‘Yea, but I am. I set me down on the heather, and listened wi’ all my might, and I thowt I heard a bird singing.’ ‘Happen a lark?’ said Mary, after a perceptible pause. ‘Happen. I should ha’ gone to church in th’ evenin’, but I can’t hear--nowt distinct, that’s to say--and I’m a’most inclined to think that I didn’t _hear_ yon lark, but only thowt I did, from memory, thou known.’ ‘Ay,’ assented Mary. ‘And when I go into church, and hear the organ buzzin’ and th’ voices all mixed up wi’ it, and can’t make out what it is, it fair moithers me; same as when I look up, and see th’ parson speakin’, and don’t know what it’s about.’ ‘Ay,’ said Mary, laconically as ever, but this time there was the faintest possible vibration in her voice. And there was another long pause, while Mary’s eyelids drooped. He did not see that--it was too dark; and had he seen it, he could not have known that those eyelids were sore with repressed tears, which burnt them, and which she would not allow to flow. ‘Sometimes,’ his voice broke in again, ‘I get discontented. I’m main fond o’ music, as you know, Mary.’ ‘Ay, I know thou art.’ ‘And it troubles me above a bit sometimes as I should be deaf, for it just takes away my greatest pleasure. Sometimes I wish I’d been blind instead.’ No answer from Mary, till Harry, in a hesitating voice, said, ‘What dost think, Mary? Is it very wrong to have such thoughts?’ ‘No, I dunnot,’ replied Mary. ’ I call it very nateral. If I was deaf, I reckon I should make more noise about it than you do. I wonder what them chaps is doin.’ It’s time they was comin’ in.’ ‘Don’t thou go out. I’ll find ’em, and tell ’em, for I mun be goin’ too,’ said Harry, rising. Mary had begun to poke the fire violently, and now let the poker fall with a loud rattle, as Harry, without her knowing it, had advanced close to her, so that her elbow struck against his outstretched hand. ‘Dule tak’ th’ fire-irons!’ said she, impatiently. ‘I conna think what ails ’em. Good neet to you, if you mun be going,’ she added, shaking hands with him, and, as soon as he was gone, lighting the gas. Presently her brothers came in. The house was locked up. Mary went to bed, followed by Edmund. Myles was left by the dying-out kitchen fire, with a book on the table, which he never opened, but sat till far into the night, living through some of those strange hours of still, silent, yet vivid, rushing, mental life which come to all of us sometimes in our youth, and which are like no other hours in our experience. CHAPTER IX. A TEA-PARTY. ‘Mir war’s so wohl, so weh!’ After that evening Myles found himself in a position which he at least found full of difficulties. Two things happened, both of which he had looked upon as probable; the news of what had happened spread, and Frederick Spenceley did not prosecute. The waiter who had allowed Myles to go into the billiard-room was dismissed; the billiard-marker who had stood by shared the same fate.