He leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two miles, till a winding path called Snail-Creep sloped up a hill and entered a hazel copse by a hole like a rabbit’s burrow.  In he plunged, vanished among the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and snapping of twigs in divers points of Grey’s Wood.

Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon.  He worked like a galley slave.  Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gathered without ceasing.  At last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nuts could not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, he shouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce of the wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road, strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered the homeward lane, whistling as he went.

Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr. Dewy’s opinion as on that afternoon.  In fact, it is just possible that a few more blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men’s account would have clarified Dick’s brain entirely, and made him once more a free man.

But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present.  Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly against the sky about fifty yards in his van.  Here, upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line of its neighbours.  Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the bank, head bowed on hand.  The grassy margin entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the figure recognized him.  Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy.

“Dick, Dick!  O, is it you, Dick!”

“Yes, Fancy,” said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his nuts.

She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the whole history of love.

“O Dick,” she sobbed out, “where have you been away from me?  O, I have suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more!  ’Tis cruel, Dick; no ’tisn’t, it is justice!  I’ve been walking miles and miles up and down Grey’s Wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and worn out, and I could walk no further, and had come back this far!  O Dick, directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you and I put down the dress; ’tisn’t finished now, and I never will finish, it, and I’ll wear an old one Sunday!  Yes, Dick, I will, because I don’t care what I wear when you are not by my side—­ha, you think I do, but I don’t!—­and I ran after you, and I saw you go up Snail-Creep and