"You must hurry and get dry clothes on, Mark," said Mildred. "Squire Clamp's is the nearest house across the bridge." "Hang Squire Clamp! his clothes would poison me. I'd as lief go to a quarantine hospital to be dressed." "Don't!" said Lizzy. But he kept on in the same mercurial strain.--"Clamp lives on poison, like Rappaccini's daughter, in Hawthorne's story; only it makes him ugly instead of fair, as that pretty witch was. His wife never had any trouble with spiders as long as she lived; he had only to blow into a nest, and the creatures would tumble out, and give up their venomous ghosts. No vermin but himself are to be seen in his neighborhood; the rats even found they couldn't stand it, and had to emigrate." "The breath that killed spiders must have been a little too powerful, at times, for Mrs. Clamp, one would think," said Mildred. "It was," said Mark. "She died one day, after Clamp had cheated a widow out of her dower." "Don't stop longer for your fun," said Mildred, "you'll surely take cold. Besides, I can't have you making any disparaging remarks upon my guardian." "Bless my soul! your guardian! how imprudent, to be sure!"--with a significant twinkle. "Well, I'm going. Banfield's is the nearest house; so we'll part here." The girls went towards the village; and Mark, making vigorous strides across the meadow, took a straight line for Banfield's. Near the house is a piece of woods,--one corner of the leafy mantle that covers the hill slipped down its side and trailing upon the borders of the fertile field below. Just as he passed the woods he saw Hugh Branning letting down the bars and leading his pony out into the road. The only bridle-path through the woods led over the hill to the little house on the westerly slope, where lived Dame Ransom, Lucy's bowed and wrinkled grandmother. Mark wondered not a little where the midshipman had been; but as he still retained the memory of the old quarrel, he did not accost him, and presently thought no more of it. Reaching the house, he got some dry clothes and then went home with bounding steps. The earth was never so beautiful nor the sky so benign. The cloud of doubt had furled off and left his heaven blue. He had spoken and found that the dream of his boyhood and the hope of his youth had become the proud triumph of his manhood. Mildred Kinloch loved him! loved him as sincerely as when they were both children! What higher felicity was to be thought of? And what a motive for exertion had he now! He would be worthy of her, and the world should acknowledge that the heiress had not stooped when she mated with him. CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Kinloch was surprised at finding that neither Hugh nor Mildred, nor yet Lucy Ransom, was in the house.