beetle, he was, by virtue of his unspoken passion, the protoplasm of a
poet.




Chapter 4


Vessons took up the pose of one seeing a new patient.

'This young lady's lost her way,' Reddin remarked.

'She 'as, God's truth! But you'll find it forra I make no doubt, sir.
"There's a way"' (he looked ironically at the poultry-basket behind the
trap, from which peered anxious, beaky faces)--'"a way as no fowl
knoweth, the way of a man with a maid."'

'Fetch the brood mares in from the lower pasture. They should have been
in this hour.'

'And late love's worse than lad's love, so they do say,' concluded
Vessons.

'There's nothing of love between us,' Reddin snapped.

'I dunna wonder at it!' Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's
flushed face and at Hazel's tousled hair, and withdrew.

Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the