That a squire’s brother should conceive that he might take some slight liberty with a cotter’s daughter, that he might, on a May day and none looking, snatch a kiss or steal an arm about her, was truly, in Joan’s time, neither a great rarity nor a great matter. If it went no further than that, it need not be especially remembered. Rebuff with vigour, if you chose, but so that the thing ended there, it was no hanging matter! At the castle, page or esquire might have been more forward than Carthew, and Joan, though she sent them about their business, might have done so with some inward laughter. But Master Harry Carthew! He was a Puritan, strict and stern, he was always with the minister, he walked with the Bible and by the Bible. He was no hypocrite either; it was easy to see that he was earnest. Then what did he have to do with coming here so, troubling her so? Joan felt a surge of anger and fright. Something boding and pestilential seemed to gather like a mist about her. The two, both silent now, moved out of the shadow of the fruit trees into the blossomy handbreadth before the cottage door. As they did so, Alison Inch came by the gate, saw the horse fastened to the elm, and, looking through the wicket, Carthew and Joan. If she had meant to come in or no did not appear; she stood stock-still for a moment, then put herself into motion again and passed on. If Carthew saw her, he paid no attention. But Joan saw her, saw her face quite plainly. When Carthew—with a sudden and harsh “Good-bye for this time; or, good-bye forever, if so be I can yet kill this thing within me!”—strode away and through the gate, and, mounting his horse, rode off with a stiff bearing, not looking back, she stood for a moment or two with a still, expressionless face, then, moving slowly to the doorstep, sat down and took her head into her hands. She was seeing again Alison’s face. “That’s what she meant the other day—she meant that at church I was minding, not the psalm, but that man.... Then, doth she mind him so herself that she looked so, there at the gate?... Woe’s me!” mourned Joan. “Here’s a coil!” CHAPTER IX THE OAK GRANGE ADERHOLD sat in the moth-eaten old chair, in the bare room, beside the bed in which, seventy-odd years before, Master Hardwick had been born and in which he was now to die. The old man lay high upon the pillows. He slept a good deal, but when he waked his mind was clear, not weakened like his body. Indeed, the physician thought that the mental flame burned more strongly toward the end, as though Death fanned away some heavy and dulling vapour. Master Hardwick was sleeping now. Old Dorothy had tiptoed in to see how matters went, and, after a whispered word, had tiptoed out again. She was fond of Aderhold—she said that the Oak Grange had been human since he came.