o' sun-and then a snap fro" the northeast, that'll bring the rest o' the leaves down-and, after that, a kittenish sort o' warmth, pretending winter isn't going to bite."

Cicely laughed, out of the homesickness that was shadowing her already. "It is not kind, Jabe, to call it womanish."

He glanced at her with great friendliness, his eyes keen and bright as a hawk's. "Ah, now, you differ, like, fro' the rest o' them. Wind and hunting licked ye into shape. No maid's whimsies about ye, Miss Cicely."

And again she laughed; for at the moment her mood, in spite of wind and hunting, was just that of the mixed weather he had prophesied.

"Ay, so," said Jabez, as if he were proud of the upbringing he had shared. "I mind one day when I met ye, as a lile lass, riding down the moor. You'd had a fall, you had, and you were dead-weary; and you were crying like a babby, thinking ye had all the moor to your lonesome, like."

"I never cry Jabe. My men-folk trained me."

"Ah, bide, now. Happen it wasn't just crying. It war a long while since, and a body forgets. But what I call to mind is that you gathered yourself up at the sight o' me, and clucked your horse into a trot, and laughed as you went by. I pick my folk that way, same as I judge the weather."

It was pleasant to these two, who were nearing a separation that they feared, to stay and gossip with Jabe o' the Barns. Jabe was part of the moors, the dawns and sunsets, they had known aforetime. He asked alms from no man, and did not seek advancement along the dusty roads that lead to cities. He was living, with God and rheumatism and the chances of each day, in the life that fitted him like a home-spun suit; and such men carry with them a persuasiveness, be

cause they are like the open hills, knowing no lies or cowardice.

Cicely looked at the man. His coat was rusty and gaping at the seams; his bent legs were cased in tatters that were stained by much wayfaring through rain and heather. He had an odd smell about him, too; close contact with ferrets, dogs, and rabbits rendered delicate nostrils sensitive at his approach. Yet Cicely saw only his blue, steady eyes, smelt only the brackens in which he slept while the mid-day sun was hot.

"Jabe, I'm leaving it all," she said. "Ay-and for why?" he answered bluntly, much as Roger himself had done.

She curtseyed with mock gravity. "To learn French, if you please." "That willun't help ye to talk to dogs and hosses."

"To learn how to carry myself and to grow genteel," she went on.

"I never bothered wi' that sort o' learning, myself."

So much was obvious; and Cicely, glancing at him, laughed infectiously. "To learn how rough and clumsy all you folk are-to learn foreign ways."

"Well, as for that," said Jabe, fumbling for his pipe, "you're too honest and straight-bred for whimsies o' that sort. I'll trust ye to fare out, and home again-you'll not vary much, and you'll not forget."

Again, as on that far-back huntingday, the tears rushed to Cicely's eyes; and again she conquered them. It meant so much to her that Jabe here trusted her, She did not trust herself just now. All that her mother pictured of Brussels and the school there— the constant harping on an education that would fit her for a smoother life than the moors could teach her-returned to her. The whole ideal, to her view of it, was cramped and false; and yet she would be alone yonder, day by day and week by week, till her

two years' imprisonment was ended. She would be among English girls of her own age, but of a softer breed; there would not be one, perhaps, who would stand by her in the battle for freedom. The whole adventure showed intolerably lonely, here where the hills were big and the wind came packed with scents from the moor; she was asked to go out friendless on an errand she despised, and to withstand a long corrosion; and again she felt weak and small and feared surrender until Jabe spoke tranquilly of trust in her.

Something danced at her heart. Her ragged friend, who was lighting his pipe with quiet unconcern, nad touched the right chord.

"You've known me since I was a baby, and-and you trust me, Jabe?" she asked,

"Ay, as I trust Bouldsworth Hill. Landmarks don't often shift."

She looked down the fields, red-gold in the evening light, and her thoughts roved wild, as a girl's will when she reaches the parting of the ways. was almost happy.

She

"And you, Roger?" she asked, turning sharply. "Do you trust me, too?" "As far as the world's end," he said, forgetting Jabe, forgetting all except this odd gravity that had settled on him. "Perhaps beyond the world's end-who knows, child?"

"Then I shall go to Brussels-almost gladly, and hating it beforehand-hating it, and glad to go, and-oh, just a muddle of a child, Roger, as you always said I was."

It did not trouble Jabe that the gentry were talking over his head like birds chattering; and presently, as Cicely looked down the fields again, old instinct cut across her dreams. In the keen light she saw, sixty yards away, a grey-brown lump lying motionless in a tuft of ruddy bent-grass.

"There's another hare for your bag,

Roger," she said, reaching out for the spaniel's collar lest he should spoil good sport.

They watched him go craftily upwind until he trod on a rotten twig before he was well within gun-shot. The hare went lopping in a wide circle, and Roger took an aim that was both quick and unhurried. When he returned, Jabe o' the Barns saw that the hare a plump eight-pounder-was riddled through the head.

"I've seen you miss many an easy shot," he said, his face wrinkling with the quiet, sportsman's approbation— "but I seldom saw ye miss a long 'un. She war yards out o' range, yond hare -yards out o' range."

"She's here, Jabe, all the same."

"Aye, you've bagged her," growled the other "but I stick to 't that she was fair outrageous out o' gunshot."

Cicely, not knowing why, glanced up at Roger, and met an answering question in his eyes. They were fond of each other, and near to parting; and at these times intuition thrives, like bees on honey. Jabe at the moment seemed a prophet seeing far ahead. Then, after a little silence that was full of wonderment, they said goodbye to Jabe. Roger stuffed the hare into his bag, and the two of them went down the broken lands together.

"Roger, are you very poor?" the girl asked suddenly.

"My father says so, and his father said as much before him-but don't worry, Cicely. We have a horse or two in stable yet; and we like our grumbles."

"You're honest, Roger?"

"Extremely honest, baby. It's the only gift I have."

"Because if-if it happened that you were really poor-and you'd die if you hadn't a full stable-you know you'd die I'm sure that I could help you." "If you could."

"I can. Father says I shall be a rich

little woman when I come of ageand, Roger, it meant nothing to me till just now, when you talked of hav ing to sell your horses. We're so friendly, and I can help you—when I come of age."

He looked at this child of the hills who one moment was a woman, and the next a lassie who did not guess how serious a matter guineas are to grown-up folk. Her face was puckered with the ludicrous, pathetic wrinkles that cross a child's face when it feels the troubles of its elders and seeks to right them by simple, unconsidered ways.

"That's a long way off, Cicely," he said, some odd pain and trouble underneath his banter. "When you come home from Brussels-with a French accent and deportment-you'll still be a long way off from coming of age."

She broke into a storm of tears. No hill-thunder ever brought a flood more drenching or more sudden. "I-I was in earnest, Roger-and very home-sick -and you laugh at me."

He put an arm about her, not knowing whether she were child or woman, and not caring. She was in trouble, and needed him; and he had always hated tears.

"I'm in earnest, too," he said at last. "We're getting poorer every yearselling a field here, a farm there, to keep up the stables and all that-but it can't go on, Cicely."

"Yes, till I come of age. Think of it, Roger! I shall have more than I want, and you'll have less, and we'll just share and share alike. Comrades do."

The breadth of view this child had, the pity and the beauty of it, touched Roger with an exquisite pain. The world was so old and sordid, while she was as fresh and unspoiled as April when she bids the spring come out of hiding.

"Comrades, do," he said. "I'll wait till you come of age."

"You're laughing at me still, Roger." "Then we're comrades proved, Cicely. I seldom laugh at enemies."

And somehow a great trust came to them. Whether it crept from the sunset dying up the moors, or from the dusk that was stealing over the pastures, they did not ask. In peace and amity they went down the fields, needing no speech of any sort, until they reached the deep ravine known to the moorside as Hither Clough.

The year had been kind with Hither Clough. The winter's gales had driven down it, uprooting weaker trees, and bowing down the stronger sort with snow; spring had been wayward and uncertain, and the summer over-hot; but now in the autumn-tide the watered hollow was gathering her recompense. There were none but beech-trees here; and no tree in the hill country, except the rowan, knows better how to live and die than the smooth-limbed beech. The wood was dying now, until the next year's resurrection-trumpet brought all the young spring leafage leaping forward to the new birth; but it was dying game, with a strange, tranquil beauty that smiled at death, disdaining it.

They went down the road together by the winding track that dipped and climbed, turning corners swift with ambush and sweet with mystery. And the spirit of the wood crept close about them, so that with a common impulse they halted and stood looking down the glen. The branches were half stripped of leaves; those that were left were dancing in the breeze, red against the grey-black bark; and underfoot, right down to the silver, tinkling stream there was a crimson carpet laid, as if royalty were expected in the glen. Even the water was splashed with red, wherever the fallen leaves had come to harbor in some

quiet pool. Down from the moor, too, a last shaft of red-gold struck keen through the dell; and everywhere there was a fairy-dance of red leaves falling, chasing and coying with each other as the breeze piped their minuet. It was so that the glen said good-bye to summer, knowing the keenness of the winter's tooth, but knowing, too, that on the far side of adversity the singing birds would build their nests again.

These two, the man of six-andtwenty and the girl in her teens, stood as if shipwrecked happily on an island where no one gossiped and none cared for guineas. They were alone in a world fresh from God's hands, and big with righteousness of a swift and happy sort. There was no to-morrow and no yesterday-only a comradeship with the glen's magic and with each other.

"Roger," she said by and by, "it is just as if we stood in church."

"Brussels will cure you of your fancies," he answered-uncivilly, because he was shaken out of the easy-going order of his days. "You'll forget us in six months, Cicely-I give you SO long."

She stood away from him, defiant because the hurt went too deep for tears. "Roger, did-did you say that? Did you say that I should forget all this?"

"I was always a bit of a fool, child. Yes, I said it, just to hurt you. I'm going to miss you-going to look for you up the fields when I know that you're learning monkey-tricks in France-"

He, too, was unreasonably happy, though they had just skirted the edge of their first quarrel.

"Do you think two years of makebelieve will kill sixteen years of-oh, of this, Roger-the wind from the moor, and the look of Pendle Hilland dusk coming down through the wood?"

"No, it couldn't. I trust you."

In life, as wayfarers live it day by day, men and women do not pick the right word deliberately; they stumble on it, and blurt it out, not knowing why.

"Trust-old Jabe o' the Barns said just the same do you really trust me, Roger?"

"What else, child?"

"I'm going into a lone country-and I'm afraid-and-and, Roger say again that you trust me. They might teach me to think in French-or to love lapdog comforts-it's all a nightmare to me, somehow."

They went down the wood, halting for a last glance at the crimson splendor of it, and crossed the pastures that led to the side-gate of Woodhouse. And they were very quiet, because they were under a spell that neither of them could understand until long trouble had interpreted its beauty.

"You'll come in, Roger, and show father what we've shot to-day?" "Not to-night, I think. He must take your word for it."

Something had happened to these two to-day, and they were loth to part. They stood dallying at the gate, so that any passing countryman might have mistaken them for lovers, though as yet they were simply comrades who stood at the parting of the ways and saw a blue mist-of happiness, and vague unrest, and sorrow scarcely felt -drifting down the separate tracks they had to take.

"There'll never again be a day like

this, Roger," she said, breaking the silence.

And Roger laughed at her. "There will-if we wait for it, baby, and seize it when it comes."

"It is so easy for you. You're staying here, with your dogs and horsesbut I-Roger, I'm going into exile."

"They all think it's easy for me-but I shall miss you every day, Cicelyand most of the horses will have to go before you come back from Brussels."

The old comradeship returned. “Is it-honestly, is it as bad as that?" she asked, with a friendly hand on his

arm.

"Near to it."

"Then, Roger, you will have to take to trade. Other squires are doing it since rents went down."

"I'd rather die a beggar, owning enough soil to bury me. Trade? Can you see me selling wool in their greasy markets?"

"You are always very-very like yourself, somehow." For the moment she had borrowed a grown woman's insight and understood his heat. "Tr the moors were full of looms, Rogerand father says they will be soonyou'd ride further and further out each day, till you found the curlews and the heather. You'd just disdain the mills, pretending they weren't there."

"We're agreed, then. I'm too lazy to get out of the old tracks."

"Unless one thing happened Roger, I'm fey to-night. You mustn't heed me. I seem to be looking so far ahead."

"And the one thing?"

"Oh, some sudden call-some one needing you-needing you desperately -you'd take to trade then, Roger-to anything, I think-if you could help them."

"It was never my way. I'm easygoing, child-my own father, I tell you, twits me with it. He says that

I'd ride a horse to death and break my neck at the end of the journey, if it happened to be pleasure I was bent on."

He was teasing her, as of old, glad to be near her, glad even of his reputation for good-natured indolence. After all, his love of sport had brought him many days such as this had been -days unconsidered until he realized that this comrade with the wind-blown hair was soon to leave him.

"You're not fey, for all that," he put in, lazily. "Folk who are really fey see true pictures. You'll go, and you'll come back-but you'll find me riding horses that I can't afford-and shooting up the moors when I ought to be doing bailiff's work for father-"

"Yes, if some one hasn't needed you enough by that time."

Roger was silent for a long while. He watched a heron standing motionless at the stream's edge, fifty yards below, in search of prey. He heard a plover calling as she flapped overhead, and the smell of the wind came down to him from the moors. All was as of old, save this unexpected broadening of the thing men call the soul. Cicely had said so little; but from old comradeship she had learned the way of speech.

"You trust me?" he asked, sharply. "I always trusted you. I always shall."

"It is a sporting risk. None of my friends would take odds as long as that."

"All your friends would—”

"Yes, if I rode a steeplechase, or played a match at pigeon-shooting. But in the big game of life, child, they wouldn't count on me. They've guessed my secret."

"Why are you bitter? It has been so good-so good until you spoil it all. Roger, your face is hard. I do not like it."

He straightened his big, lazy body.