The open gate through which she had strayed was reached all too quickly. When she had passed through she made him a curtsey and held out her hand. He touched it with his lips as if it were sacramental bread. She avowed herself much beholden to his kindness. "Shall I ever see you again, Mistress Barbara?" he asked in a low voice, for an old servant was hobbling down from the house to meet her. "My Aunt Wotherspoon is bed-ridden and receives no visitors." "But I could be of no further service to you?" pleaded Jeremy. She hesitated and then she said demurely: "It would be a humane action, sir, to see sometimes that this gate is shut, lest I stray through it again and drown myself in the river." Jeremy could scarce believe his ears. IV This was the beginning of Jeremy's love-story. He guarded the gate like Cerberus or Saint Peter. Sometimes at dawn he would creep out of his house and tramp through the dew-filled meadows to see that it was safely shut. During the day he would do sentry-go within sight of the sacred portal, and when the flutter of a mob-cap and a flowered muslin met his eye he would advance merely to report that the owner ran no danger. And then, one day, she bade him open it, and she came forth and they walked arm-in-arm in the meadows; and this grew to be a daily custom, to the no small scandal of the neighbourhood. Very soon, Jeremy learned her simple history. She was an orphan, with a small competence of her own. Till recently she had lived in Somersetshire with her guardian; but now he was dead, and the only home she could turn to was that of her bed-ridden Aunt Wotherspoon, her sole surviving relative.