“An’ in my gert quandary I was gwaine in to Mother Gurney here. She’s juggled wi’ my life afore, seemin’ly, an’ if any knows what’s to be the end of it, ’tis her, I should think. I want to hear what’s right an’ proper. I’m so weary of my days as you. Life an’ love be gall-bitter this way. Oh, Jan, can’t ’e say nought to comfort me? ’Tis more’n I can bear.” She was hysterical, and he flung down his bundle and sat beside her and tried to bring some peace to her spirit. His heart was full for her and he spoke eagerly. Then he saw the gold and coral on her finger and stopped talking and put his elbows on his knees and his big sandy head down on his hands. “’Twas what you done, ’twas same as what you done,” she said. “You left me for love of me; why can’t I leave Tim for love of him?” “’Tis axin’ a woman to much.” A long silence reigned. Wind-blown ponies stamped and snorted close at hand, and from a window in the neighbouring cottage a sharp eye watched the man and woman. Gammer was counting the chances of a customer, possibly two. Fired with a glimmer of the hope that can never perish while the maid is free, John Aggett argued the advantages of obedience to Farmer Chave. He felt himself base in this, but Sarah was under his eyes, within reach of his arm. Her hot tears were on his hand. “’Tis for you I be thinkin’, though you might say ’twas two words for myself an’ but one for you. I wants your sorrow turned into joy, Sally, if it’s a thing can be done. Leave me out—theer—now I’m not thinkin’ for myself at all. Leave me out, an’ leave him out, an’ bide a maid till the right man finds ’e. I lay he haven’t crossed your path yet. Give young Chave up for your own sake, if not his, an’ look life in the face again free.” He continued fitfully in this strain, quenching his own dim hope remorselessly as he spoke, and she, hearing little save the drone of his voice, occupied herself with her own thoughts. Her emotions toward John Aggett had never much changed. Her love for Tim, being a feeling of different quality, had left her temperate if sincere regard for John unmoved. Possibly his own action in the past had rendered her more kindly disposed to him than before. There certainly existed in her mind a homespun, drab regard for him, and circumstances had not changed it. Now as he strengthened her determination to give up her lover for her lover’s good, and despite the bitterness of her spirit before the sacrifice, she could find some room in her mind for the man before her. To-day the presence of Sarah awoke the finest note in John. His first dim hope was extinguished; he soared above it, resolutely banished any personal interest in the problem now to be solved, and assumed that Sarah had similarly obliterated him from all considerations of the future. But it was not so.