“I never thought of ’em as high,” she returned slowly, pondering. “Anyway, I never felt shut in. Likely it was just because things seem that much bigger and wider to a child, but I remember thinking the garden was nearabouts as big as the whole world!” “Well, I’m not saying this here’s quite as big as that!” he had tried to laugh her out of her brooding. “But it’s a fairish size. You’ll not find a better kitchen-spot anywhere in the North.” “It’s terribly shut-in, all the same,” she persisted obstinately. “And terribly small. _That_ small,” she added suddenly, with a characteristic flash which might have stood equally for bitterness or humour, “I could happen put it inside my wedding-ring!” It had grown no bigger for her, either, as time went on. She had never ceased to find it small and shut-in, never ceased to rebel against its limitations. Many a day she had sat by the upstairs window during the years that followed, but she had never succeeded in pushing the walls away. It was he who had done it in the end by writing the letter, laying them flat with his pen as effectively as with any Jericho trumpet. Still, it was her will that ran behind the pen, even though it was his hand that held it. He knew that well enough, even while his loyalty had no intention of admitting it. The disputes and discussions had seemed futile enough at the time, but they had done their work in the end. Her hours of silent revolt, equally with her passionate clamourings to be free, had accumulated at last into a dynamic force which seemed able to move mountains. Once, before, indeed, she had almost succeeded in getting her way, only to find, just as she was on the point of turning into it, that it led to a dead end. The affair was so long ago now that he had practically forgotten it, but it came back to him, this morning. Contemplating it to-day, he was struck by one curious fact,--that what he had nearly done then seemed to him now far more incredible than what he had actually done, last night. The sudden reassertion of that distant point of view showed him how much he had altered since that date; how far he had travelled, although unknowingly, along the road to Mattie’s desire. It was at a local flower-show that the opportunity had come, tumbled from Heaven, as it seemed, in answer to Mattie’s pleading. He had been present at the show in the capacity of judge, and a visiting landowner had taken a fancy to him. At the end of the afternoon, his new friend, without actually offering him the post, had yet managed to convey to him that his own head gardener’s situation, which happened to be vacant at the moment, could be Kirkby’s for the mere formality of asking.