Vacancy he had no notion when he saw Joe standing a little behind him

to the right. The youth had evidently come from hard work in the fields,

and stood shifting his feet, breathing loudly, his face coloured like

a setting sun, and his arms, below the rolled-up sleeves of his blue

shirt, showing the hue and furry sheen of ripe peaches. His red lips

were open, his blue eyes with their flaxen lashes stared fixedly at

Ashurst, who said ironically:

"Well, Joe, anything I can do for you?"

"Yeas."

"What, then?"

"Yu can go away from yere. Us don' want yu."

Ashurst's face, never too humble, assumed its most lordly look.

"Very good of you, but, do you know, I prefer the others should speak

for themselves."

The youth moved a pace or two nearer, and the scent of his honest heat

afflicted Ashurst's nostrils.

"What d'yu stay yere for?"

"Because it pleases me."

"Twon't please yu when I've bashed yure head in!"

"Indeed! When would you like to begin that?"

Joe answered only with the loudness of his breathing, but his eyes

looked like those of a young and angry bull. Then a sort of spasm seemed

to convulse his face.

"Megan don' want yu."

A rush of jealousy, of contempt, and anger with this thick,

loud-breathing rustic got the better of Ashurst's self-possession; he

jumped up, and pushed back his chair.

"You can go to the devil!"

And as he said those simple words, he saw Megan in the doorway with a

tiny brown spaniel puppy in her arms. She came up to him quickly:

"Its eyes are blue!" she said.

Joe turned away; the back of his neck was literally crimson.

Ashurst put his finger to the mouth of the little brown bullfrog of a

creature in her arms. How cosy it looked against her!

"It's fond of you already. Ah I Megan, everything is fond of you."

"What was Joe saying to you, please?"

"Telling me to go away, because you didn't want me here."

She stamped her foot; then looked up at Ashurst. At that adoring look

he felt his nerves quiver, just as if he had seen a moth scorching its

wings.

"To-night!" he said. "Don't forget!"

"No." And smothering her face against the puppy's little fat, brown

body, she slipped back into the house.

Ashurst wandered down the lane. At the gate of the wild meadow he came

on the lame man and his cows.

"Beautiful day, Jim!"

"Ah! 'Tes brave weather for the grass. The ashes be later than th' oaks

this year. 'When th' oak before th' ash---'"

Ashurst said idly: "Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy

bogie, Jim?"

"It might be under that big apple tree, as you might say."

"And you really do think it was there?"

The lame man answered cautiously:

"I shouldn't like to say rightly that 't was there. 'Twas in my mind as

'twas there."

"What do you make of it?"

The lame man lowered his voice.

"They du zay old master, Mist' Narracombe come o' gipsy stock. But

that's tellin'. They'm a wonderful people, yu know, for claimin'

their own. Maybe they knu 'e was goin', and sent this feller along for

company. That's what I've a-thought about it."

"What was he like?"

"'E 'ad 'air all over 'is face, an' goin' like this, he was, zame as