all in the land, I fancy, could see his very real beauty.  He was very good-looking, and most graceful in his bearing, with that something wild as of a woodland creature in his aspect.  Her mother moaned over her dismally whenever the girl came to see her on her day out.  The father was surly, but pretended not to know; and Mrs. Finn once told her plainly that ’this man, my dear, will do you some harm some day yet.’  And so it went on.  They could be seen on the roads, she tramping stolidly in her finery—­grey dress, black feather, stout boots, prominent white cotton gloves that caught your eye a hundred yards away; and he, his coat slung picturesquely over one shoulder, pacing by her side, gallant of bearing and casting tender glances upon the girl with the golden heart.  I wonder whether he saw how plain she was.  Perhaps among types so different from what he had ever seen, he had not the power to judge; or perhaps he was seduced by the divine quality of her pity.

“Yanko was in great trouble meantime.  In his country you get an old man for an ambassador in marriage affairs.  He did not know how to proceed.  However, one day in the midst of sheep in a field (he was now Swaffer’s under-shepherd with Foster) he took off his hat to the father and declared himself humbly.  ‘I daresay she’s fool enough to marry you,’ was all Foster said.  ‘And then,’ he used to relate, ’he puts his hat on his head, looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throat, whistles the dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do the work.’  The Fosters, of course, didn’t like to lose the wages the girl earned:  Amy used to give all her money to her mother.  But there was in Foster a very genuine aversion to that match.  He contended that the fellow was very good with sheep, but was not fit for any girl to marry.  For one thing, he used to go along the hedges muttering to himself like a dam’ fool; and then, these foreigners behave very queerly to women sometimes.  And perhaps he would want to carry her off somewhere—­or run off himself.  It was not safe.  He preached it to his daughter that the fellow might ill-use her in some way.  She made no answer.  It was, they said in the village, as if the man had done something to her.  People discussed the matter.  It was quite an excitement, and the two went on ‘walking out’ together in the face of opposition.  Then something unexpected happened.

“I don’t know whether old Swaffer ever understood how much he was regarded in the light of a father by his foreign retainer.  Anyway the relation was curiously feudal.  So when Yanko asked formally for an interview—­’and the Miss too’ (he called the severe, deaf Miss Swaffer simply Miss)—­it was to obtain their permission to marry.  Swaffer heard him unmoved, dismissed him by a nod, and then shouted the intelligence into Miss Swaffer’s best ear.  She showed no surprise, and only remarked grimly, in a veiled blank voice, ’He certainly won’t get any other girl to marry him.’