“That’s all very true and very reasonable, ’squire; but it’s rather hard, this waiting.  Here, for five years, have I been playing this sort of game, and it goes greatly against the grain to have to begin anew and in a new place.  But here’s where the old buck lives.  It’s quite a snug farm, as you may see.  He’s pretty well off, and, by one little end or the other, contrives to make it look smarter and smarter every year; but then he’s just as close as a corkscrew, and quite mean in his ways.  And—­there’s Kate, ’squire, looking from the window.  Now, ain’t she a sweet creature?  Come, ’light—­you shall see her close.  Make yourself quite at home, as I do.  I make free, for you see the old people have all along looked upon me as a son, seeing that I am to be one at some time or other.”

They were now at the entrance of as smiling a cottage as the lover of romance might well desire to look upon.  Everything had a cheery, sunshiny aspect, looking life, comfort, and the “all in all content;” and, with a feeling of pleasure kindled anew in his bosom by the prospect, Ralph complied readily with the frank and somewhat informal invitation of his companion, and was soon made perfectly at home by the freedom and ease which characterized the manners of the young girl who descended to receive them.  A slight suffusion of the cheek and a downcast eye, upon the entrance of her lover, indicated a gratified consciousness on the part of the maiden which did not look amiss.  She was seemingly a gentle, playful creature, extremely young, apparently without a thought of guile, and altogether untouched with a solitary presentiment of the unhappy fortunes in store for her.

Her mother, having made her appearance, soon employed the youth in occasional discourse, which furnished sufficient opportunity to the betrothed to pursue their own conversation, in a quiet corner of the same room, in that under-tone which, where lovers are concerned, is of all others the most delightful and emphatic.  True love is always timid:  he, too, as well as fear, is apt to “shrink back at the sound himself has made.”  His words are few and the tones feeble.  He throws his thoughts into his eyes, and they speak enough for all his purposes.  On the present occasion, however, he was dumb from other influences, and the hesitating voice, the guilty look, the unquiet manner, sufficiently spoke, on the part of her lover, what his own tongue refused to whisper in the ears of the maiden.  He strove, but vainly, to relate the melancholy event to which we have already sufficiently alluded.  His words were broken and confused, but she gathered enough, in part, to comprehend the affair, though still ignorant of the precise actors and sufferers.

The heart of Katharine was one of deep-seated tenderness, and it may not be easy to describe the shock which the intelligence gave her.  She did not hear him through without ejaculations of horror, sufficiently fervent and loud to provoke the glance of her mother, who did not, however, though turning her looks frequently upon the two, venture upon any inquiry, or offer any remark.  The girl heard her lover patiently; but when he narrated the catastrophe, and told of the murder of the guard, she no longer struggled to restrain the feeling, now too strong for suppression.  Her words broke through her lips quickly, as she exclaimed—­