“Beautiful day, Jim!”

“Ah!  ‘Tes brave weather for the grass.  The ashes be later than th’ oaks this year.  ‘When th’ oak before th’ ash—–­’”

Ashurst said idly:  “Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy bogie, Jim?”

“It might be under that big apple tree, as you might say.”

“And you really do think it was there?”

The lame man answered cautiously: 

“I shouldn’t like to say rightly that ’t was there.  ’Twas in my mind as ’twas there.”

“What do you make of it?”

The lame man lowered his voice.

“They du zay old master, Mist’ Narracombe come o’ gipsy stock.  But that’s tellin’.  They’m a wonderful people, yu know, for claimin’ their own.  Maybe they knu ‘e was goin’, and sent this feller along for company.  That’s what I’ve a-thought about it.”

“What was he like?”

“’E ’ad ’air all over ‘is face, an’ goin’ like this, he was, zame as if ’e ’ad a viddle.  They zay there’s no such thing as bogies, but I’ve a-zeen the ‘air on this dog standin’ up of a dark naight, when I couldn’ zee nothin’, meself.”

“Was there a moon?”

“Yeas, very near full, but ’twas on’y just risen, gold-like be’ind them trees.”

“And you think a ghost means trouble, do you?”

The lame man pushed his hat up; his aspiring eyes looked at Ashurst more earnestly than ever.

“’Tes not for me to zay that but ‘tes they bein’ so unrestin’like.  There’s things us don’ understand, that’s zartin, for zure.  There’s people that zee things, tu, an’ others that don’t never zee nothin’.  Now, our Joe—­yu might putt anything under’is eyes an e’d never zee it; and them other boys, tu, they’m rattlin’ fellers.  But yu take an’ putt our Megan where there’s suthin’, she’ll zee it, an’ more tu, or I’m mistaken.”

“She’s sensitive, that’s why.”

“What’s that?”

“I mean, she feels everything.”

“Ah!  She’m very lovin’-’earted.”

Ashurst, who felt colour coming into his cheeks, held out his tobacco pouch.

“Have a fill, Jim?”

“Thank ’ee, sir.  She’m one in an ’underd, I think.”

“I expect so,” said Ashurst shortly, and folding up his pouch, walked on.

“Lovin’-hearted!” Yes!  And what was he doing?  What were his intentions—­as they say towards this loving-hearted girl?  The thought dogged him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where the little red calves were feeding, and the swallows flying high.  Yes, the oaks were before the ashes, brown-gold already; every tree in different stage and hue.  The cuckoos and a thousand birds were singing; the little streams were very bright.  The ancients believed in a golden age, in the garden of the Hesperides!...  A queen wasp settled on his sleeve.  Each queen wasp killed meant two thousand fewer wasps to thieve the apples which would grow from that blossom in the