any comment on his absence, and appeared oddly oblivious of the
existence of parson Blencarn's niece.

She had always been a sour-tongued woman; but, as the days shortened
with the approach of the long winter months, she seemed to him to grow
more fretful than ever; at times it was almost as if she bore him some
smouldering, sullen resentment. He was of stubborn fibre, however,
toughened by long habit of a bleak, unruly climate; he revolved the
matter in his mind deliberately, and when, at last, after much plodding
thought, it dawned upon him that she resented his acquaintance with Rosa
Blencarn, he accepted the solution with an unflinching phlegm, and
merely shifted his attitude towards the girl, calculating each day the
likelihood of his meeting her, and making, in her presence, persistent
efforts to break down, once for all, the barrier of his own timidity. He
was a man not to be clumsily driven, still less, so he prided himself, a
man to be craftily led.

It was close upon Christmas time before the crisis came. His mother was
just home from Penrith market. The spring-cart stood in the yard, the
old grey horse was steaming heavily in the still, frosty air.

'I reckon ye've come fast. T' ould horse is over hot,' he remarked
bluntly, as he went to the animal's head.

She clambered down hastily, and, coming to his side, began breathlessly:

'Ye ought t' hev coom t' market, Tony. There's bin pretty goin's on in
Pe'rith today. I was helpin' Anna Forsyth t' choose six yards o'
sheetin' in Dockroy, when we sees Rosa Blencarn coom oot o' t' 'Bell and
Bullock' in company we' Curbison and young Joe Smethwick. Smethwick was