“Where’s Mrs. Wood?” said I, when she had got over that silly squeak women always give when you come suddenly on them.

“Dear, dear, Master Jack! what a turn you did give me!  I thought it was the tramp.”

“What tramp?” said I.

“Why, a great lanky man that came skulking here a bit since, and asked for the missus.  She was down the garden, and I’ve half a notion he went after her.  I wish you’d go and look for her, Master Jack, and fetch her in.  It’s as damp as dear knows what, and she takes no more care of herself than a baby.  And I’d be glad to know that man was off the place.  There’s wall-fruit and lots of things about, a low fellow like that might pick up.”

My ears felt a little hot at this allusion to low fellows and garden thieving, and I hurried off to do Mary Anne’s bidding without further parley.  There was a cloud over the moon as I ran down the back garden, but when I was nearly at the end the moon burst forth again, so that I could see.  And this is what I saw:—­

First, a white thing lying on the ground, and it was the widow’s cap, and then Mrs. Wood herself, with a gaunt lanky-looking man, such as Mary Anne had described.  Her head came nearly to his shoulder, as I was well able to judge, for he was holding it in his hands and had laid his own upon it, as if it were a natural resting-place.  And his hair coming against the darker part of hers, I could see that his was grey all over.  Up to this point I had been too much stupefied to move, and I had just become conscious that I ought to go, when the white cap lying in the moonlight seemed to catch his eye as it had caught mine; and he set his heel on it with a vehemence that made me anxious to be off.  I could not resist one look back as I left the garden, if only to make sure that I had not been dreaming.  No, they were there still, and he was lifting the coil of her hair, which I suppose had come down when the cap was pulled off, and it took the full stretch of his arm to do so, before it fell heavily from his fingers.

When I presented myself to my mother with the bunch of flowers still in my hand, she said, “Did my Jack get these for Mother?”

I shook my head.  “No, Mother.  For Mrs. Wood.”

“You might have called at the farm as you passed,” said she.

“I did!” said I.

“Couldn’t you see Mrs. Wood, love?”

“Yes, I saw her, but she’d got the tramp with her.”

“What tramp?” asked my mother in a horror-struck voice, which seemed quite natural to me, for I had been brought up to rank tramps in the same “dangerous class” with mad dogs, stray bulls, drunken men, and other things which it is undesirable to meet.

“The great lanky one,” I explained, quoting from Mary Anne.

“What was he doing with Mrs. Wood?” asked my mother anxiously.

I had not yet recovered from my own bewilderment, and was reckless of the shock inflicted by my reply.