'And should you like to be married?' he asked gently.

He expected a shy affirmative. He received a flat negative.

'My mam didna like it. And she said it'd be the end of going in the woods and all my gamesome days. And she said tears and torment, tears and torment was the married lot. And she said, "Keep yourself to yourself. You wunna made for marrying any more than me. Eat in company, but sleep alone"--that's what she said, Mr. Marston.'

Edward was so startled at this unhesitating frankness that he said nothing. But he silently buried several sweet hopes that had been pushing up like folded hyacinths for a week. The old madness was upon him, but it was a larger, more spiritual madness than Reddin's, as the sky is larger and more ethereal than the clouds that obscure it. He was always accustomed to think more of giving than receiving, so now he concentrated himself on what he could do for Hazel. He felt that her beauty would be an ample return for anything he could do as her husband to make her happy. If she would confide in him, demands on his time, run to him for refuge, he felt that he could ask no more of life. The strength of the ancient laws of earth was as yet hidden from him. He did not know the fierceness of the conflict in which he was engaging for Hazel's sake--the world-old conflict between sex and altruism.

If he had known, he would still not have hesitated.

Suddenly Hazel looked round with an affrighted air.

'It's late to be here,' she said.

'Why?'

'There's harm here if you bide late. The jeath pack's about here in the twilight, so they do say.'

They looked up into the dark steeps, and the future seemed to lower on them.

'Maybe summat bad'll come to us in this spinney,' she whispered.

'Nothing bad can come to you when you are in God's keeping.'

There canna be many folk in His keeping, then.'

'Do you say your prayers, Hazel?' he asked rather sadly.

'Ah! I say:

"Keep me one year, keep me seven, Till the gold turns silver on my head; Bring me up to the hill o' heaven, And leave me die quiet in my bed."

That's what I allus say.'

'Who taught you?'

'My mam.'

'Ah, well, it must be a good prayer if she taught it you, mustn't it?'

he said.

Suddenly Hazel clutched his arm affrightedly.

'Hark! Galloping up yonder! Run! run! It's the Black Huntsman!'

It was Reddin, skirting the wood on his way home from a search for Hazel. If he had come into the spinney he would have seen them, but he kept straight on.

'It's bringing harm!' cried Hazel, pulling at Edward's arm; 'see the shivers on me! It's somebody galloping o'er my grave!'

Edward resolved to combat these superstitions and replace them by a sane religion. He had not yet fathomed the ancient, cruel and mighty power of these exhalations of the soil. Nor did he see that Hazel was enchained by earth, prisoner to it only a little less than the beech and the hyacinth--bond-serf of the sod.

When Edward and Hazel burst into the parlour, like sunshine into an old garden, they were met by a powerful smell of burnt merino. Mrs. Marston had been for some hours as near Paradise as we poor mortals can hope to be. Her elastic-sided cloth boots rested on the fender, and her skirt, carefully turned up, revealed a grey stuff petticoat with a hint of white flannel beneath. The pink shawl was top, which meant optimism.

With Mrs. Marston, optimism was the direct result of warmth. Her spectacles had crept up and round her head, and had a rakishly benign appearance. On her comfortable lap lay the missionary _Word_ and a large roll of brown knitting which was intended to imitate fur. Edward noted hopefully that the pink shawl was top.

'Here's Hazel come to see you, mother!'

Mrs. Marston straightened her spectacles, surveyed Hazel, and asked if she would like to do her hair. This ceremony over, they sat down to tea.

'And how many brothers and sisters have you, my dear?' asked the old lady.

'Never a one. Nobody but our Foxy.'

'Edward, too, has none. Who is Foxy?'

'My little cub.'

'You speak as if the animals were a relation, dear.'

'So all animals be my brothers and sisters.'

'I know, dear. Quite right. All animals in conversation should be so.

But any single animal in reality is only an animal, and can't be.

Animals have no souls.'

'Yes, they have, then! If they hanna; _you_ hanna!'

Edward hastened to make peace.

'We don't know, do we, mother?' he said. 'And now suppose we have tea?'

Mrs. Marston looked at Hazel suspiciously over the rim of her glasses.

'My dear, don't have ideas,' she said.

'There, Hazel!' Edward smiled. 'What about your ideas in the spinney?'

'There's queer things doing in Hunter's Spinney, and what for shouldna you believe it?' said Hazel. 'Sometimes more than other times, and midsummer most of all.'

'What sort of queer things?' asked Edward, in order to be able to watch her as she answered.

Hazel shut her eyes and clasped her hands, speaking in a soft monotone as if repeating a lesson.

'In Hunter's Spinney on midsummer night there's things moving as move no other time; things free as was fast; things crying out as have been a long while hurted.' She suddenly opened her eyes and went on dramatically 'First comes the Black Huntsman, crouching low on his horse and the horse going belly to earth. And John Meares o' the public, he seed the red froth from his nostrils on the brakes one morning when he was ketching pheasants. And the jeath's with him, great hound-dogs, real as real, only no eyes, but sockets with a light behind 'em. Ne'er a one knows what they's after. If I seed 'em I'd die,' she finished hastily, taking a large bite of cake.

'Myths are interesting,' said Edward, 'especially nature myths.'

'What's a myth, Mr. Marston?'

'An untruth, my dear,' said Mrs. Marston.