The widow felt herself in the shadow of a vague distress, painfully called upon to say something appropriate. She murmured that Nellie was going to live with her uncle that winter. The squire raised his hedge of eyebrows suddenly. "In Hamilton?" With her uncle Thaddeus, the elder brother of Simon. He had taken so much interest in Nellie. The squire mused. Yes. Could Mrs. Bourn, if Mr. Thaddeus Bourn again visited Hagar, contrive to suggest to him personally that his former friend, Gerald Map, remembered him with pleasure and would be under obligation to Mr. Bourn if he, Mr. Thaddeus Bourn, would call upon him, Gerald Map? The squire then took his leave. He came upon Morgan himself crossing the green with his gun and hunting-dog. They faced each other and stopped. Mr. Paulus from the post-office below the hill observed them. "Resemblin'," he remarked, "two rams that's goin' to butt lightnin' out of themselves in a minute." "You still visit Hagar, then?" said the squire, his voice muttering thunder. "Quite often." The trick of the gathered eyebrows was curiously common to both. The squire took his time. "You intend to marry Miss Helen Bourn?" "I've been figuring on that for seven years. You haven't found me changing my mind. I intend to do it." "I intend to prevent it, Morgan." "In Nellie's interest, sir?" "I regard it as in her interest." "I mean, is that your interest in it?" "I shall not say." "I didn't feel encouraged to think it was an interest in me. But it's natural to ask." "Quite natural." The squire walked a few steps, stopped and looked back, his eyebrows drooping over their melancholy caves. "I take no interest in your success in any direction. I shall be measurably interested in your failures. Whenever you have a failure to report, and are inclined to report it personally, I shall be glad to see you." "That's an odd offer, sir." Morgan swung his gun over his shoulder. "I never saw any real need of a row, and I don't yet. And I don't pretend to understand the mixture now." The squire went his way without answering. Morgan looked after him, then at his hunting-dog sniffing among the heaps of fallen leaves, at Windless Mountain, and found nothing suggestive. He walked slowly towards the Bourn house.