Bride was riding slowly down the hill from St. Erme’s on her little Exmoor pony, with a grave and sorrowful face. Around her the green billowy downs stretched away in all their bright spring greenness, overhead the larks were carolling as though their hearts were filled with rapture, whilst far below the sea tossed and sparkled in the brilliant sunshine in a fashion that was exhilarating and gladsome. It was a day late on in March--one of those days not unfrequent at that season, especially in the south and west--a day that seems filled with a promise of coming summer--a day in which all nature rejoices, which stirs the pulses and sets the blood coursing joyously, and fills the air with subtle promises of life and hope. Bride’s face had been tranquil and happy as she rode up the heights towards Farmer Teazel’s farm, but it was sorrowful and troubled now as she returned, for she had failed in the mission on which she had been bound, and was experiencing one of those revulsions of feeling which often follow upon a period of solitary meditation and resolve, when the dreamer is brought face to face with the stern realities of human life and human nature. Bride’s mission to the farm had been to plead with the farmer to offer a place in his service to Saul Tresithny, now just out of prison. His sentence had been up a few weeks earlier, but he had been ill of fever in the prison hospital when the period of release came, and had only that week been set at liberty. All through the term of his imprisonment Bride’s thoughts and her prayers had been much exercised with him. The compassion she felt towards him partook of the nature of a great yearning tenderness, curious in a girl of her age and station, and she could not help believing that her feelings must be in some sort reflected in the minds of others. Her father she knew felt compassion for Saul, though he seldom spoke his name. Abner, as was natural, yearned over his grandson with a great love and tenderness, and both Mr. Tremodart and Mr. St. Aubyn were interested in him, and were willing to give him occupation in their service on his release, if he would accept it. But Saul’s known aversion to service in any of its branches was too well known in the place for any one to have much hope of his falling in with either of these offers. Abner shook his head whenever he was questioned on the subject, and said he feared Saul had not changed or softened with his incarceration. But the thought came to Bride that if his old master the farmer, with whom he had always got on so well, would offer him his old place at the farm, that offer would be accepted, and she had gone up to talk poor Saul’s case over with the kind-hearted yeoman, and get him to see the matter in the light that she herself viewed it.