chemical manure stores, paid him a higher rent than the best of his small
farms. It was obviously well managed by the tenant, and Kit approved.
Modern machines and methods, although expensive, were good and were
needed in the dale. The trouble was, they sometimes gave the man who
could use them power to rob his poorer neighbors. Kit saw that
concentrated power was often dangerous, and since unorganized, individual
effort was no longer profitable, he knew no cure but cooperation.

Although young, he was seldom rash. Enthusiasm is not common in the bleak
northern dales, whose inhabitants are, for the most part, conservative
and slow. Wind and rain had hardened him and he had inherited a reserved
strength and quietness from ancestors who had braved the storms that
raged about Ashness. Yet the north is not always stern, for now and then
the gray sky breaks, and fell and dale shine in dazzling light and melt
with mystic beauty into passing shade. Kit, like his country, varied in
his moods; sometimes he forgot to be practical and his caution vanished,
leaving him romantic and imaginative.

He went on, and as he reached the first of the white houses a girl came
out of a gate and stopped where the moonlight fell across the road. She
had some beauty and her pose was graceful.

"Oh," she exclaimed, with rather exaggerated surprise, "it's Kit! I
suppose you'll take this letter? I was going to the post."

Kit did not know much about young women, but hesitated, because he
doubted if she wanted him to post the letter.

"If you like," he said. "I expect the causeway at the water-splash
will be wet."