapely maid. How lightly and rapidly she walked: ’twas a long way, too--three miles and more. He could have wished he had not been quite so hard with her. He might have asked her to sit down and rest for a while; he might have offered her a glass of cider. He almost wondered at his own outburst of irritation as he looked back on it now, and watched the girl’s retreating form with an increasing sense of shame. The toilsome day was over at last, the horses stabled, the men fed. Farmer Fowler was smoking the pipe of peace in his trellised porch with a pleasant sense of weariness. It was good to rest there under the honeysuckle in the twilight, and to think of how much had been accomplished during the long sunny hours which had preceded it. The sound of a light foot caused him to raise his eyes, which he had partially closed a few moments before, and the ensuing click of the garden gate made him sit upright and crane forward his head. A girl’s figure was making its way down the little paved path, a girl’s voice once more greeted him tremulously. “If you please, Mr. Fowler, I’m sorry to trouble you, but----” Jacob Fowler in the evening was a different person to the Jacob Fowler of the fields; he stretched out his hand and drew her forward by the sleeve. “Sit down, my maid,” he said; “sit ye down. You’ve a-had a longish walk, and for the second time to-day, too.” Bethia came into the shadow of the porch; her face looked pale in the dim light, and he could see the bosom of her light dress rise and fall quickly with her rapid breath. “If you please, sir,” she began again, “I know you’ll be vexed, but Father, he’s very much undone about the taxes. He’ll be gettin’ into trouble, he says, if he doesn’t send the money off to-morrow. He made me come back and ask you again. We’d take it very kind if you’d let us have what’s owing, sir.” Her tremulous tone smote Jacob; stretching out his big hand once more, he patted her shoulder encouragingly. “There, don’t ye be afeard, my maid; don’t ye. I’ll not bite ye.” A dimple peeped out near Bethia’s lip. “You very nearly did bite me this morning,” she said.