dark face. A stranger watching it might have wondered, indeed, whether it
could smile with any fulness or spontaneity.

"But you don't see any good in grumbling--is that it?"

"Noa--we'se not git ony profit that gate, I reckon," said the old man,
laying his scraper to the mud once more.

"Well, good-night to you. I'm expecting my sister to-night, you know, my
sister Mrs. Fountain, and her stepdaughter."

"Eh?" said Reuben slowly. "Then yo'll be hevin cumpany, fer shure.
Good-neet to ye, Misther Helbeck."

But there was no great cordiality in his tone, and he touched his cap
carelessly, without any sort of unction. The man's manner expressed
familiarity of long habit, but little else.

Helbeck turned into his own park. The road that led up to the house wound
alongside the river, whereof the banks had suddenly risen into a craggy
wildness. All recollection of the marshland was left behind. The ground
mounted on either side of the stream towards fell-tops, of which the
distant lines could be seen dimly here and there behind the crowding
trees; while, at some turns of the road, where the course of the Greet
made a passage for the eye, one might look far away to the same mingled
blackness of cloud and scar that stood round the head of the estuary.
Clearly the mountains were not far off; and this was a border country
between their ramparts and the sea.

The light of the March evening was dying, dying in a stormy greyness that