“Come, Edie! which is it to be?” he asked.

“Naughty boys, to fall out like this!” she cried.  “Cousin Jack, you know how fond I am of you.”

“Oh, then go to him!” said Horscroft.

“But I love nobody but Jim.  There is nobody that I love like Jim.”

She snuggled up to him, and laid her cheek against his breast.

“You see, Jock!” said he, looking over her shoulder.

I did see; and away I went for West Inch, another man from the time that I left it.

CHAPTER V.

THE MAN FROM THE SEA.

Well, I was never one to sit groaning over a cracked pot.  If it could not be mended, then it is the part of a man to say no more of it.  For weeks I had an aching heart; indeed, it is a little sore now, after all these years and a happy marriage, when I think of it.  But I kept a brave face on me; and, above all, I did as I had promised that day on the hillside.  I was as a brother to her, and no more:  though there were times when I had to put a hard curb upon myself; for even now she would come to me with her coaxing ways, and with tales about how rough Jim was, and how happy she had been when I was kind to her; for it was in her blood to speak like that, and she could not help it.

But for the most part Jim and she were happy enough.  It was all over the countryside that they were to be married when he had passed his degree, and he would come up to West Inch four nights a week to sit with us.  My folk were pleased about it, and I tried to be pleased too.

Maybe at first there was a little coolness between him and me:  there was not quite the old schoolboy trust between us.  But then, when the first smart was passed, it seemed to me that he had acted openly, and that I had no just cause for complaint against him.  So we were friendly, in a way; and as for her, he had forgotten all his anger, and would have kissed the print of her shoe in the mud.  We used to take long rambles together, he and I; and it is about one of these that I now want to tell you.

We had passed over Bramston Heath and round the clump of firs which screens the house of Major Elliott from the sea wind.  It was spring now, and the year was a forward one, so that the trees were well leaved by the end of April.  It was as warm as a summer day, and we were the more surprised when we saw a huge fire roaring upon the grass-plot before the Major’s door.  There was half a fir-tree in it, and the flames were spouting up as high as the bedroom windows.  Jim and I stood staring, but we stared the more when out came the Major, with a great quart pot in his hand, and at his heels his old sister who kept house for him, and two of the maids, and all four began capering about round the fire.  He was a douce, quiet man, as all the country knew, and here he was like old Nick at the carlin’s dance, hobbling around and waving his drink above his head.  We both set off running, and he waved the more when he saw us coming.