"Nay? I doubt the b.u.t.ter will never come to idle hands."

The girl began again, and the thud, thud of the churn was like the angry beating of her heart.

Lucy's unwonted despondency rose from the strange temper of Joel.

Usually he was as affectionate as she could desire, but sometimes, without any reason that she knew, he would be taciturn and neglectful.

Yet he loved her--she did not doubt it. There was an inconsistency in him, and it puzzled her. For to Lucy's understanding, character should be simple, and not a thing of complex feelings and contradictory impulses. Though Joel purposed the highest achievements, he rarely attained; though he said that he adored her, he could not rouse his energy to fulfil his responsibilities. She was unhappy, trying to piece together these parts of him, and present a clear picture to her mind.

At last she heard the plop-plop of b.u.t.ter in the churn, and her eyes brightened. When the brain is distracted with questions it is unable to solve, that concern the inner life, it finds relief in turning to outward shows, where something is being accomplished--be it only the coming of b.u.t.ter.

The hind had cleaned out the byre, and shaken down fresh straw. It glistened in the gloom like thick golden threads, soon to be trodden under the hoofs of the cows. Lucy could hear her sister's voice as she drove them from their pasture across the bridge to the milking. They lumbered in single file up the path--red cows, white cows, piebald cows, with straight horns and full swinging udders, their brown eyes looking from under their lashes with an expression of innocent content.

Lucy was in a mood to draw a.n.a.logies from everything about her, and she thought of the yellow straw and Barbara's hair, and how soon life, with its heavy foot, would beat out its gold.

"If you could have a wish just now, that would come true," she said, "what would you wish for most in the world?"

Barbara leaned her cheek against the warm side of Cushy, her favourite cow, and pondered this question, while the only sound was the swish of milk into the pail.

"Eyes," she remarked at length.

"Eyes? You're not going blind, Barbara?"

"Nay, nay, I've got the best eyes in the dale. I can count twelve stars in the Pleiades, and no one else can see more than six. It's not them kind of eyes I want--it's spirit-eyes."

"Oh, Barbara, do you want to see spooks?"

The girl laughed, and then was silent. At last she said:

"I feel that if we could push a curtain aside, we'd find ourselves in a wonderful world. It's here, about us, on every hand, but we can't get in."

"Spooks!" again exclaimed Lucy. "I've seen a spook. It's the spirit of this old house--a grinning, grey hag, grey as its name--and it's got you and me in its grip; but I'll get away from it, see if I don't. It takes the very life out of me--haunts me like a shadow."

"Shut your eyes to it," said Barbara; "don't think of it, then it won't bother you."

"Shut my eyes! So I do; but it's my bed-fellow when you're not here. It gets close to me--ugh!--and whispers and whispers----"

"Well, what does it whisper?"

"Horrid things--all about death and sorrow and pain----"

"They're the common lot of us creatures. You won't escape them even if you run away from Greystones."

"I'm off now, at any rate," and Lucy took her milk cans and set out for High Fold. It was her habit to meet Joel at this time, on her way through Cringel Forest, and glean from their short meeting either joy or unhappiness upon which to feed herself until the same hour of the next evening.

The road to the village lay along the beck-side, and crossed the stream by an old stone bridge just beyond the falls. The bridge was garlanded in summer with honeysuckle; already the pale green leaves were out--the first green leaves in the dale--and the sight gladdened the heart of the girl. The further away she got from Greystones the happier she grew; she threw off the brooding despondency that had clouded her spirit all day, and hummed as she walked. The evening air was balmy, the snow had vanished from the fells, spring had come at last.

She had not gone far when she met Peter Fleming on his way to see her great-grandmother. He was swinging along at a good pace, with books tucked under each arm, and whistling like a blackbird. But he turned and walked with her to the edge of the forest. She could not help a momentary wish that Peter, with his honest grey eyes, and open smile were Joel. She could have rested her heart in peace upon him. She would never have been troubled with doubts. She would have been like a bird, buoyed up like a bird on the calm blue waters of the mere, as happy and unconcerned a creature as any on the earth. He had never shown her anything but a brotherly affection, but she knew by instinct that artful fingers, and a pretty face could cause his heartstrings to vibrate. Yet it was Joel, and not Peter, whom she loved.

He left her at the edge of the forest, and she followed one of the many paths by which it was intersected, that led to a clearing where Timothy Hadwin's cottage stood. But his door was shut, so she left his can of milk on the doorstep, and ran down to a little dell to meet Joel. She jingled her cans so that he might hear her coming.

He was waiting for her with his back against a tree-trunk.

A sweeter trysting-place these lovers could not have chosen. The mossy banks were starred with celandines, now closing with the lengthening shadows; hollies, dense and glossy-leaved, formed a complete screen around, and down in the bottom, among grey pebbles, a spring bubbled up, as clear as crystal and cold as ice, widening into a pool, in which the lovely slim bodies of the sunbeams by day, and the moon-beams by night, bathed and swam.

Joel was in a lively humour, but Lucy would be serious.

"Oh, lad, lad," she whispered, "take me away from Greystones. I'm so unhappy there."

"Unhappy! What or who has been frightening you, Lucy? Is it the old woman?"

She shuddered.

"I'm sure the place is haunted."

"So it is--by your great-grandmother. It's not canny to have a great-grandmother, Lucy. She ought to be a ghost by now."

"Oh, I'd rather have her as she is," replied the girl. "She can't get out of the four-poster--at any rate she wont till she's dead. Then"--she shivered again, and moved closer to him--"she would soon be after us, keeking through the bushes, and crying out in that sharp voice of hers: 'Lucy, Lucy, away to your bed!' But, Joel, I wish you would tell her that you want to marry me."

"G.o.d forbid," he said fervently.

"Why not, Joel? Don't you want to marry me? She's fonder of you than she is of me."

He plucked a bunch of the little yellow flowers and twined them in her curls.

"You're very pretty to-night, Lucy," he answered, "and you know I want to marry you more than anything else in the world. But it would not help us for me to tell her so, though she does profess to like the looks of me. She likes the looks of her money better."

"What's that to do with it?"

"She'd want to know if I expected her to keep us."

"You could say 'No.'"

"Then she'd want to know if I could keep you."

"You could say 'Yes.'"

"But I can't keep you, Lucy. I can't keep myself, not yet, though I have hopes that my luck is changing," he spoke mysteriously.

"Shall we never be married?" she asked wearily, leaning her head upon his shoulder.

"We must wait a little longer."

"It's always wait, wait, wait, Joel."

"Well, you see, you shouldn't have fallen in love with such a poverty-stricken creature. But I thank G.o.d--whenever I thank Him at all--that you did. You're the only soul that has ever cared for me, Lucy. My mother blew the thought of me away as though I had been dust; and old Mally Ray, honest heart, doesn't know the meaning of real love.

I don't think her religion approves of the word. Look up, Lucy, and let me see you smile--it's a garden of roses to me, that smile of yours."

She did look up, but to ask in a cold voice:

"How much money have you, Joel?"