from under his lowered eyebrows, talking but little to Mary. But now
he grows more uneasy still, for the gate goes again, and still another
footfall is heard approaching through the darkness.

"That is James Stockbridge. I should know that step among a thousand.
Whether brushing through the long grass of an English meadow in May
time, or quietly pacing up and down the orange alley in the New World,
between the crimson snow and the blazing west; or treading lightly
across the wet ground at black midnight, when the cattle are
restless, or the blacks are abroad; or even, I should think, staggering
on the slippery deck, when the big grey seas are booming past, and
the good ship seems plunging down to destruction."

He had loved Mary dearly since she was almost a child; but she, poor
pretty fool, used to turn him to ridicule, and make him fetch and carry
for her like a dog. He was handsomer, cleverer, stronger, and better
tempered than George Hawker, and yet she had no eyes for him, or his
good qualities. She liked him in a sort of way; nay, it might even be
said that she was fond of him. But what she liked better than him was
to gratify her vanity, by showing her power over the finest young
fellow in the village, and to use him as a foil to aggravate George
Hawker. My aunt Betsy (spinster), used to say, that if she were a man,
sooner than stand that hussy's airs (meaning Mary's), in the way young
Stockbridge did, she'd cut, and run to America, which, in the old
lady's estimation, was the last resource left to an unfortunate human
creature, before suicide.

As he entered the parlour, John's face grew bright, and he held out his
hand to him. The Doctor, too, shoving his spectacles on his forehead,
greeted him with a royal salute, of about twenty-one short words; but