"The master have sold the black mare, Miss Winifred, and the saddle and bridle he bought of the Widow Oldmixon!" said Roger, presently, coming through the garden. "The gentleman as bought them paid all in gold and gave me a crown-piece to boot. He was a bookish-looking sort of man like a parson, but he seemed a goodish judge of a horse too, and he rode away more like a dragoon than a scholar, to my mind." There was an uneasy feeling in Winifred's heart that night. She was not sure that she had done right in exchanging tokens with Mr. Carew in that way, and for the first time in all her life she felt a certain disinclination to open her mind to her mother. But the life-long habit of openness prevailed, and at bed-time, the usual hour for confidences, she showed the locket to her mother and told her all about it. Dame Magdalen was not a little disturbed. "Beshrew the man and his courtier's compliments!" said she to herself. "I wish he had gone anywhere else for a horse!" But as she looked at Winifred's steadfast, modest gray eyes, she could not think any harm had yet been done. "I am heartily glad he is out of the way!" was her second comment. But she only said: "There was no harm in it. Mr. Carew naturally wished to give you a token, and I suppose he had nothing else which he thought would please a young maid. As to the exchanging of tokens, that is but one of his court fashions. I dare say he will spend your gold piece at the first tavern." "Then I may keep the locket, mother?" said Winifred, somehow feeling that her heart was not particularly lightened by this view of the case. "Yes, if you please, child, so you do not show it. It is too valuable an ornament for one in your station." There was no danger of her showing it, Winifred thought. Neither would she bring herself to believe that Mr. Carew would spend her gold piece at the first tavern. She had slept alone in the little room over the porch since her father's arrival, and that night, for almost the first time in her life, she cried herself to sleep. CHAPTER XI. THE BEGINNING OF CHANGES. THE next three or four months were months of sad suspense to all the friends of Arthur Carew. To Winifred they were the longest she had ever spent. All the excitement and adventure of her life had been crowded into ten days, and now that they were over, it seemed hard to return to the little common duties of every-day life—to have nothing more important on her mind, when she awoke in the morning, than feeding the chickens or carrying her daily portion to Dame Sprat. Even her lessons with Mrs. Alwright had lost part of their charm, now that there were no messages to carry back and forth between my lady and Mr. Arthur—now that she was no longer a counsellor and in some sort a heroine, but had sunk into plain little Winifred Evans again.