At Slumberleigh you have time to notice the change of the seasons. There is no hurry at Slumberleigh. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, each in their turn, take quite a year to come and go. Three months ago it was August; now September had arrived. It was actually the time of damsons. Those damsons which Ruth had seen dangling for at least three years in the cottage orchards were ripe at last. It seemed ages ago since April, when the village was a foaming mass of damson blossom, and the "plum winter" had set in just when spring really seemed to have arrived for good. It was a well-known thing in Slumberleigh, though Ruth till last April had not been aware of it, that God Almighty always sent cold weather when the Slumberleigh damsons were in bloom, to harden the fruit. And now the lame, the halt, and the aged of Slumberleigh, all with one consent, mounted on tottering ladders to pick their damsons, or that mysterious fruit, closely akin to the same, called "black Lamas ploums."

There were plum accidents, of course, in plenty. The Lord took Mrs. Eccles's own uncle from his half-filled basket to another world, for which, as a "tea and coffee totaller," he was no doubt well prepared. The too receptive organisms of unsuspecting infancy suffered in their turn. In short, it was a busy season for Mr. and Mrs. Alwynn.

Ruth had plenty of opportunities now for making her long-projected sketch of the ruined house of Arleigh, for the old woman who lived in the lodge close by, and had charge of the place, had "ricked" her back in a damson-tree, and Ruth often went to see her. She had been Ruth's nurse in her childhood, and having originally come from Slumberleigh, returned there when the Deyncourt children grew up, and lived happily ever after, with the very blind and entirely deaf old husband of her choice, in the gray stone lodge at Arleigh.

It was on her return from one of these almost daily visits that Mrs. Eccles pounced on Ruth as she passed her gate, and under pretence of inquiring after Mrs. Cotton, informed her that she herself was suffering in no slight degree. Ruth, who suddenly remembered that she had been remiss in "dropping in" on Mrs. Eccles of late, dropped in then and there to make up for past delinquencies.

"Is it rheumatism again?" she asked, as Mrs. Eccles seemed inclined to run off at once into a report of the goings on of Widow Jones's Sally.

"Not that, my dear, so much as a sinking," said Mrs. Eccles, passing her hand slowly over what seemed more like a rising than a depression in her ample figure. "But there! I've not been myself since the Lord took old Samiwell Price, and that's the truth."

Samuel Price was the relation who had entered into rest off a ladder, and Ruth looked duly serious.

"I have no doubt it upset you very much," she said.

"Well, miss," returned Mrs. Eccles, with dignity, "it's not as if I'd had my 'ealth before. I've had something wrong in the cistern" (Ruth wondered whether she meant system) "these many years. From a gell I suffered in my inside. But lor'! I was born to trouble, baptized in a bucket, and taken with collects at a week old. And how did you say Mrs. Cotton of the lodge might be, miss, as I hear is but poorly too?"

Ruth replied that she was better.

"She's no size to keep her in 'ealth," said Mrs. Eccles, "and so bent as she does grow, to be sure. Eh, dear, but it's a good thing to be tall. I always think little folks they're like them little watches, they've no room for their insides. And I wonder now"—Mrs. Eccles was coming to the point that had made her entrap Ruth on her way past—"I wonder now—"

Ruth did not help her. She knew too well the universal desire for knowledge of good and evil peculiar to her sex to doubt for a moment that Mrs. Eccles had begged her to "step in" only to obtain some piece of information, about which her curiosity had been aroused.

"I wonder, now, if Cotton at the lodge has heard anything of the poachers again this year, round Arleigh way?"

"Not that I know of," said Ruth, surprised at the simplicity of the question.

"Dear sakes! and to think of 'em at Vandon last night, and Mr. Dare and the keepers out all night after 'em."

Ruth was interested in spite of herself.

"And the doctor sent for in the middle of the night," continued Mrs. Eccles, covertly eying Ruth. "Poor young gentleman! For all his forrin ways, there's a many in Vandon as sets store by him."

"I don't think you need be uneasy about Mr. Dare," said Ruth, coldly, conscious that Mrs. Eccles was dying to see her change color. "If anything had happened to him Mr. Alwynn would have heard of it. And now," rising, "I must be going; and if I were you, Mrs. Eccles, I should not listen to all the gossip of the village."

"Me listen!" said Mrs. Eccles, much offended. "Me, as is too poorly so much as to put my foot out of the door! But, dear heart!" with her usual quickness of vision, "if there isn't Mr. Alwynn and Dr. Brown riding up the street now in Dr. Brown's gig! Well, I never! and Mr. Alwynn a-getting out, and a-talking as grave as can be to Dr. Brown. Poor Mr. Dare! Poor dear young gentleman!"

Ruth was conscious that she beat rather a hurried retreat from Mrs. Eccles's cottage, and that her voice was not quite so steady as usual when she asked the doctor if it were true that Mr. Dare had been hurt.

"All the village will have it that he is killed; but he is all right, I assure you, Miss Deyncourt," said the kind old doctor, so soothingly and reassuringly that Ruth grew pink with annoyance at the tone. "Not a scratch. He was out with his keepers last night, and they had a brush with poachers; and Martin, the head keeper was shot in the leg. Bled a good deal, so they sent for me; but no danger. I picked up your uncle here on his way to see him, and so I gave him a lift there and back. That is all, I assure you."

And Dr. Brown and Mrs. Eccles, straining over her geraniums, both came to the same conclusion, namely, that, as Mrs. Eccles elegantly expressed it, "Miss Ruth wanted Mr. Dare."

"And he'll have her, too, I'm thinking, one of these days," Mrs. Eccles would remark to the circle of her acquaintance.

Indeed, the match was discussed on numerous ladders, with almost as much interest as the unfailing theme of the damsons themselves.

And Dare rode over to the rectory as often as he used to do before a certain day in August, when he had found Ruth under the chestnut-tree—the very day before Mrs. Alwynn started on her screen, now the completed glory of the drawing-room.

And was Ruth beginning to like him?

As it had not occurred to her to ask herself that question, I suppose she was not.

Dare had grown very quiet and silent of late, and showed a growing tendency to dark hats. His refusal had been so unexpected that the blow, when it came, fell with all the more crushing force. His self-love and self-esteem had been wounded; but so had something else. Under the velvet corduroy waistcoat, which he wore in imitation of Ralph, he had a heart. Whether it was one of the very best of its kind or warranted to wear well is not for us to judge; but, at any rate, it was large enough to take in a very real affection, and to feel a very sharp pang. Dare's manner to Ruth was now as diffident as it had formerly been assured. To some minds there is nothing more touching than a sudden access of humility on the part of a vain man.

Whether Ruth's mind was one of this class or not we do not pretend to know.