Down the village street, past the Loggerheads and the Forge, and along a long country lane, paved unevenly with round stones after a way our forefathers in some of the northern counties had of paving, in imperfect prophetic vision of MacAdam. To-day no broad waggon-wheel groans, nor hoofed foot clatters along; only a few cottagers and smart-bonneted servant girls trudge along to the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, built A.D. 1789, that stands in simple, dissenting ugliness at the hill-foot, while over its newly-painted, gingerbread-coloured door stands this modest announcement: "This is the Gate of Heaven." "It strikes me," says St. John, rousing himself out of a reverie which has lasted a quarter of an hour--"it strikes me as one of the few instances in which one's experience tallies with what one reads in novels, the awkward knack people have of interrupting one at the wrong moment." "How do you mean?" asks Essie, coming out of a reverie, too. "I never," pursues he, taking off his hat, and passing his hand over the broad red mark it has made on his forehead--"I never read aloud to any one in my life--I was rather fond of reading poetry at one period of my history, I leave you to guess which--not that she cared about it--she did not know Milton from Tommy Moore; but I never read to her in the course of my life without the footman coming in to put coals on at the most affecting passages--Arthur's parting from Guinevere, say, or Medora's death--and clattering down the tongs and shovel, making the devil's own row." Esther laughs. "These reflections are _à propos_ of--what?" "Of Conny's most ill-timed entry last night," he answers, with energy. "I don't suppose she makes such a midnight raid once in five years, and she certainly could not have found you and me _tête-à-tête_ at two in the morning more than once in fifty years. Why could not she leave us in peace that once? We did not grudge her any amount of pleasant dreams; why need she grudge us our pleasant wakefulness?" "Do you think she came on purpose, then?" asks Essie, her eyes opening as round in alarmed surprise as a baby's when a grown-up person makes ugly faces at it. He shrugs his shoulders slightly. "Cannot say, I'm sure. Conny is not much in the habit of burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of knowledge generally. If it _was_ accident, she came in at a wonderfully _à propos_, or rather _mal à propos_, moment. Tell me," he says, crossing over to her side of the road, and fixing frankly-asking eyes upon her; "I may be mistaken--it is a misfortune to which I am often incident--but I could not help thinking that, just as that unlucky candle appeared round the corner last night, you were going to tell me something--something about yourself? I thought I saw it in your face. I think I deserved some little reward for raking up for your behoof the ashes of that old fire that I burnt my fingers at so badly once."