Heber looked grim and weary as he approached. Since Sunday, when he had parted from Susannah, he had had no chance of leaving his work either to question his father at Talgwynne or to make any other attempt at discovering where Catherine had hidden herself. He did not know what to believe; his doubt of his cousin's truthfulness was strong and his opinion of Mrs. Job's wisdom great. Yet, as he looked back in cold blood at their ride in the dark and at his own roughness, he could not help seeing some likelihood in the girl's return to his rival. He was not accustomed to considering himself from the outside--few primitive men are; but he had thought a good deal as he went about his business in the solitudes of the mountains; and failure will open new vistas to those who are not eaten up by vanity. Though not given to succumbing to circumstances, Heber was tried by the enforced patience and inaction of the last week and his heart was heavy in him. If Susannah's letter had produced no effect on Charles, it had given him the keen pleasure of knowing that Heber was made a fool of as well as himself. The whole look of the man as he came to meet him sent the warmth of satisfaction through Saunders, because it suggested to him that he was out of spirits with the world. As the distance lessened between them his own expression proclaimed the feeling; and back again to his mind came the vision of their last meeting and Heber's smile. It was his turn to smile now. He stopped. "Well, have ye found her yet?" he asked. The shepherd made no pretence of misunderstanding him; his methods were too direct for that, and even the engrafted genteelness of Charles's points of view could not blind him to a certain nobility in the coarsely clad, weather-beaten fellow, which struck him at that moment as an additional outrage on himself. "I know where I won't find her, and that's wi' you," said Heber, at a venture. Charles was sharp enough to see where a vulnerable point would lie, and the overmastering longing to wound Heber inspired his tongue. "And that's where you're wrong," said he. "I've got her safe enough, and I'll keep her too--for a bit." The pupils of the shepherd's eyes seemed to be contracting as Saunders watched his face with an ecstatic sense of the success of his own words. "If I follow ye till midnight," Heber said, at last, "I'll see whether ye speak truth." He spoke with a slow, cold emphasis. Charles was a little disconcerted. Were the other to keep his word he would be likely to prove the falseness of his statement; were he to precede him to his house he would certainly do so. He suspected that Heber knew where he lived. "You'll have some way to go, then," said he. "A decent man doesn't keep his wench under other folks' noses. If you've a mind to see Catherine, I'll not stop you. I'm going out to see her myself, an' perhaps the sight of the pair of us'll please her."