Presently the girl declared her mind to be made up and promised that she would break off her engagement. For a moment the other showed hearty satisfaction, then his forehead grew wrinkled. “One thing mind,” he said. “My name must not crop up no more in this. Ban’t that I fear anything man can do, but theer’ll be no weight to what you sez onless you make it clear ’tis your own thought. ’Tis you I care about—an’ ’tis him you care about. I be gude as gone a’ready. ’Twas mere chance throwed us together, an’ none need know ’bout it.” She was silent awhile, then put her hand out to him. “I do owe you more’n ever a maid owed a man, I reckon.” He took and held the hand extended. “You cannot help what’s past and gone. Just call me home to your mind now an’ again—that’s all I ax ’e. Now I must be movin’, for I’ve got long ways to go to-day.” Even in her misery she took a mournful pleasure in her power to command. “Sit down an’ bide till I bid you go,” she said. He obeyed, resumed the seat from which he had risen and tied and untied his bundle, but did not speak. “If us could call back a year an’ begin livin’ all over again, Jan.” He looked down at her, puzzled. “A man would give his soul to go back a bit sometimes; but that’s about the awnly thing God A’mighty’s self can’t do, I reckon. ’Tis more’n His power to give back essterday.” “He can do it His own way. He can help us poor unhappy creatures to forget.” “So can a pint of old ale; not but them around about a man mostly looks to it that the raw of sorrow shan’t heal tu quick for want of callin’ to mind.” “Jan, I’m gwaine to give him up. I have given him up for all time. I shall allus love him, Jan, because I must. But that is all. An’ you—you mustn’t go out into the world an’ wander ’pon the airth an’ maybe never come home no more through fault of mine. Ban’t fair as two men should break theer hearts an’ have theer days ruined for one worthless woman. What I am, I am; what I felt for you, Jan, I feel—no more, no less. ’Tisn’t I loved you less than I always did, but him more. If ’tis unmaidenly so to say, rebuke me, Jan.” Thus she deliberately came into his life again for the third time, and he was overwhelmed. And yet his answer was one of almost savage fierceness. Joy shook him, too,—a sort of incredulous joy, as when one dreams rare things, yet knows that one dreams. The mingled emotions of the time upset his self-control, induced a sort of tense excitation and rendered his voice indistinct, hollow, mumbling as that of a man drunken or cleft in palate. “That! That! You say that to me—arter all these long, long days! To come back now! God in Heaven, what a puppet dance ’tis! Now here, now theer—be your heart so light as thistledown? I doan’t know wheer I stand; I’m mazed as a sheep this minute. An’ you’d come back to me now?” “I would, Jan. I will.” “An’ live man an’ wife to the li’l lew cot offered us by the gudeness of Farmer?”