“By the way, Mr. Plowden, I want to tell you of something I heard the other day, and which concerns you. Indeed, I think that it is only right that I should do so. I heard that you were seen talking to my sister, not very far from the Titheburgh Abbey cottages, and that she—she ran away from you. Then Mr. Jones jumped over the wall, and also began to talk with you. Presently he also turned, and, so said my informant, you struck at him with a heavy stick, but missed him. Thereupon a tussle ensued, and you got the worst of it.” “He irritated me beyond all endurance,” broke in Mr. Plowden, excitedly. “O, then the story is true?” Mr. Plowden saw that he had made a fatal mistake; but it was too late to deny it. “To a certain extent,” he said, sulkily. “That young ruffian told me that I was not a gentleman.” “Really! Of course that was unpleasant. But how glad you must feel that you missed him, especially as his back was turned! It would have looked so bad for a clergyman to be had up for assault, or worse, wouldn’t it?” Mr. Plowden turned pale, and bit his lip. He began to feel that he was in the power of this quiet, dignified young woman, and the feeling was not pleasant. “And it would not look very well if the story got round here, would it? I mean even if it was not known that you hit at him with the stick when he was not looking, because, you see, it would seem so absurd! The idea of a clergyman more than six feet high being shaken like a naughty child! I suppose that Mr. Jones is very strong.” Mr. Plowden winced beneath her mockery, and rising, seized his hat; but she motioned him back to his chair. “Don’t go yet,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that you ought to be much obliged to me for thinking of all this for you. I thought that it would be painful to you to have the story all over the country-side, so I nipped it in the bud.” Mr. Plowden groaned in spirit. If these were the results of a story nipped in the bud, what would its uninjured bloom be like? “Who told you? “he asked, brusquely. “Jones went away.” “Yes. How glad you must be, by the way, that he is gone! But it was not Mr. Jones, it was a person who oversaw the difference of opinion. No, never mind who it was; I have found means to silence that person.” Little did Mr. Plowden guess that during the whole course of his love-scene, and the subsequent affair with Jeremy, there had leaned gracefully in an angle of the sod wall, not twenty yards away, a figure uncommonly resembling that of an ancient mariner in an attitude of the most intense and solemn contemplation; but so it was. “I am grateful to you, Miss Ceswick.” “Thank you, Mr. Plowden, it is refreshing to meet with true gratitude, it is a scarce flower in this world; but really I don’t deserve any. The observer who oversaw the painful scene between you and Mr. Jones also oversaw a scene preceding it, that, so far as I can gather, seems to have been hardly less painful in its way.”