She sat high on Trowlesworthy, where the rushes chatter and where, to their eternal treble, the wind strikes deep organ music from the forehead of the tor. From the clefts of the rocks around her, where foxes homed sometimes and the hawk made her nest, there hung now russet tassels and tufts of dead lady-fern; and above this rack of the old year sprang dark green aigrettes of the new. Stonecrops and pennyworts also flourished amid the uncurling fronds; aloft, the heath and whortle made curls for the great tor's brow; below, to the girl's feet, there sloped up boulders that shone with fabric of golden-brown mosses and dappled lichens, jade-green and grey. The woodsorrel had climbed hither, and its frail bells and sparkling trefoils glittered on the earth. The sun shone with a thready lustre over the million flattened dead rushes roundabout this place, and its light spread out upon them into a pool of pale gold. Thus a radiance as of water extended here and the wind, fretting all this death, heightened the deception; while the scattered rocks shone brilliantly against so much reflected light and looked like boulders half submerged at the fringe of a glittering sea. The girl laughed and gazed down at her home. It was a squat grey building half-way between the red tor and the distant bridge. It stood amid bright green crofts, and beside it was a seemly hayrick and an unseemly patch of rufous light that stared--hideous as a bloodshot eye--from the harmonious textures of the waste. There a shippen under an iron roof sank to rusty dissolution. Here was Trowlesworthy Farm and a great rabbit warren that extended round about it. Milly Luscombe lived at Trowlesworthy with an uncle and aunt. She was accustomed to work very hard for her living, but for the moment she did not work. She only breathed the breath of spring and talked of love. Beside her sat a sturdy youth with a red face and a little budding flaxen moustache. His countenance was not cast in a cheerful mould. Indeed, he frowned and gazed gloomily out of large grey eyes at the valley beneath him. "I axed father in plain words if I might be tokened to you--of course, that was if you said 'yes'--and he answered as plainly that I might not. You see, he was terrible up in years afore he got married himself, and so he thinks a man's a fool to go into it young." "How old was he then?" "Forty-five to the day. And he's seventy next month, though he don't feel or look anything like so much. He's full of old, stale sayings about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure: and such like. So there it is, Milly." The girl nodded. She was a dark maiden with brown eyes and a pretty mouth. She sniffed rather tearfully and wiped her eyes with the corner of her sun-bonnet. "Belike your father only waited so long because the right one didn't come. When he found your mother, I'm sure he married her quick enough."