At that moment the simple iron semi-circle which the milk maid used to hold her pails off her skirts, became, with Sophia’s handling, the most complex thing, and would in no wise adjust itself.  Alec jumped from his horse, hung his bridle-rein over the gate-post as he entered the pasture, and made as if to take the pails as a matter of course.

Pride, vanity, conceit, whatever it may be that makes people dislike kindness when their need is obvious, produced in her an awkward gaiety.  “Nay,” said she, refusing; “why should you carry my milk for me?”

“Well, for one thing, we live too near not to know you don’t do it usually.”

“Still, it may be my special pleasure to carry it to-night; and if not, why should you help me with this any more than, for instance, in cooking the dinner to-morrow?  I assure you my present pastoral occupation is much more romantic and picturesque than that.”

But he took the half-filled pails (she had not attempted to carry full ones), and, pouring the contents of one into the other, proceeded to carry it.

“Since it is you who command,” she cried, “shall I hold your horse in the meantime?”

With provoking literalism he gave a critical glance at the bridle.  “He’s all right,” he said, not caring much, in truth, whether the cob broke loose or not.

So she followed him across the road into the lane, because it hardly seemed civil to let him go alone, and because he would not know what to do with the milk when he got to the yard.  She did not, however, like this position.

“Do you know,” she began again, “that I am very angry with you, Mr. Trenholme?”

He wished for several reasons that she would cease her banter, and he had another subject to advance, which he now brought forward abruptly.  “I don’t know, Miss Rexford, what right I have to think you will take any interest in what interests me, but, after what happened last night, I can’t help telling you that I’ve got to the bottom of that puzzle, and I’m afraid it will prove a very serious matter for my poor friend Bates.”

“What is it?” she cried, his latest audacity forgotten.

“Just now, as I came out of the village, I met the person I saw in the Harmon house, and the same I saw before, the time I told you of.  It was a woman—­a young woman dressed in silk.  I don’t know what she may be doing here, but I know now who she must be.  She must be Sissy Cameron.  No other girl could have been at Turrifs Station the night I saw her there.  She is Sissy Cameron.” (His voice grew fiercer.) “She must have turned her father’s hearse into a vehicle for her own tricks; and what’s more, she must, with the most deliberate cruelty, have kept the knowledge of her safety from poor Bates all these months.”

“Stay, stay!” cried Sophia, for his voice had grown so full of anger against the girl that he could hardly pour out the tale of her guilt fast enough.  “Where did you meet her?  What was she like?”