meanwhile Hannah would make him a careful wife. But he was a far-seeing young man, who had a way of considering things in all their bearings, hence he had purposely held aloof for a long time, for the simple reason that there was no occasion to hurry. He knew what Hannah was like, and had come to the conclusion that, on the whole, she would do. But she did not inspire him to any display of sentiment, and there was no reason why he should waste his time with her when he felt that he could be employed quite as agreeably and perhaps more profitably at home. It was simply to make sure that things were going on satisfactorily that he went at last to Woodside Farm, and not from any particular desire to see her. Then, to his surprise, Margaret had appeared. She took his breath away, and being a young man of intelligence, he saw at once that she and her father were altogether of a different class from that to which he was accustomed. He wondered how she came to be there. How her father came to be there, and what had induced him to marry Mrs. Vincent and settle down at the farm. "There must be a screw loose somewhere," he thought; but what would a dozen screws matter to him if only--for it promptly occurred to him--he could marry Margaret? The thought intoxicated him; she was young and beautiful; she made the blood dance through his veins as it had not done since he was two-and-twenty, when he had fallen in love with the daughter of a dentist who had thrown him over for the purser of an Atlantic-going steamer: and that young lady had not been a patch on this one. With a wife like Margaret, he told himself, there was no knowing what might be done, to what heights he might rise in these democratic days. He looked at Hannah's face; it was faded and somewhat weather-beaten; there were lines of temper on it--they would be deeper by-and-by; the hard gray-blue of her eyes chilled him, her tightly pulled back hair repelled him, her manner suggested that time would make her shrewish. Life with her would mean a clean, well-ordered home of a sort, but hardly a gay and pleasant dove-cot. Luckily, he had not in any way committed himself; he had merely been extremely polite and friendly, and entered upon that stage which, in the class just below the one he considered to be his own, was known as "walking-out"--a sort of prelude to getting engaged. But he had not said a single word of love; he had looked at her, it is true, but a cat may look at a king. The worst of it was that he could never manage to make any impression upon Margaret; at best, she was only civil to him; she spoke as little as possible, and generally vanished soon after his arrival; there were times when he felt her manner to be a little contemptuous; still, he determined not to bind himself in another direction till he made sure that she was impossible. He looked in the glass and came to the conclusion that he was by no means bad-looking; the curl of his hair and the fairness of his mustache