It took him just an hour to trundle an ancient bicycle, lent by Mr. Pigott, from Billing's Corner to the Market Cross after his day's work was done; and an hour back, with the moon hanging over Wind-hover and the night-jars purring in the woods under the northern escarpment of the Downs. But he was young; the August evenings were long-drawn and full of scents and the cries of partridges; and the hour he spent with Ruth in the Brooks, strolling along the tow-path under the pollarded willows to the sound of rooks homing and high-strewn in the heaven, was worth the toil. The time was between the hay and the straw; and Ruth, apart from her milking at the Barton, was not pressed with work. She liked his visits, and looked for them; but she drew no nearer to him, nor ever invited him to come. Friendly always, even affectionate, she kept between them a cloud, impalpable and impenetrable. At the end of a month he knew that he was no closer to his goal than when he had met her first upon the river-bank. The old folks grew to love the constant visitor, nor did he disguise the errand on which he was bent; while little Alice, with her father's eyes peeping from beneath her mother's curls, greeted her new friend with screams of joy, bangings on her drum, and the loveliest and most intimate of smiles. Ernie made the child a cradle-swing of willow-withes, hung it from the bough of an apple-tree, in the garden, and passed many a happy hour alone with her. One evening Ruth, returning from the Dower-house, her yoke upon her shoulders, found him in the garden on the hill at the back of the cottage, swinging the child and singing. She bent her knees and lowered her milk-cans to the ground. The clanking of the cans on the stone caught Ernie's ears. He turned from his labour of love to see Ruth standing in the door in her earth-coloured gabardine. She smiled at him; and in her eyes there was the gleam, mysterious and darkling, with which good men are sometimes blessed by their women. Ernie bent over the cradle. "Who'm I, baby?" he asked. The little singing voice from the basket-cradle made answer sweetly in one brief bubble-word. Ruth heard it, put her hand to her heart, and turned slowly away, the chains of the yoke upon her shoulders jingling faintly. Ernie came to her. "You mustn't, Ernie," she murmured. "I must then," he whispered in her ear, "my dear love--my lady." His arm stole about her; but she put it aside, and regarded him with eyes that were great and grieved under the evening sky. "Ernie," she said in her gently thrilling voice. "Goo away, there's a dear lad--afoor worse comes of it. You can't help me; and I might harm you." He took her hands in his, and kissed them.