As she knelt on the brink and drank slowly from her hand, Hugh had space to note how white her face was and how weary her every gesture. So when she rose he drew her back a little to the roots of an oak tree, where he bade her sit and rest a time. Garrett shrugged his shoulders, when the word was passed to him, then tied the horses and went to stretch himself on the bank farther down-stream. Hugh returned to Lois, and, seating himself beside her, persuaded her to lean against him, till her eyes closed and he hoped that she might sleep. He sat very still and looked sometimes at her brown head against his shoulder, and sometimes at the branches of the oak above him and the clear sky beyond that was growing brighter and taking on a bluish tinge. He listened to the hurry of the brook and the restless stamp of the horses; then, shutting his eyes, he seemed only to see Everscombe manor house and the sunlight upon the eastern terrace. “Are you asleep, too?” The words were spoken softly, but they startled him through all his body. “I am awake now, in any case,” he replied, and laughed a little with a foolish sort of satisfaction as he looked down at Lois. For the tense look of the night before had left her eyes, and she had again the face of his old comrade at Everscombe. “Your poor arm will sleep next, Hugh. I am leaning too heavily against it.” “I had not felt it,—if you are content.” Lois smiled slightly and tremulously, then, slipping out one hand, drew her fingers through the wet grass. “There has been a heavy dew,” she said irrelevantly, “and it has soaked my shoes,—my shoe, I mean.” She let her feet just show beneath her petticoat, and Hugh had sight of one stout shoe and the toe of a small gray stocking. “You’ve been tramping with one foot half bare?” he broke out. “Nay, nay, I have been riding. I knew it not till this morning, so I did not mind. I must have left that other shoe in the closet where I hid away.” “Tell me, Lois, how came you there at Northrope?” he asked, after an instant. The girl’s face lost its flash of gayety. “Why, ’tis only—” she began, and, pulling some blades of grass, twisted them between her fingers without looking at him. “Last October ’twas, Aunt Delia said perchance I were best now go visit my mother’s kinsfolk in Northamptonshire. And last week they said I had best visit her again. O me, I know not why they will not have me! I do not eat so much, Hugh, and I am ready to be of service.” She pushed aside his arm and leaned forward with her head upon her knee; by the movement of her shoulders he knew that she was crying.