“‘Can you lift that pail for me?’ she said, pointing, and I lifted the heavy pail, and poured it as she directed into the separator, a smooth Niagara of milk. “About three days later my thatcher unbosomed himself to me. Westmacott had disappeared from the farm, and of course every one for five miles round knew that Pennistan had turned him out. I don’t know how they knew it, but country people seem to know things like a swallow knows its way to Egypt. “I recommended my thatcher to speak privately to Amos first, which he did, and received that good man’s sanction and approval. “Then Ruth came to me, or, rather, I met her with the pig pail in her hand, and she stopped me. A distant reaper was singing on its way somewhere in the summer evening. “‘I’ve seen Leslie Dymock,’ she said abruptly. ‘Is it true that you....’ “‘I didn’t discourage him,’ I said as she paused. “Again she put to me that disconcerting question, ‘Why?’ “‘He’s a good fellow,’ I answered warmly. ‘He cares for you. He didn’t tell me. I guessed.’ “‘How?’ she asked. “‘Heavens!’ I cried, taking the pig pail angrily from her, ‘you positively rout me with your direct questions. Why? How? As if one’s actions could hold in a single why or how. Don’t you know that the stars of the Milky Way are as nothing compared with the complexity of men’s motives?’ “She gazed at me, and as I looked into her eyes I felt that I had been a fool, and that with certain human beings a single motive could sail serenely like a rising planet in the evening sky. Then I remembered I was still holding the pail. I set it down. “‘I am sorry,’ I said more gently, ‘I ought not to answer you like that. I like, I respect, and I trust Leslie Dymock, and for that reason I should at least be glad to see you consider his claim. As for my guessing, I had only to look at his face when you came.’ “‘I see,’ she said slowly. She bent to recover her pail. ‘I must be getting on to the pigs,’ and indeed those impatient animals were shrieking discordantly from the stye.