He wrote an excellent hand, and was quick at figures. In fact, he was an intelligent, teachable young fellow, who had made good use of his opportunities at school: moreover, he could keep his temper well under control when it suited him to do so; and, little by little, the Squire began to find him useful in many ways. He himself was growing old, and Aaron got more stupid every year that he lived. By-and-by nothing more was said about Hubert having to earn a living elsewhere. He relieved the Squire of many duties that had become irksome to him; and when a man of his years has once dropped a burden he rarely cares to pick it up again. In short, by the time Hubert was twenty years old he had made himself thoroughly indispensable to the Squire. No one but Hubert himself ever knew with what a fever of unrest he awaited the coming home of Ella Winter. Had she forgotten him? Would she recognise him after all these years? How would she greet him? He tormented himself with a thousand vain questions. He knew now that he loved her with all the devotion of a deeply passionate heart. Miss Winter came at last. The moment her eyes rested on Hubert she recognised him, changed though he was. She came up to him at once, and held out her hand. "When I see so many faces about me that I remember, then I know that I am at home," she said, looking into his eyes with that sweetly serious look of hers. Hubert touched her hand, blushed, and stammered; although, as a rule, there were few young men more self-possessed than he was. At the same moment a chill ran through him. His heart seemed as if it must break. The Ella of his day-dreams--the bright-eyed, sunny-haired little maiden, who had treated him almost like a brother, who had grasped his wrist when she leaped across the runlets in the sands, who had imperiously ordered him to drag down the tall branches of the nut-trees till the fruit was within her reach--had vanished from his ken for ever. In her stead stood Miss Winter, a strangely-beautiful young lady, whose face was familiar and yet unfamiliar. As he saw and recognised this, he saw, too, and recognised for the first time, the impassable gulf that divided them. She was a lady, the daughter of an ancient house: he was not a gentleman, and nothing could ever make him one, at least in her eyes, or in the eyes of the world to which she belonged. He was a son of the soil. He was Gurth the swineherd, and she was the Lady Rowena. What folly, what madness, to love one so utterly beyond his reach! CHAPTER V. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. "You must go round to the side-door if you have any business here," cried a shrill, angry, quavering voice, in answer to the loud knocking of a stranger at the main entrance of Heron Dyke.