here, and came down to have a chat; it's better talking out here than in
the house, where there's always somebody listening."

The man was a big, broad-shouldered, stupid-looking clod-hopper of about
twenty-three years of age. His dark red hair grew low upon his forehead,
and his bushy brows met over a pair of greenish gray eyes; his nose was
large and well-shaped, but the mouth was coarse in form and animal in
expression. Rosy-cheeked, red-haired, and bull-necked, he was not unlike
one of the stout oxen grazing in the meadows round about the Court.

The girl seated herself lightly upon the wood-work at his side, and put
one of her hands, which had grown white in her new and easy service,
about his thick neck.

"Are you glad to see me, Luke?" she asked.

"Of course I'm glad, lass," he answered, boorishly, opening his knife
again, and scraping away at the hedge-stake.

They were first cousins, and had been play fellows in childhood, and
sweethearts in early youth.

"You don't seem much as if you were glad," said the girl; "you might
look at me, Luke, and tell me if you think my journey has improved me."

"It ain't put any color into your cheeks, my girl," he said, glancing up
at her from under his lowering eyebrows; "you're every bit as white as
you was when you went away."

"But they say traveling makes people genteel, Luke. I've been on the