into the hill. Here, in November twilights, when the dumb birds cowered
in the dark pines, you might hear from the summit a horn blown-very
clearly, with tuneful devilry, and a scattered sound of deep barking
like the noise of sawing timber, and then the blood-curdling tumult of
the pack at feeding time.

To-day, as Hazel began her work, the radiant woods were full of pale
colour, so delicate and lucent that Beauty seemed a fugitive presence
from some other world trapped and panting to be free. The small patens
of the beeches shone like green glass, and the pale spired chestnuts
were candelabras on either side of the steep path. In the bright
breathless glades of larches the willow-wrens sang softly, but with
boundless vitality. On sunny slopes the hyacinths pushed out
close-packed buds between their covering leaves; soon they would
spread their grave blue like a prayer-carpet. Hazel, stooping in her
old multi-coloured pinafore, her bare arms gleaming like the stripped
trees, seemed to Edward as he came up the shady path to be the spirit
of beauty. He quite realized that her occupation was not suited to a
minister's future wife. 'But she may never be that,' he thought
despairingly.

'Have you ever thought, Hazel,' he said later, sitting down on a
log--'have you ever thought of the question of marriage?'

'I ne'er did till Foxy took the chicks.' Edward looked dazed. 'It's
like this,' Hazel went on. 'Father (he's a rum 'un, is father!), he
says he'll drown Foxy if she takes another.'

'Who is Foxy?'