him run hares with anybody except himself.”  It was seventeen years ago that Spot was a puppy and he a boy—­and now the one was dust with old Reuben, and the other had settled down so effectually that he was going to marry Judy in a fortnight.  At least Judy was a good woman—­nobody had ever said a word against her—­and she would make him a good wife.  That, after all, was what a farmer must think of—­a good, saving wife, without any foolishness about her, who would be thrifty and lend a hand at his work when he needed it.  All the rest was nonsense when once a man married.  Dreams were all very well in their way, but realities and not dreams, after all, were things he must live with.  Looking ahead he saw his future stretching smooth and firm, like the flat white turnpike that dragged its solid length into the distance.  On that road there was no place for the absurdity of red stockings!  And so, in the absence of all elation, only the grim sense of duty in the doing soothed him as he made his way to Solomon Hatch’s cottage.

On the back porch he found Judy deftly taking butter out of the churn, and watched her while she worked the soft lumps with a wooden paddle in a large yellow bowl.  Though he would have been the last to suspect it—­for passion like temptation appeared to him to beset the beautiful alone—­Judy, in her homely way, was also a crucible, and the little earthern pot of her body was near to bursting at the moment from the violence of the flames within.  She had just seen a black coated figure in a red gig spin by on the road, and for one blissful minute, she had permitted herself a flight of fancy, in which she was the bride, not of Abel Revercomb, but of Orlando Mullen.  To sit in that red wheeled gig, touching the sleeve of his black coat!  To stitch the frayed seams in is silk waistcoat!  To iron his surplices as only she could iron when the divine fury seized her!  To visit his poor and afflicted!  To lift her swooning gaze every Sunday, with a sense of possession, to that pulpit!  For a minute only the rapture lasted, and all the time, she went on placidly making butter in the large yellow bowl.  She was in the mood to commit sublime follies and magnificent indiscretions.  For the sake of a drive in that red wheeled gig she would have foresworn Abel at the altar.  For the ecstasy of ironing those surplices she would have remained a spinster forever.

“That’s nice butter, Judy,” remarked her lover, and believed that he had paid her a tribute peculiarly suited to the complexion of her soul.

His gaze followed the drab sweep of her hair, which was combed straight back from her forehead.  Her eyes were looking heavenward while she worked, yet they caught no beam, no colour from her celestial visions.  Small hectic blotches burned in the centre of her cheeks, and her thin lips were pressed tightly together as though she bit back a cry.  Sometimes she would remain dumb for an hour in his presence, while her thoughts soared like birds in the blue region of dreams.  She indulged her imagination in grotesque but intoxicating reveries, in which she passed nobly and with honour through a series of thrillingly romantic adventures; and, in fact, only ten minutes before Abel’s arrival, she had beheld herself and the young clergyman undergoing a rapturous, if slightly unreal, martyrdom, as missionaries to the Chinese.