“For what reasons?” said John, lighting up again. She had drooped her head a little when she said these last words. A bright blush had flushed all over her. Could it be that she meant---- John was not vain, and yet the inference was so natural; he sat gazing at her for one long minute in a suggestive tremulous silence, and then he went faltering, blundering on. “I would be anything for your sake--_that_ you know. I would be content to labour for you from morning to night. I would be a ploughman for your sake. To be a rich man is not so easy; but if you were to tell me to do it--for you--I would work my fingers to the bone; I would die, but I should do it--for you. Am I to be rich for you?” “Oh, fancy! here we are already,” cried Kate, in a little tremor, feeling that she had gone too far, and he had gone too far, and thinking with a little panic, half of horror, half of pleasure, of the walk that remained to be taken through the enchanted wood. “How fast the stream has carried us down! and yet I don’t suppose it can have been very fast either, for the shadows are lengthening. We must make haste and get home.” “But you have not answered me,” he said, still leaning across his oars with a look which she could not face. “Oh, never mind just now,” she cried; “let us land, please, and not drift farther down. You are paying no attention to where the boat is going. There! I knew an accident would happen,” cried Kate, with half-mischievous triumph, running the boat into the bank. She thought nothing now of his feet getting wet, as he stepped into the water again to bring it to the side that she might land. She even sprang out and ran on, telling him to follow her, while he had to wait to secure the boat, and warn the people at the forester’s cottage that he had left it. Kate ran on into the wood, up the broad road gradually narrowing among the trees, where still the sunshine penetrated like arrows of gold, and the leaves danced double, leaf and shadow, and the birds carried on their ceaseless interluding, and the living creatures stirred. She ran on mischievously, with a little laugh at her companion left behind. But that mood did not long balance the influence of the place. Her steps slackened--her heart began to beat. All at once she twined her arms about a birch to support herself, and, leaning her head against it, cried a little in her confusion and excitement. “Oh, what have I done? what shall I say to him?” Kate said to herself. Was she in love with John that she had brought him to this declaration of his sentiments? She did not know--she did not think she was--and yet she had done it with her eyes open. And in a few minutes he would be by her side insisting on an answer. “And what shall I say to him?” within herself cried Kate.