through the field above the road, or waited among the trees until she
was gone.

For some time I saw nothing of her; but one day, as I was going through
the gate, I saw written in pencil on the white board of the post that
marked the rode [Rode--a length of road. The high-road is divided into
rodes, and the division between these is marked by posts, on which stand
the names of the houses, whose owners have to keep that portion of the
road in repair.]: "You are angry with me, but S. is not at all angry
with you."

I knew the large clumsy writing well, and I went back to the gate two or
three times that day to read it over and over again. It was Susanna in a
new character; I saw her in thought behind the letters as behind a
balustrade. In the afternoon I wrote underneath: "Look on the back of
the post!" and there I wrote: "D. is not angry with S. either."

The next day Susanna was standing by the fence in the garden when I
passed, but pretended not to see me; she probably repented having been
so ready to make advances.

Although outwardly their relations were polite in the extreme, in
reality my father's intercourse with the minister was from this time
broken off; they never, except on special occasions and in response to a
solemn invitation, set foot within one another's door. This again gave a
kind of clandestine character to the intercourse between me and Susanna.
No command was laid upon us, yet we only met, as it were, by stealth.

We were both lonely children. Susanna sat at home, a prisoner to
every-day tediousness, under her mother's watchful eye, and in my dreary