It may be that her choice was decided by the fact that she drove to the chapel and walked to the church; it may be that, dearly as she loved the vicar, she loved her grand-dad more; or it may be that the simplicity of the chapel, the austerity of the service, and the character of the congregation, all of a kind, close to earth, humble of heart, and russet in hue, attending there for no other reason than because they loved it, appealed to something profound and ineradicable in the spirit of this child bred amongst the austere and simple hills to which she knew herself so close.

Old Mat was fond of saying that the girl’s mother could do what she liked with her, and nobody else could do anything at all.

“I don’t try,” he would add, “She puts the terror on to me, that gal do.”

And the old man was right.

Different as they were, there was a deep and mysterious sympathy between mother and daughter.  And on that sympathy the mother’s power was based.

Only once was her authority, based as it was upon the spirit, subject to breaking strain.

When the girl was fourteen, Mrs. Woodburn decided to send her to the High School at Lewes.  Old Mat shook his head; Mrs. Haggard was delighted; the girl herself went about with pursed lips and frozen air.

The vicar, meeting her in the village, stopped her.

“What d’you think about it, Boy?” he asked in his grave, kind way.

“I shall go,” blurted the girl.  “But I shall win all the same.”

“Win what?” asked the vicar.

“That,” said Boy, and flashed on her way.

When the day of parting came, word was sent round to the stables that nobody was to be in them at twelve o’clock.  At that hour a slight cold figure crossed the yard swiftly, and entered the stables.  The key was turned in the door.  There was no sound from within, except the movement of the horses, to whom the girl was bidding good-bye.

Half an hour later the door was opened, and she came out, cold and frosty as she had entered.

Monkey Brand, standing in the door of the saddle-room, keeping guard over the stable-lads lest they should peep and pry, saw her come.

“She look very grim,” he afterward reported to Old Mat.

“Keeps a stiff lip for a little ’un,” whispered a lad peeping from behind the jockey’s shoulder.

Monkey Brand rounded on him.

“If you’d ’alf her ’eart,” he said, “you might be mistook for a man.”

For three weeks thereafter Putnam’s knew the girl no more; and it seemed that the soul had died out of the place.  Monkey Brand moped, and swore the horses moped, too.

“When I goes round my ‘orses in the mornin’ they look at me like so many bull-oxes askin’ to be slaughtered,” he said.  “Never see sich a sight.  Never!”

Old Mat for once was glum.  His eye lost its twinkle, and his walk its famous lilt.  Mr. Haggard was genuinely sorry for the old man.