"I am not going to throw you off, George," she said, quietly; "but I am going to give you up. I have tried, oh! how hard I have tried, to believe that you would be better some day, but I can't hope so any longer. You have promised again and again that you would give up drinking, but you are always breaking your promise, and now I find that in spite of all I've said, you still hold with those bad men at Dareport, and that you have taken to poaching, and now they are in search of you for being one of those concerned in desperately wounding John Morton. No, George, I have for years withstood even my father. I have loved you in spite of his reproaches and entreaties, but I feel now that instead of your making me happy I should be utterly miserable if I married you, and I have made a promise to Miss Carne that I would give you up." "Oh, she has been meddling, has she?" George Forester said with a terrible imprecation; "I will have revenge on her, I swear I will. So it's she who has done the mischief, and made you false to all you promised. Curse you! with your smooth face, and your church-going ways, and your canting lies. You think, now they are hunting me away, you can take up with some one else; but you shan't, I swear, though I swing for it." And he grasped her suddenly by the throat; but at this moment there was a sound of voices in the road behind them, and dashing Ruth to the ground with a force that stunned her, he sprang into the woods. A minute later the stablemen at The Hold came along the road and found Ruth still lying on the ground. [Illustration: "_He grasped her suddenly by the throat._"] After a minute's consultation they determined to carry her down to her father's house, as they had no idea what was the best course to pursue to bring her round. Two of them, therefore, lifted and carried her down, while the other hurried on to prepare the miller for their arrival. "Master Powlett," he said as he entered, "your girl has hurt herself; I expect she slipped on a stone somehow, going up the hill, and came down heavy; anyhow we found her lying there insensible, and my two mates are bringing her down. We saw her two or three hundred yards ahead of us as we came out of the churchyard, so she could not have laid there above a minute or so when we came up." Ruth was brought in. Mrs. Powlett had not yet returned from Dareport, but a neighbour was soon fetched in by one of the men while another went for the doctor, and in a few minutes Ruth opened her eyes. "Don't talk, dear," her father said, "lie quiet for a few minutes and you will soon be better; you slipped down in the road, you know, and gave yourself a shake, but it will be all right now." Ruth closed her eyes again and lay quiet for a short time, then she looked up again and tried to sit up. "I am better now, father."