That day Chris was going up to Newtake.  She had not yet settled there, though her brother and Sam Bonus were already upon the ground, but the girl came and went, busying her fingers with a hundred small matters that daily increased the comfort of the little farm.  Her way lay usually by the coomb, and Martin, having learned that she was visiting Will on the occasion in question, set out before her and awaited her here, beside the river, in a lonely spot between the moorland above and the forest below.  He felt physically nervous, yet hope brightened his mind, though he tried to strangle it.  Worn and weary with his long struggle, he paced up and down, now looking to the stile, now casting dissatisfied glances upon his own person.  Shaving with more than usual care, he had cut his chin deeply, and, though he knew it not, the wound had bled again since he left home and ruined both his collar and a new tie, put on for the occasion.

Presently he saw her.  A sunbonnet bobbed at the stile and Chris appeared, bearing a roll of chintz for Newtake blinds.  In her other hand she carried half a dozen bluebells from the woods, and she came with the free gait acquired in keeping stride through long tramps with Will when yet her frocks were short.  Martin loved her characteristic speed in walking.  So Diana doubtless moved.  The spring sunshine had found Chris and the clear, soft brown of her cheek was the most beautiful thing in nature to the antiquary.  He knew her face so well now:  the dainty poise of her head, the light of her eyes, the dark curls that always clustered in the same places, the little updrawing at the corner of her mouth as she smiled, the sudden gleam of her teeth when she laughed, and the abrupt transitions of her expression from repose to gladness, from gladness back again into repose.

She saw the man before she reached him, and waved her bluebells to show that she had done so.  Then he rose from his granite seat and took off his hat and stood with it off, while his heart thundered, his eye watered, and his mouth twitched.  But he was outwardly calm by the time Chris reached him.

“What a surprise to find ’e here, Martin!  Yet not much, neither, for wheer the auld stones be, theer you ’m to be expected.”

“How are you, Chris?  But I needn’t ask.  Yes, I’m fond of the stones.”

“Well you may be.  They talk to ‘e like friends, seemingly.  An’ even I knaw a sight more ’bout ’em now.  You’ve made me feel so differ’nt to ’em, you caan’t think.”

“For that matter,” he answered, leaping at the chance, “you’ve made me feel different to them.”

“Why, how could I, Martin?”

“I’ll tell you.  Would you mind sitting down here, just for a moment?  I won’t keep you.  I’ve no right to ask for a minute of your time; but there’s dry moss upon it—­I mean the stone; and I was waiting on purpose, if you’ll forgive me for waylaying you like this.  There’s a little thing—­a big thing, I mean—­the biggest—­too big for words almost, yet it wants words—­and yet sometimes it doesn’t—­at least—­I—­would you sit here?”