This attitude wearing thin, he took refuge in that of unimpeachable honesty. 'Fair and square! The best man wins!' This lasted for some time, but was not proof against 'Swedes, Mr. James. Mangolds, Mr.

James. Stewing pears, Mr. James.' He began to get in a panic. His bow was cursory. He pocketed the money furtively and read his name in a low, apologetic tone. But this would never do! He must pull himself together. He tried bravado.

'Mr. Vessons. Mr. James.'

Vessons stood immovable within arm's reach of Miss Clomber. When he got a prize, which he did three times, no one else having sent any cheeses, he extended his arm like one side of a pair of compasses, and vouchsafed neither bow nor smile. He disliked Miss Clomber because he knew that she meant to be mistress of Undern. Mr. James was getting on well with the bravado.

'What do I care what people think? Dear me! All the world may see me get my prize.'

Then he caught Abel's satiric eye, and went all to pieces. He clutched at his first attitude--the business-like--and so began all over again, and managed to get through by not looking in Abel's direction, being upheld by the knowledge that his pockets were getting very full.

When he read out, 'Cherries, bottled. Mrs. Marston,' and Edward went to receive the prize, Reddin shouldered up to Hazel and asked:

'What time's he going?'

'I dunno.'

'Don't forget, mind.'

'Oh, Mr. Reddin, I mun go! What for wunna you let me be?'

But Reddin, finding Miss Clomber's eye on him, was gone.

Mr. James had come to the end of the list. He read out Abel's name and that of an old bent man with grey elf-locks, a famous bee-master. Mr.

James looked at Abel as much as to say, 'You've got your prize, you see! It's quite fair.'

'Thank yer,' said Abel to Miss Clomber, and then to James with fine irony: 'You dunna keep bees, do yer, Mr. James?'

The hills loomed in the dusk over the show-ground. They were of a cold and terrific colour, neither purple nor black nor grey, but partaking of all. Kingly, mournful, threatening, they dominated the life below as the race dominates the individual. Hazel gazed up at them. She stood in the attitude of one listening, for in her ears was a voice that she had never heard before, a deep inflexible voice that urged her to do--she knew not what. She looked up at the round wooded hill that hid God's Little Mountain--so high, so cold for a poor child to climb. She felt that the life there would be too righteous, too well-mannered. The thought of it suddenly made her homesick for dirt and the Callow.

She thought of Undern crouched under its hill like a toad. She remembered its echoing rooms and the sound as of dresses rustling that came along the passages while she put on the green gown. Undern made her more homesick than the parsonage.

Edward had gone. She had said she wanted to stay with her father, and Edward had thought her a sweet daughter and had acquiesced, though sadly.

Now she was awaiting Reddin. The dancing had not begun, though the tent was ready. Yellow light flowed from every gap in the canvas, and Hazel felt very forlorn out in the dark; for light seemed her natural sphere.

As she stood there, looking very small and slight, she had a cowering air. Always, when she stood under a tree or sheltered from the rain, she had this look of a refugee, furtive and brow-beaten. When she ran she seemed a fugitive, fleeing across the world with no city or refuge to flee into.

Miss Clomber's approach made her start.

'A word with you!' said Miss Clomber in her brisk, unsympathetic voice.

'I saw you with Mr. Reddin twice. I just wanted to say in a sisterly and Christian spirit'--she lowered her voice to a hollow whisper--'that he is not a good man.'

'Well,' said Hazel, with a sigh of relief in the midst of her shyness and her oppression about the mountain, 'that's summat, anyway!'

Miss Clomber, outraged and furious, strode away.

Hazel was again left to the hills. The taciturnity of winter was upon them still, and in the sky beyond was the cynical aloofness that comes with frost after sunset.

She turned from them to the lighted tent. The golden glow was like some bright creature imprisoned. Abel had prorogued an interminable argument with the old man with the elf-locks, and now began thrumming inside the tent.

Young men and women converged upon it at the sound of the music, as flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her--she shut away in the dark. Her feet began to dance.

'I'll go in!' she said defiantly. 'What for not?'

But just as she was lifting the flap she heard Reddin's voice at her elbow.

'Hazel, why did you run away?'

'I dunno.'

'Why didn't you tell me your name? Here have I been going hell-for-leather up and down the country.'

'Ah! That's gospel! That's righteous! I seed you.'

Reddin was speechless.

'Me and father was in the public, and you came. I thought it was the Black Huntsman.'

'Thanks. Not a pin to choose, I suppose.'

'Not all that.'

'We're wasting time. What's all this about the parson?'

'I told 'ee.'

'But it isn't true. You and the parson!'

He laughed. Hazel looked at him with disfavour.

'You're like a hound-dog when you laugh like to that,' she said, 'and I dunna like the hound-dogs.'

He stopped laughing.

Abel's harp beat upon them, and the soft thudding of feet on the turf, like sheep stamping, had grown in volume as the shyest were gradually drawn into the revelry.

A rainstorm, shaped like a pillar, walked slowly along the valley, skirting the base of the hills. It was like a grey god with folded arms and head aloof in the sky. As it drew slowly nearer to the two who stood there like lovers and were not lovers, and as it lashed them across the eyes, it might have been fate.

'Hazel, can't you see I'm in love with you?'

'What for are you?' There was a wailing note in Hazel's voice, and the rain ran down her face like tears. 'There's you and there's Ed'ard Oh, what for are you?'

Reddin looked at her in astonishment. A woman not to like a man to be in love with her. It was uncanny. He stood square-set against the darkening sky, his fine massive head slightly bent, looking down at her.

'I never thought,' he said helplessly--'I never thought, when I had come to forty years without the need of women' ('of love,' he corrected himself), 'that I should be like this.'

He looked at Hazel accusingly; then he gazed up at the coming night as a lion might at the sound of thunder.