'There'll be terrible work wi' mother over this.'

He accompanied her down the narrow lane that led past her uncle's house.
When the lighted windows came in sight he halted.

'Good night, lassie,' he said kindly. 'Do ye give ower distressin'
yeself.'

'Good night, Mr. Garstin,' she answered, in the same low, rapid voice in
which she had given him her answer up on the fell.

'We're man an' wife plighted now, are we not?' he blurted timidly.

She held her face to his, and he kissed her on the cheek, clumsily.


VI

The next morning the frost had set in. The sky was still clear and
glittering: the whitened fields sparkled in the chilly sunlight: here
and there, on high, distant peaks, gleamed dainty caps of snow. All
the week Anthony was to be busy at the fell-foot, wall-building against
the coming of the winter storms: the work was heavy, for he was
single-handed, and the stone had to be fetched from off the fell-side.
Two or three times a day he led his rickety, lumbering cart along the
lane that passed the vicarage gate, pausing on each journey to glance
furtively up at the windows. But he saw no sign of Rosa Blencarn; and,
indeed, he felt no longing to see her: he was grimly exultant over the
remembrance of his wooing of her, and over the knowledge that she was
his. There glowed within him a stolid pride in himself: he thought of