“Oh, no, I’d rather be about,” responded Judy hurriedly.  “I came over from the house with a message for you when I saw Mr. Mullen passin’.”

“I am trying a young horse of Jim Halloween’s,” said the clergyman, “my bay has gone lame, and Jim offered me this one for the day.  Badly broken and needs a firm bit.  I’m inclined to believe that he has never been put between shafts before, for I had quite a sharp tussle with him about passing that threshing machine in Bumpass’s field.”

“Oh, that roans all right if you don’t fret him,” replied Abel, who had a poor opinion of the rector’s horsemanship.  “Stop jerking at his mouth, and give him his head.”

But the Reverend Orlando, having drifted naturally into the habit of thinking that he had been placed here to offer, not to receive, instruction, appeared a little restive under the other’s directions.

“I flatter myself that I possess the understanding of horses,” he replied.  “I’ve never had a disagreement with Harry, though I’ve driven him every day since I’ve been here.”

“All the same I’d keep a steady hand if I were going by that threshing machine up the road,” rejoined Abel who magnanimously refrained from adding that he had assisted at the purchase of Harry, and that horse had been fourteen, if a day, when he passed into the clergyman’s keeping.

A healthful glow suffused Mr. Mullen’s cheeks, while he struggled valiantly to conceal his annoyance.  He was very young, and in spite of his early elevation to a position of spiritual leadership, he remained after all merely an ordinary mortal.  So he stiffened perceptibly on the shiny seat of his gig, and gave a sharp pull at the reins, which wrenched the head of the young roan away from a clump of sassafras.

“It is better for every man to follow his own ideas, don’t you think, Mr. Revercomb?” he replied, advocating in his resentment a principle which he would have been the first to rap soundly had it been advanced by one of his parishioners.  “I mean, of course, in the matter of driving.”

“When do you go?” asked Judy suddenly, and turned her face away because she could not trust herself to meet his beautiful, earnest eyes.

“Within a fortnight.  It is important that I should assume my new responsibilities immediately.”

“And you won’t come back ever again?” The meadows swam in a blur before her eyes, and she thought of the purple velvet slippers which would never be finished.

He was a kind-hearted young man, who wished well to all the world, and especially to those of his congregation who had profited spiritually by his sermons.  If he had suspected the existence of Judy’s passion, it would undoubtedly have distressed him—­but he did not suspect it, owing to a natural obliquity of vision, which kept him looking away from the world as it is in the direction of a mental image of the world as he imagined it.  So, with an amiable word or two of regret that Providence had arranged his removal to wider fields, he drove on, sitting very erect and sawing earnestly at the mouth of the young horse.