"When was it?" asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance and bitterness returning. "What do you mean?" "Miss Margaret--a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when farmers' daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it. That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher's--warn you knaws her?--her tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I." "Told what?" sharply. "What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck night. 'Tain't no use caddling I--I can't tell ee no more. What, bean't you going to carry that basket no furder?" For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks. "Mebbe you'll give I a bit of snuff?" she said. He gave her a shilling and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be fixed on Geoffrey. "This is intolerable," he said to himself, "that he should make Margaret a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman allude to, and how came that earring lost?" It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket, readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, "The gurt chattering fool to come a' hindering I!" CHAPTER NINE. GLEANING. Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man's countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust, timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was laid low; and the acorns--first green, then faintly yellow--were ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.