“‘Is he coming to the wedding?’ “‘Oh, ay, if he chooses.’ “I now became concerned for my own future. Life at the Pennistans’ without Ruth would, I foresaw, be less agreeable although not actually unbearable. She and I had worked together in a harmony I could scarcely hope to reproduce with the hired girl who was to take her place, for you must realise that although I have only reported to you our conversations on the more human subjects of life, our everyday existence had been made up of hours of happy work and mutual interest. I seriously thought of leaving, and said as much to Dymock. “Some days afterwards that good young man came to me. “‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘of your leaving and of your not liking, as you told me, to go away from the Weald till after next spring. Now I’ve a proposal to make to you,’ and he told me of a cottage near his own place, with five acres, enough to support hens, pigs, and a cow, whose tenant had recently died. He suggested to me that I should rent this small holding for a year. ‘And you can walk over o’ nights, and have a bit of supper with us,’ he added hospitably. “The matter was adjusted, and I told Ruth with joy that I should be within half a mile of her in her new life. I was grieved to see that she first looked taken aback, then dismayed, then irritated. I say that I was grieved, but presently I found occasion to be glad, for I reflected that if she thus resented the disturbance of her solitude with her husband it could only be on account of her growing fondness for him, and as I could not now revoke my tenancy I resolved that I would at least be a discreet neighbour. “How smugly satisfied we all were at that time! I feel ashamed for myself and for the others when I think of it. “The first indication I had that anything was wrong came about a week before Ruth’s wedding, when, walking down a lane near Pennistans’ driving home the cattle, I passed Rawdon Westmacott. We were by then near November, so the evening was dark, and I was not sure of the man’s identity until we had actually crossed. Then I saw his sharp face, and recognised the subtly Oriental lilt of his walk. He looked angry when he saw that I was myself, and not one of the herdsmen he no doubt expected. I wondered what the fellow was doing on Pennistan’s land. “The weather was bitterly cold, all the leaves were gone from the trees, and the fat, wealthy Weald was turned to a scarecrow presentment of itself. Instead of the blue sky and great white clouds like the Lord Mayor’s horses, a hard sulphur sky greeted me in the early mornings, with streaks of iron gray cloud on the horizon, and a lowering red disc of sun. Underfoot the ground was frosty, and the frozen mud stood up in little sharp ridges. As it thawed during the day the clay resumed its slimy dominion, and I had to exchange my shoes for boots, as the clay pulled my shoes off my heels.