since the day he broke his best lilac for her.  So it can’t be she what’s done mischief—­nor him, nor any on ’em.  So I sez to myself, what is it?  What’s come over the old place?  What’s come over Passon?  Neither place nor man’s the same somehow, yet blest if I know where the change comes in.  It’s like one of the ways o’ the Lord, past findin’ out!”

He might have thought there was something still more to wonder at if he could have looked into Josey Letterbarrow’s cottage that evening and seen Maryllia there, sitting on a low stool at the old man’s knee and patting his wrinkled hand tenderly, while she talked to him in a soft undertone and he listened with grave intentness and sagacity, though, also with something of sorrow.

“An’ so ye think it’s the onny way, my beauty!” he queried, anxiously—­“There ain’t no other corner round it?”

“I’m afraid not, dear Josey!” she answered, with a sigh—­“And I’m telling you all about it, because you knew my father, and because you saw me when I was a little child.  You would not like me to marry a man whom I hate,—­a man who is bad right through, and who only wants my aunt’s money, which he would get if I consented to be his wife.  I am sure, Josey, you don’t think money is the best thing in life, do you?—­I know you agree with me that love is better?”

Josey looked down upon her where she sat with an almost devout tenderness.

“Love’s the onny thing in the world worth ‘avin’ an’ keeping my beauty!” he said—­“An’ love’s wot you desarves, an’ wot you’re sure to get.  I wouldn’t see Squire’s gel married for money, no, not if it was a reglar gold mine!—­I’d rather see ’er in ’er daisy grave fust!  An’ I don’t want to see ’er with a lord nor a duke,—­I’ll be content to see ’er with a good man if the Lord will grant me that ’fore I die!  An’ you do as you feels to be right, an’ all things ’ull work together for good to them as loves the Lord!  That’s Passon’s teachin’ an’ rare good teachin’ it be!”

At this Maryllia rose rather hurriedly and put on her hat, tying its chiffon strings slowly under her chin.

“Good-bye, Josey dear!”—­she said—­“It won’t be for very long.  But you must keep my secret—­you mustn’t say a word, not even”—­here she paused and laughed a little forcedly—­“not even to the Parson you’re so fond of!”

Josey looked at her sideways, with a quaintly meditative expression.

“Passon be gone away hisself,”—­he said, a little smile creeping among the kindly wrinkles of his brown weather-beaten face—­“He baint comin’ back till Sunday.”

“Gone away?” Maryllia was quite unconscious of the vibration of pain in her voice as she asked the question, as she was equally of the startled sorrow in her pretty eyes.

“Ah, my beauty, gone away,”—­repeated Josey, with a curious sort of placid satisfaction—­“Passon, he be lookin’ downhearted like, an’ a change o’ scene ’ull do ‘im good mebbe, an’ bring ’im back all the better for it.  He came an’ said good-bye to me this marnin’.”