Wayne halted a moment and let his eyes dwell on the tender frolic of it all; then sighed impatiently and pushed up the stream side till he reached the moor. To the right the bare fields stretched to the sky, catching a shadowed softness from the sunlight; to the left, Hill House glowered down upon the dark cleft that nursed the waterfall. "Ay, this picture has more truth in ’t than yonder idleness of spring below," he muttered, watching a hawk glance down on molten wing and lift a screaming moor-tit in its beak. On the sudden a clear voice came over the swell of the brinkfield up above, singing a moorland ballad of love and battle—a voice that had something of the throstle’s nesting-note in it. Shameless Wayne, shading his eyes with both hands, looked up the hill and saw a well-known figure standing clear against the sky. He started forward eagerly; but his face was dark again as he waited at the little brigg of stone until Janet reached the further margin of the stream; and she, seeing him, halted at the far side of the brigg, under the rowan that waved its feathery shadows to and fro above the sun-flecked waters. But still Wayne gave no greeting, though his eyes were fain of her. "I give thee good-day," she faltered, chilled by his silence. "Wilt not tell me, Ned, that ’tis well-met by Hazel Brigg?" Wayne looked across at her, and his face showed harsher than his thoughts. "Ay—wert thou a Wayne, or I a Ratcliffe, girl," he said. Janet had learned to know this mood of his; at their last meeting—the same which Red Ratcliffe and Hiram the farm-man had surprised—he had met her with the same stubborn front. Then she had given way to her impatience; but this morning she was minded to be soft toward him, knowing the danger he was in and eager at all costs to save him from it. "What ails thee, Ned?" she asked, after they had looked each at the other across the stream. "Why, life, I think," he answered, with a hard laugh. "To take the stoniest road, and all the while to know one’s self a fool for ’t——" "I had thought life somewhat sweeter than its wont to-day," she broke in, obstinate as himself in her own fashion. "The sun shines, and the larks sing——" "But the feud-cries are louder still, and not if all the larks in heaven tried to sing them down would it be otherwise." Cold his voice was, with only a deeper note in it now and then to show how sorely it was fretting him to stand his ground. "Art minded, I see, to take up the tale just where we left it on the moor when last we met," cried Janet, with a flash of scorn. "Does the tale go lighter, Janet, for what has been added to it since we met? Thy folk came down to Marsh, and one of them did not go back again." "Thou didst not bid him come—nor I wish him God-speed on his errand," said Janet, with a last effort to persuade him.