"Good night, father," said Ruth, lifting her face to his, but Rumbold did not, or affected not to see. He was standing absorbed in watching the approach of a big black coal-laden barge which now hove lumbering in sight through the middle span of the bridge. [Sidenote: The queen's crown goes down.] As the boat cleared into open stream again her huge black bows came athwart the poor drowning May garland, and swirled it deep down under water. Whether the unfortunate wreath's destruction afforded Rumbold special pleasure, or that some other cause originated the grim smile slowly breaking on his gloomy lips, who shall say? The look at all events roused Lee's ire, and he said in tones of indignant reproach, which he seemed at small pains to conceal, "Your daughter bids you good-night, Master Rumbold." The maltster started from his abstraction, and imprinting a cold kiss on Ruth's upturned brow, waved her away with a gesture of impatience, and resumed his contemplation of the barge. Now, in Ruth's eyes coal-laden barges were things as ugly almost as they were common up and down their little silver Lea; and the rapt interest her father appeared to be taking in this one and particular specimen of its class, attracted her wonder and curiosity. To her the boat seemed only more than a usually hideous one, by reason of its cruel destruction of her May crown; and partly in search of sympathy, partly in good-night, she stole a glance at Lawrence Lee. Alack! He had seemingly forgotten her very existence, so absorbed was he also in following the course of the barge. "And this," thought Ruth, swallowing back a rising lump in her throat, was "the end of the delightfullest day she had ever spent!" Truly, as once she had read somewhere in some dusty fusty old book, "a merry going out makes a mournful coming in," and she turned with lagging and sorrowful step up the grassy slope, pausing, however, within a few yards of the road, which was fringed with a thick growth of bracken and bramble, to cast one more wistful glance at Lawrence, and to see whether the odious barge had taken itself out of sight. Nothing of the sort. There stood the young man with folded arms, and brows gloomily knit, watching the boat, which was now turning from midstream. A minute more, and it floated up to a standstill alongside of the water steps, near the bottom of the inn garden. [Sidenote: Mysterious visitors.] The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over the white wooden paling which skirts the garden by the water's edge, and cast such bewildering shadows in the now fast gathering darkness, that Ruth cannot be certain of the precise number of figures all wearing broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks, which rise, as she looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot haste to the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard.