Maryllia smiled.

“You really must sit down!” she said again, gently persuading him into his chair, wherein he sank heavily, like a stone, though his face shone with alertness and vigour.  “Primmins!” and she addressed that functionary who had been standing in the background watching the little scene; “Bring some glasses of port wine.”  Primmins vanished to execute this order.  “Now, you dear old man,” continued Maryllia, drawing up an oaken settle close to Josey’s knee and seating herself with a confidential air; “you must tell me just what you want me to do, and I will do it!”

She looked a mere child, with her fair face upturned and her rippling hair falling loosely away from her brows.  A great tenderness softened Josey’s eyes as he fixed them upon her.

“God Almighty bless ye!” he said, raising his trembling hand above her head; “God bless ye in your uprisin’ and downlyin’,—­and make the old ’ouse and the old ways sweet to ye!  For there’s naught like ’ome in a wild wandering world—­and naught like love to make ’appiness out of sorrow!  God bless ye, dear little gel!—­and give ye all your ’art’s desire, if so be it’s for your good and guidin’!”

Instinctively, Maryllia bent her head with a pretty reverence under the benediction of so venerable a personage, and gently pressed the wrinkled hand as it slowly dropped again.  Then glancing at Bainton, she said softly: 

“He’s very tired, I’m afraid!—­perhaps too tired to tell me all he wishes to say.  Will you explain what it is he wants?”

Bainton, thus adjured, took courage.

“Thank ye kindly, Miss; and if I may make so bold, it’s not what he wants more’n wot all the village wants and wot we’ve been ‘opin’ against ‘ope for, trustin’ to the chance of your comin’ ’ome to do it for us.  Passon Walden he’s a rare good man, and he’s done all he can, and he’s been and seen Oliver Leach, but it ain’t all no use,—­ -”

He paused, as Maryllia interrupted him by a gesture.

“Oliver Leach?” she queried; “He’s my agent here, I believe?”

“Jes’ so, Miss—­he was put in as agent arter the Squire’s death, and he’s been ’ere ever since, bad luck to ‘im!  And he’s been a-cuttin’ down timber on the place whenever he’s took a mind to, askin’ no by-your-leaves, and none of us ‘adn’t no right to say a wurrd, he bein’ master-like—­but when it comes to the Five Sisters—­why then we sez, if the Five Sisters lay low there’s an end of the pride and prosperity of the village, an’ Passon Walden he be main worrited about it, for he do love trees like as they were his own brothers, m’appen more’n brothers, for sometimes there’s no love lost twixt the likes o’ they, and beggin’ your pardon, Miss, he sent me to ye with a message from hisself ‘fore dinner, but you was a-lyin’ down and couldn’t be disturbed nohow, so I goes down to Spruce”—­here Bainton indicated the silent Spruce with a jerk of his thumb—­“he be the forester ’ere,