"I'd best be going," she said, still half-wishful to linger--anxious
not to make herself cheap, yet wishing he would start some conversation
which would make it possible to stay without seeming to want to over
much.

"When'll you be out again?" asked Archelaus, his foot in the door.

"I don't know."

"I do. Good-night, lil' thing!" And he withdrew the foot and was off
through the darkness under the elms. Phoebe was left with her awakened
heart-beats.




CHAPTER XIV

A LETTER


Harvest had all been gathered in at Cloom, the threshing was over, the
grain lay in heaps, grey-green and golden, in the barn, or had been sold
and taken away, and the first tang of early autumn was in the air. The
peewits had come down and were mewing in the dappled skies, and on the
telegraph wires the high-shouldered swallows sat in rows preparing for
flight; in the hedgerows the dead hemlocks, brittle as fine shells, were
ready to scatter their pale seeds at a touch, and the blackberries, on
which as the West Country saying has it, the devil had already laid his
finger, were filmed with mildew. It was autumn, but rich, warm autumn,