"She's a strange girl, that Miriam of yours," she averred. "I've seen her scores of times these years back. Why, she can't be as old as I am for I remember her, a little, black-eyed, wild-looking, elfish thing, going about the moors with that half-witted Daddy folk said was such a scholar. I've come across her bilberrying, or sat upon a boulder making up bunches of wild flowers, and singing softly some strange heathenish song--she's a sweet voice enough, I'll allow. But she's either feart or proud. I'd have made up to her many's the time for my heart ached for the girl brought up among those good-for-nought Burnplatters, but no! she was off, like an unbroken colt, before I could say ten words. And more by token I'm a bit feared myself o' that old witch she goes about with. Folk say she's got the evil eye, and the girls always cross their fingers when she goes by." "I'm surprised at you, Ruth. Where's your Christianity?" "That's all very well, Abel. But facts are facts, and there's none so much smoke but what there's a fire somewhere. She's an evil name in the countryside, and I could wish your sweetheart--if it has to be, though let's hope you'll cure of it--had anyone but her for a granny. Then there's that Ephraim--not but what he might have been all right if he'd been reared different. I remember him as nice a lad as ever strode--but those Burnplatters would spoil a saint." "But about. Miriam?" I interrupted, for I was not greatly concerned to hear my sister at large upon the possibilities of Ephraim's nature. "When are you to see her again?" "To-night, please God." "I'd leave God out of the question in this job, Abel. Let's hope it isn't all a peck of the other one's brewing." "Pshaw!" was all I'd patience to utter. "Well, 'pshaw' be it. You see Miriam and tell her, I'll make it in my way to meet her on the moor, and if she's a mind to be friends with me, why, for your sake, Abel, I'll go far out of my way to be friends with her. Though what th' congregation will say if they come to know of my 'companying with her and that they will, for certain sure, is more than I care to think." "Can't you say you're trying to convert her Ruth? There's more rejoicing, you know, over one sinner that repenteth--though I'll knock the man down that calls Miriam a sinner. Still, if she could be got to chapel…." "Abel Holmes wouldn't fail to be at chapel, too. Why, man, I don't suppose the poor girl's got a go-to-meeting frock to bless herself with. But there, Jim's come out of the house and gone into the barn. He'll be lighting his pipe and setting th' hay on fire if I don't watch him. Go your ways, Abel, and good luck to you. 'Who maun to Coupar, maun to Coupar.' What has to be, will be's good doctrine, if all's fore-ordained from the beginning; but I could have wished the good Lord had ordained anyone but a Burnplatter for my sister-in-law"--and off she tripped towards the shippon.