"Heaven forbid!" fervently ejaculated the young man. "Heaven forbid you should ever do that, child! There must come never a cloud to darken little Ruth's days." [Sidenote: Cross-purposes.] "And yet I think mine can scarce be all sunshine if yours are--mind! mind! There you go! Running right into the mudbank!" "Then must my steerswoman be to blame," laughed he. "Pull to the right, Ruth." "I hate secrets," she pouted, doing as he directed. "There are some things," rejoined the superior creature, "girls can't understand." "Then, to be sure, I think they cannot be good for boys--we crave your lordship's pardon--MEN we should have said;" and Ruth hemmed a little correcting cough--"to meddle with; And-- There you are again. All in the osier tangle now!" "Confound it! and whose fault but yours?" he cried petulantly. "Didn't I bid you keep to the right?" "And how am I to see what I'm doing, pray, if you will bob your head about in that fashion?" retorted she, irately knitting her brows. "Lawrence, dear, what's your mighty secret?" she added, in honey-sweet tones. "Who said I had one?" flashed he. "How stupid and disagreeable you are to-night, Ruth! What is it you want?" "Only for you to be nice again. Dear, nice, happy, old Lawrence." [Sidenote: Stillness but not peace.] "Nice! happy! psha! bah! hang it! A fellow's nowhere with you girls if he isn't always up in the seventh heaven!" grunted Lawrence, and then he rowed on in sulky silence between the low-lying meadow banks, where the quiet oxen stood plunged knee-deep in the fresh young buttercup-studded grass, lazily sniffing in the fragrant evening air, all translucent with the greenish golden tints of mingled young moon-beams, and the last rays of the setting sun. Save the low chirp, chirp, twee of the birds settling to their nests among the pollard willows, and the ripple of the water about the boat's prow, not a sound broke the stillness, till a somewhat sharp bend of the river brought them in sight of a wooden bridge, overshadowed to its right by a thicket of tall beeches and brushwood; while leftwards, a narrow road threaded on across it to a second bridge, spanning another stream that gleamed gray and still as glass between straight high-lying banks scarcely twenty yards beyond; and so winding on, over a waste of level common land, till it was lost in distance. Dimly discernible through the copse to the right of the first bridge were the walls of a quaintly-timbered, many-gabled, two-storied house, whose latticed casements and trellised porch gleamed in the night's soft radiance; whilst a huge sign, bearing the royal arms, swung in its carved oaken framework, which projected from between the windows of the upper storey, right across the narrow road above the lofty wall of red brick which ran facing the inn for some distance. [Sidenote: Master Rumbold on the watch]