Jan was almost as grateful to the young lady as a starving man would have been for a loaf of bread; yet it was perhaps rather her looks and her voice than her kind offer that compelled his gratitude. Hitherto nobody had understood him—which was the less surprising because he had some difficulty in understanding himself—and he had observed a general disposition to treat him with the indulgence accorded to the mentally deficient. But here at last was a beautiful, beneficent being who not only did not call him a fool but clearly showed, without actually saying so, that she entered into his feelings and shared them. He had often seen her before, in church and elsewhere, but did not remember ever to have heard her speak. After she and her father had ridden away, he dropped his elbows upon the gate once more and for some time thought about her dreamily, with a pleasantly warmed heart, wondering why he had never before noticed her physical beauty. Then he stretched himself and strode off to get the cows in for milking. Mildred Haseldine, if scarcely beautiful, was as pretty as golden hair, forget-me-not blue eyes, and neat little features could make her. Beneficent she might fairly be called, inasmuch as she was always glad to do a good turn to her neighbours, and this farm lad, with his odd craving for mental nourishment and his rebellion against the monotony of agricultural life, interested her. So as soon as she reached home she laid the library shelves under contribution, selecting ‘Ivanhoe,’ Tennyson’s Poems, Carlyle’s ‘Past and Present’ and Fitchett’s ‘Deeds that Won the Empire,’ as being a sufficiently comprehensive batch to begin with, and handed the volumes to her maid Judith, with instructions that they were to be given to young John Issel, if he should call for them. She observed that Judith blushed; but the circumstance made no impression upon her, Judith’s blushes being frequent and for the most part devoid of cause. As a matter of fact, Judith Combe had some excuse for exhibiting self-consciousness at the sound of Jan Issel’s name. Not very much, it is true; for in her class of life the fact of ‘walking out’ with a young man on Sunday afternoons is not held to commit either of the walkers to subsequent matrimony, and certainly Jan did not consider himself in any way pledged to Judy Combe, whom he had chosen merely because, like his brothers and everybody else, he had to have a female companion of some sort. He liked the gentle, demure lass, was indifferently aware that she was nice-looking (she was in reality decidedly prettier than Miss Haseldine), and even supposed that he might marry her some day. But that, of course, would only be if he should stay at Bratton, instead of going out into the wide world—a contingency which he never cared to contemplate.