sense was absolutely powerless to probe even the crust of Clement’s nature; but she was satisfied that his poetry must be a thing as marketable as that in printed books.  Indeed, in an elated moment he had assured her that it was so.  During the earlier stages of their attachment, she pestered him to write and sell his verses and make money, that their happiness might be hastened; while he, on the first budding of his love, and with the splendid assurance of its return, had promised all manner of things, and indeed undertaken to make poems that should be sent by post to the far-away place where they printed unknown poets, and paid them.  Chris believed in Clement as a matter of course.  His honey must at least be worth more to the world than that of his bees.  Over her future husband she began at once to exercise the control of mistress and mother; and she loved him more dearly after they had been engaged a year than at the beginning of the contract.  By that time she knew his disposition, and instead of displaying frantic impatience at it, as might have been predicted, her tolerance was extreme.  She bore with Clem because she loved him with the full love proper to such a nature as her own; and, though she presently found herself powerless to modify his character in any practical degree, his gloomy and uneven mind never lessened the sturdy optimism of Chris herself, or her sure confidence that the future would unite them.  Through her protracted engagement Mrs. Blanchard’s daughter maintained a lively and sanguine cheerfulness.  But seldom was it that she lost patience with the dreamer.  Then her rare, indignant outbursts of commonplace and common sense, like a thunderstorm, sweetened the stagnant air of Clement’s thoughts and awoke new, wholesome currents in his mind.

As a rule, on the occasion of their frequent country walks, Clem and Chris found personal problems and private interests sufficient for all conversation, but it happened that upon a Sunday in mid-December, as they passed through the valley of the Teign, where the two main streams of that river mingle at the foothills of the Moor, the subject of Will and Phoebe for a time at least filled their thoughts.  The hour was clear and bright, yet somewhat cheerless.  The sun had already set, from the standpoint of all life in the valley, and darkness, hastening out of the east, merged the traceries of a million naked boughs into a thickening network of misty grey.  The river beneath these woods churned in winter flood, while clear against its raving one robin sang little tinkling litanies from the branch of an alder.

Chris stood upon Lee Bridge at the waters’ meeting and threw scraps of wood into the river; Clem sat upon the parapet, smoked his pipe, and noted with a lingering delight the play of his sweetheart’s lips as her fingers strained to snap a tough twig.  Then the girl spoke, continuing a conversation already entered upon.

“Phoebe Lyddon’s that weak in will.  How far’s such as her gwaine in life without some person else to lean upon?”