"Her didn't make much account on him while him were alive; but now 'ce be dead, 'tis butivul tu zee how her du take on," said Happy Jack.

There was a soft mist of heat; the long-delayed spring coming suddenly, after storms of cold rain and gales of wind had swept the Youle valley. Two days' powerful sunshine had excited the buds to breaking, and drawn up the tender blades of young grass from the soaked earth.

The flowering laurels hung over the shady banks, whereon large families of primroses spent their brief and lovely existence undisturbed. The hawthorn put forth delicate green leaves, and the white buds of the cherry-trees in the orchard were swelling on their leafless boughs.

In such summer warmth, and with the concert of building birds above and around, it was strange to see the dead and wintry aspect of the forest trees; still bare and brown, though thickening with the red promise of foliage against the April sky.

John Crewys, climbing the lane next the waterfall, had been hailed by the roadside by the toothless, smiling old rustic.

"I be downright glad to zee 'ee come back, zur; ay, that 'a be. What vur du 'ee go gadding London ways, zays I, when there be zuch a turble lot to zee arter? and the ladyship oop Barracombe ways, her bain't vit var tu du 't, as arl on us du know. Tis butivul tu zee how her takes on," he repeated admiringly.

John glanced uneasily at his companion, who stood with downcast eyes.

"Lard, I doan't take no account on Miss Zairy," said the road-mender, leaning on his hoe and looking sharply from the youthful lady to the middle-aged gentleman. "I've knowed her zince her wur a little maid. I used tu give her lolly-pops. Yu speak up, Miss Zairy, and tell 'un if I didn't."

"To be sure you did, Father Jack," said Sarah, promptly.

"Ah, zo 'a did," said the old man, chuckling. "Zo 'a did, and her ladyship avore yu. I mind her when her was a little maid, and pretty ways her had wi' her, zame as now. None zo ramshacklin' as yu du be, Miss Zairy."

"There's nobody about that he doesn't remember as a child," said Sarah, apologetically. "He's so old, you see. He doesn't remember how old he is, and nobody can tell him. But he knows he was born in the reign of George the Third, because his mother told him so; and he remembers his father coming in with news of the Battle of Waterloo, So I think he must be about ninety."

"Lard, mar like a hunderd year old, I be," said Happy Jack, offended. "And luke how I du wark yit. Yif I'd 'a give up my wark, I shude 'a bin in the churchyard along o' the idlers, that 'a shude." He chuckled and winked. "I du be a turble vunny man," quavered the thin falsetto voice. "They be niver a dune a laughin' along o' my jokes. An' I du remember Zur Timothy's vather zo well as Zur Timothy hisself, though 'ee bin dead nigh sixty year. Lard, 'ee was a bad 'un, was y' ould squire. An old devil. That's what 'ee was."

"He only means Sir Timothy's father had a bad temper," explained
Sarah. "It's quite true."

"Ah, was it timper?" said Jack, sarcastically. "I cude tell 'ee zum tales on 'un. There were a right o' way, zur, acrust the mead thereby, as the volk did claim. And 'a zays, 'A'll putt a stop tu 'un,' 'a zays. And him zat on a style, long zide the tharn bush, and 'a took 'ee's gun, and 'a zays, 'A'll shute vust man are maid as cumes acrust thiccy vield,' 'a zays. And us knowed 'un wude du 't tu. And 'un barred the gate, and there t'was."

He laughed till the tears ran down his face, brown as gingerbread, and wrinkled as a monkey's.

"Mr. Crewys is in a hurry, Jack," said Sarah. "He's only just arrived from London, and he's walked all the way from Brawnton."

"'Tain't but a stip vur a vine vellar like 'ee, and wi' a vine maiden like yu du be grown, var tu kip 'ee company," said Happy Jack. "But 'ee'll be in a yurry tu git tu Barracombe, and refresh hisself, in arl this turble yeat. When the zun du search, the rain du voller."

"I dare say you want a glass of beer yourself," said John, producing a coin from his pocket.

"No, zur, I doan't," said the road-mender, unexpectedly. "Beer doan't agree wi' my inzide, an' it gits into my yead, and makes me proper jolly, zo the young volk make game on me. But I cude du wi' a drop o' zider zur; and drink your health and the young lady's, zur, zo 'a cude."

He winked and nodded as he pocketed the coin; and John, half laughing and half vexed, pursued his road with Sarah.

"It seems to me that the old gentleman has become a trifle free and easy with advancing years," he observed.

"He thinks he has a right to be interested in the family," said Sarah, "because of the connection, you see."

"The connection?"

"Didn't you know?" she asked, with wide-open eyes. "Though you were
Sir Timothy's own cousin."

"A very distant cousin," said John.

"But every one in the valley knows," said Sarah, "that Sir Timothy's father married his own cook, who was Happy Jack's first cousin. When I was a little girl, and wanted to tease Peter," she added ingenuously, "I always used to allude to it. It is the skeleton in their cupboard. We haven't got a skeleton in our family," she added regretfully; "least of all the skeleton of a cook."

John remembered vaguely that there was a story about the second marriage of Sir Timothy the elder.

"So she was a cook!" he said. "Well, what harm?" and he laughed in spite of himself. "I wonder why there is something so essentially unromantic in the profession of a cook?"

"Her family went to Australia, and they are quite rich people now: no more cooks than you and me," said Sarah, gravely. "But Happy Jack won't leave Youlestone, though he says they tempted him with untold gold. And he wouldn't touch his hat to Sir Timothy, because he was his cousin. That was another skeleton."

"But a very small one," said John, laughing.

"It might seem small to us, but I'm sure it was one reason why Sir
Timothy never went outside his own gates if he could help it," said
Sarah, shrewdly. "Luckily the cook died when he was born."

"Why luckily, poor thing?" said John, indignantly.

"She wouldn't have had much of a time, would she, do you think, with Sir Timothy's sisters?" asked Sarah, with simplicity. "They were in the schoolroom when their papa married her, or I am sure they would never have allowed it. Their own mother was a most select person; and little thought when she gave the orders for dinner, and all that, who the old gentleman's next wife would be," said Sarah, giggling. "They always talk of her as the Honourable Rachel, since Lady Crewys, you know, might just as well mean the cook. I suppose the old squire got tired of her being so select, and thought he would like a change. He was a character, you know. I often think Peter will be a character when he grows old. He is so disagreeable at times."

"I thought you were so fond of Peter?" said John, looking amusedly down on the little chatterbox beside him.

"Not exactly fond of him. It's just that I'm used to him," said Sarah, colouring all over her clear, fresh face, even to the little tendrils of red hair on her white neck.

She wore a blue cotton frock, and a brown mushroom hat, with a wreath of wild roses which had somewhat too obviously been sewn on in a hurry and crookedly; and she looked far more like a village schoolgirl than a young lady who was shortly to make her dÉbut in London society. But he was struck with the extraordinary brilliancy of her complexion, transparent and pure as it was, in the searching sunlight.

"If she were not so round-shouldered—if the features were better—her expression softer," said John to himself—"if divine colouring were all—she would be beautiful."

But her wide, smiling mouth, short-tipped nose, and cleft chin, conveyed rather the impression of childish audacity than of feminine charm. The glance of those bright, inquisitive eyes was like a wild robin's, half innocent, half bold. Though her round throat were white as milk, and though no careless exposure to sun and wind had yet succeeded in dimming the exquisite fairness of her skin, yet the defects and omissions incidental to extreme youth, country breeding, and lack of discipline, rendered Miss Sarah not wholly pleasing in John's fastidious eyes. Her carriage was slovenly, her ungloved hands were red, her hair touzled, and her deep-toned voice over-loud and confident. Yet her frankness and her trustfulness could not fail to evoke sympathy.

"It is—Lady Mary that I am fond of," said the girl, with a yet more vivid blush.

He was touched. "She will miss you, I am sure, when you go to town," he said kindly.

"If I thought so really, I wouldn't go," said Sarah, vehemently. She winked a tear from her long eyelashes. "But I know it's only your good nature. She thinks of nothing and nobody but Peter. And—and, after all, when I get better manners, and all that, I shall be more of a companion to her. I'm very glad to go, if it wasn't for leaving her. I like Aunt Elizabeth, whereas mamma and I never did get on. She cares most for the boys, which is very natural, no doubt, as I was only an afterthought, and nobody wanted me. And Aunt Elizabeth has always liked me. She says I amuse her with my sharp tongue."

"But you will have to be a little careful of the sharp tongue when you get to London," said John, smiling. He was struck by the half-sly, half-acquiescent look that Sarah stole at him from beneath those long eyelashes. Perhaps her outspokenness was not so involuntary as he had imagined.

"If I had known you were coming to-day, I would have gone up to say good-bye to Lady Mary last night," said Sarah, mournfully. "She won't want me now you are here."

"I have a thousand and one things to look after. I sha'n't be in your way," said John, good-naturedly, "if she is not busy otherwise."

"Busy!" echoed Sarah. "She sits so, with her hands in her lap, looking over the valley. And she has grown, oh, so much thinner and sadder-looking. I thought you would never come."

"I have my own work," said John, hurriedly, "and I thought, besides, she would rather be alone these first few weeks."

Sarah looked up with a flash in her blue eyes, which were so dark, and large-pupilled, and heavily lashed, that they looked almost black. She ground her strong white teeth together.

"If I were Lady Mary," she said, "I would have slammed the old front door behind me the very day after Sir Timothy was buried—and gone away; I would. There she is, like a prisoner, with the old ladies counting every tear she sheds, and adding them up to see if it is enough; and measuring every inch of crape on her gowns; and finding fault with all she does, just as they used when Sir Timothy was alive to back them up. And she is afraid to do anything he didn't like; and she never listens to the doctor, the only person in the world who's ever had the courage to fight her battles."

"The doctor," said John, sharply. "Has she been ill?"

"No, no."

"What has he to do with Lady Mary?" said John.

His displeasure was so great that the colour rose in his clean-shaven face, and did not escape little Sarah's observation, for all her downcast lashes.

"Somebody must go and see her," said Sarah; "and you were away. And the canon is just nobody, always bothering her for subscriptions; though he is very fond of her, like everybody else," she added, with compunction. "Dear me, Mr. Crewys, how fast you are walking!"

John had unconsciously quickened his pace so much that she had some ado to keep up with him without actually running.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"It is so hot, and the hill is steep, and I am rather fat. I dare say I shall fine down as I get older," said Sarah, apologetically. "It would be dreadful if I grew up like mamma. But I am more like my father, thank goodness, and he is simply a mass of hard muscle. I dare say even I could beat you on the flat. But not up this drive. Doesn't it look pretty in the spring?"

"It was very different when I left Barracombe," said John.

He looked round with all a Londoner's appreciation.

In the sunny corner next the ivy-clad lodge an early rhododendron had burst into scarlet bloom. The steep drive was warmly walled and sheltered on the side next the hill by horse-chestnuts, witch-elms, tall, flowering shrubs and evergreens, and a variety of tree-azaleas and rhododendrons which promised a blaze of beauty later in the season.

But the other side of the drive lay in full view of the open landscape; rolling grass slopes stretching down to the orchards and the valley. Violets, white and blue, scented the air, and the primroses clustered at the roots of the forest trees.

The gnarled and twisted stems of giant creepers testified to the age of Barracombe House. Before the entrance was a level space, which made a little spring garden, more formal and less varied in its arrangement than the terrace gardens on the south front; but no less gay and bright, with beds of hyacinths, red and white and purple, and daffodils springing amidst their bodyguards of pale, pointed spears.

A wild cherry-tree at the corner of the house had showered snowy petals before the latticed window of the study; the window whence Sir Timothy had taken his last look at the western sky, and from which his watchful gaze had once commanded the approach to his house, and observed almost every human being who ventured up the drive.

On the ridge of the hill above, and in clumps upon the fertile slopes of the side of the little valley, the young larches rose, newly clothed in that light and brilliant foliage which darkens almost before spring gives place to summer.

They found Lady Mary in the drawing-room; the sunshine streamed towards her through the golden rain of a planta-genista, which stood on a table in the western corner of the bow window. She was looking out over the south terrace, and the valley and the river, just as Sarah had said.

He was shocked at her pallor, which was accentuated by her black dress; her sapphire blue eyes looked unnaturally large and clear; the little white hands clasped in her lap were too slender; a few silver threads glistened in the soft, brown hair. Above all, the hopeless expression of the sad and gentle face went to John's heart.

Was the doctor the only man in the world who had the courage to fight her battles for this fading, grieving woman who had been the lovely Mary Setoun; whom John remembered so careless, so laughing, so innocently gay?

He was relieved that she could smile as he approached to greet her.

"I did not guess you would come by the early train," she said, in glad tones. "But, oh—you must have walked all the way from Brawnton! What will James Coachman say?"

"I wanted a walk," said John, "and I knew you would send to meet me if I let you know. My luggage is at the station. James Coachman, as you call him, can fetch that whenever he will."

"And I have come to say good-bye," said Sarah, forlornly.

She watched with jealous eyes their greeting, and Lady Mary's obvious pleasure in John's arrival, and half-oblivion of her own familiar little presence.

When Peter had first gone to school, his mother in her loneliness had almost made a confidante of little Sarah, the odd, intelligent child who followed her about so faithfully, and listened so eagerly to those dreamy, half-uttered confidences. She knew that Lady Mary wept because her boy had left her; but she understood also that when Peter came home for the holidays he brought little joy to his mother. A self-possessed stripling now walked about the old house, and laid down the law to his mamma—instead of that chubby creature in petticoats who had once been Peter.

Lady Mary had dwelt on the far-off days of Peter's babyhood very tenderly when she was alone with little Sarah, who sat and nursed her doll, and liked very much to listen; she often felt awed, as though some one had died; but she did not connect the story much with the Peter of every day, who went fishing and said girls were rather a nuisance.

Sarah, too, had had her troubles. She was periodically banished to distant schools by a mother who disliked romping and hoydenish little girls, as much as she doted on fat and wheezing lap-dogs. But as her father, on the other hand, resented her banishment from home almost as sincerely as Sarah herself, she was also periodically sent for to take up her residence once more beneath the parental roof. Thus her life was full of change and uncertainty; but, through it all, her devotion to Lady Mary never wavered.

She looked at her now with a melancholy air which sat oddly upon her bright, comical face, and which was intended to draw attention to the pathetic fact of her own impending departure.

"I only came to say good-bye," said Sarah, in slightly injured tones.

"Ah! by-the-by, and I have promised not to intrude on the parting," said John, with twinkling eyes.

"It is not an eternal farewell," said Lady Mary, drawing Sarah kindly towards her.

"It may be for years," said Sarah, rather offended. "My aunt
Elizabeth is as good as adopting me. Mamma said I was very lucky, and
I believe she is glad to be rid of me. But papa says he shall come and
see me in London. Aunt Elizabeth is going to take me to Paris and to
Scotland, and abroad every winter."

"Oh, Sarah, how you will be changed when you come back!" said Lady
Mary; and she laughed a little, with a hand on Sarah's shoulder; but
Sarah knew that Lady Mary was not thinking very much about her, all
the same.

"There is no fresh news, John?" she asked.

"Nothing since my last telegram," he answered. "But I have arranged with the Exchange Telegraph Company to wire me anything of importance during my stay here."

"You are always so good," she said.

Then he took pity on Sarah's impatience, and left the little worshipper to the interview with her idol which she so earnestly desired.

"I will go and pay my respects to my cousins," said John.

But the banqueting-hall was deserted, and gaps in the row of clogs and goloshes suggested that the old ladies were taking a morning stroll. They had not thought it proper to drive, save in a close carriage, since their brother's death; and on such a warm day of spring weather a close carriage was not inviting to country-bred people.