She was thinking, as she stood by the well, that now perhaps they would come back this May and she would not be there. She drew a long sigh, and missed the castle, the park and the wood, the town and the sight of the river and the bridge, over which something was always passing. She missed, too, her uncle the huntsman, who had died; missed his larger house and the greater coming and going; missed her room, where, standing at her window, she saw the moon rise behind the Black Tower. And now her uncle was dead who had been a single man, and who had kept them from month to month and year to year with his loud protest each time they talked of lifting a burden and going back to Hawthorn Forest.... But he was dead, and his house passed to the new huntsman. Joan and her father loaded their clothes and such matters upon a cart, mounted it themselves, and with some farewells to castle neighbours took the road to their own small cottage, miles away. She sighed, but then, with her eyes upon the heartsease, determined to make the best of it. It was not as though she did not love the cottage and the garden, where presently all the flowers would bloom again, and Hawthorn Forest, where she had wandered freely from childhood. She did love them, she had a warm love for them; and sometimes at her uncle’s she had pleased herself with being pensive and missing them sadly. She loved her father, too; the old clerk and she were good friends, so good friends, in an age of parental severity and filial awe, as to have scandalized the housekeeper at the castle. Moreover, though they were poor and had always lived so retired, and though the country hereabouts afforded few neighbours, and though she had never known many people in the village, having been but a young maid when she went away, there were those whom she remembered, and she looked forward to a renewal of acquaintance. And the day was very rich and fair, and a robin singing, and waves of fragrance blowing from the fruit trees, and she was young and strong and innately joyous. She broke a branch of apple blossom and stuck it into the well water; she stooped and plucked a knot of heartsease and fastened it at her bodice throat. Then she lifted the bucket to her head, and moved with it, tall and steady, over the worn stones of the path to the cottage door. Arrived within, she fell to her baking, in a clean kitchen with doors and windows wide. She was a notable cook, her mother having trained her before she died. Moreover, what she touched she touched like an artist. She made no useless steps or movements, she neither dallied nor hurried; all went with a fine assurance, an easy “Long ago I knew how—but if you ask me _how_ I know—!” She sang as she worked, a brave young carolling of Allan-à-Dale and John-à-Green and Robin Hood and Maid Marian.