Arrived at the glass door, I stopped and looked back at the gravel-walk. They had met. I saw the two shadowy figures slowly pacing backward and forward in the moonlight, the woman a little in advance of the man. What was he saying to her? Why was he so anxious that not a word of it should be heard? Our presentiments are sometimes, in certain rare cases, the faithful prophecy of the future. A vague distrust of that moonlight meeting stealthily took a hold on my mind. “Will mischief come of it?” I asked myself as I closed the door and entered the house. Mischief _did_ come of it. You shall hear how. CHAPTER IV. THE BEECHEN STICK. PERSONS of sensitive, nervous temperament, sleeping for the first time in a strange house, and in a bed that is new to them, must make up their minds to pass a wakeful night. My first night at Morwick Farm was no exception to this rule. The little sleep I had was broken and disturbed by dreams. Toward six o’clock in the morning, my bed became unendurable to me. The sun was shining in brightly at the window. I determined to try the reviving influence of a stroll in the fresh morning air. Just as I got out of bed, I heard footsteps and voices under my window. The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had passed the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from below, to look out. The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coarsely and insolently enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night. “Next time you go courting a young lady in secret,” said Silas, “make sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she say ‘Yes?’” John Jago kept his temper. “If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas,” he said, quietly and firmly, “be pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in what you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me.” Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three laborers. “You hear him, boys? He can’t tell the truth, try him as you may. He wasn’t making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on his shoulders for the second time!” Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal and serious reply.