He sat down upon the stool in the chimney corner and, when she once more attempted to blow the fire, took the bellows gravely from her and in a moment had the flames leaping high, flooding the kitchen with ruddy light. Margeret filled her pewter bowl brimful with steaming porridge and watched with pleasure as her guest ate with unconcealed hunger. She brought bread and cheese and a cup of milk which she set upon the bench beside him, and then busied herself about the kitchen lest she should seem to be staring at her unwonted visitor. Each eyed the other shyly when occasion offered, but looked away quickly when their glances happened to meet. He seemed to be watching her golden hair shining in the firelight, while she, by peeping into the old round mirror that hung upon the wall, could see how black were his hair and eyelashes and how dark blue were the eyes with which he stared at her when her back was turned. She felt friendly enough and anxious to put her companion at his case, and so, apparently, did he, but neither knew what to say and so the meal was finished in silence. It was Mistress Radpath’s footstep on the stair that roused him suddenly to speech. “Oh, I must go,” he cried, springing up. “Samuel Skerry will be awake and waiting for me this long time. He will want to strike me for my delaying.” And out of the door he sped, in greater terror, it seemed however, of Margeret’s mother than of his master, the shoemaker. The little girl, watching him through the window as he crossed the white field, realised suddenly that she had not even thought to ask his name. Often after that day she wondered who he could be, and many times looked wistfully across the waste of snow toward the neighbouring cottage. Although she saw him now and then, passing in and out of the distant doorway, he did not come near their house again. Goodman Allen’s wife, who came to sew with Mistress Radpath, dropped a bit of gossip concerning him. “We are all wondering who that shoemaker’s apprentice can be,” she said. “He is no kin of Samuel Skerry’s, of that you may be sure, for he is far too pleasant-faced and gentle-mannered. The town officer went to ask, as was his duty, but could get no information from the boy’s master. Skerry said the lad was named Roger Bardwell, that he would answer for him and that was all. We all wonder where the boy can have come from; there is not one of us who does not like him.” That, it seemed, was the sum of Hopewell’s knowledge of the shy, ragged, handsome lad.