John’s announcement awoke a laugh in the younger man, and Timothy dismissed the subject with a sort of lame apology; but the other remained dumb after his assertion, and few more words passed between them. Aggett, however, burnt within, for the recent incident had caused him infinite uneasiness and alarm. To allay these emotions he hastened to the home of Sarah as soon as his duties at the farm were ended, and there, before her parents, rated her in round terms for speaking to a strange man under the darkness. The girl’s mother heard of what had happened with secret interest; Sarah herself laughed, then cried, and finally made her peace with many promises that no light action in this sort should ever again be brought against her. Of the white witch and the prediction John did not speak; and though he returned to his loft above the cows a comforted man, yet, in the hours of night, fear and foreboding gripped his heart again and frank terror at the shadow of an awful catastrophe made him toss and sweat in the darkness. Twice he rose and prayed childish prayers that his mother had taught him. They were nothing to the purpose, yet he trusted that they might call the Almighty’s attention to him and his difficulties. So he lay awake and scratched his head and puzzled his scanty brains with what the future held hidden. As for Timothy, the splendid twilight vision of Sarah in her red array was by no means dimmed by the subsequent appearance of his own fair kinswoman. A first fiery love had dawned in him, and the romantic circumstances attending its awakening added glamour to the charm of mystery. Already he almost granted Gammer Gurney a measure of the powers she pretended to. Aggett’s statement had iced his ardour for a while; but a bitter-sweet yearning and unrest grew again after the cowman was gone—grew gigantic to the shutting out of all other things feminine; and Sarah’s grey eyes, not his little cousin’s, were the lamps that lighted Timothy’s midnight pillow.