passed near the general store, which for nearly a year back he had coveted as a business stand.  He estimated instinctively the difference in the sort of bow the pretty Brown girls would be likely to give him if he carried his own purpose through.  The day seemed duller.  He felt more sorry for his brother than he had ever felt before.  He looked about at the rough fields, the rude log fences, at the road with its gross unevennesses and side strips of untrimmed weeds.  He looked at it all, his man’s eyes almost wistful as a girl’s.  Was it as hard in this new crude condition of things to hew for oneself a new way through the invisible barriers of the time-honoured judgments of men, as it would be where road and field had been smoothed by the passing of generations?

He had this contrast between English and Canadian scenery vividly in his mind, wondering what corresponding social differences, if any, could be found to make his own particular problem of the hour more easy, and all the fine speculations he had had when he came down from the cemetery had resolved themselves into—­whether, after all, it would be better to go on being a butcher or not, when he came to the beginning of the Rexford paling.  He noticed how battered and dingy it was.  The former owner had had it painted at one time, but the paint was almost worn off.  The front fencing wanted new pales in many places, and the half acre’s space of grass between the verandah and the road was wholly unkempt.  It certainly did not look like the abode of a family of any pretensions.  It formed, indeed, such a contrast to any house he would have lived in, even had painting and fencing to be done with his own hand, that he felt a sort of wrath rising in him at Miss Rexford’s father and brother, that they should suffer her to live in such a place.

He had not come well in front before he observed that the women of the family were grouped at work on the green under a tree near the far end of the house.  A moment more, and he saw the lady of the midnight walk coming towards him over the grass.  He never doubted that it was she, although he had not seen her before by daylight.  She had purposely avoided him on the Sunday; he had felt it natural she should do so.  Now when he saw her coming—­evidently coming on purpose to waylay and speak to him, the excitement he felt was quite unaccountable, even to himself; not that he tried to account for it—­he only knew that she was coming, that his heart seemed to beat against his throat, that she had come and laid her hand upon the top of the paling, and looked over at him and said: 

“Have they buried him?  Did you—­have you been there?”

“Yes,” said he.

“We have only just heard a rumour that the funeral was taking place.  I thought when I saw you that perhaps you had been there.  I am so glad you went.”  Her eyes looked upon him with kind approval.

He fancied from her manner that she thought herself older than he—­that she was treating him like a boy.  Her face was bright with interest and had the flush of some slight embarrassment upon it.