Then he started, and did walk to Denvir Sluice and back in three hours.  The road from Plaistow Hall to Denvir Sluice was not in itself interesting.  It ran through a perfectly flat country, without a tree.  For the greater part of the way it was constructed on the top of a great bank by the side of a broad dike, and for five miles its course was straight as a line.  A country walk less picturesque could hardly be found in England.  The road, too, was very dusty, and the sun was hot above Belton’s head as he walked.  But nevertheless, he persevered, going on till he struck his stick against the waterfall which was called Denvir Sluice, and then returned not once slackening his pace, and doing the whole distance at a rate somewhat above five miles an hour.  They used to say in the nursery that cold pudding is good to settle a man’s love; but the receipt which Belton tried was a walk of sixteen miles, along a dusty road, after dinner, in the middle of an August day.

I think it did him some good.  When he got back he took a long draught of home-brewed beer, and then went upstairs to dress himself.

‘What a state you are in,’ Mary said to him when he showed himself for a moment in the sitting. room.

’I did it from milestone to milestone in eleven minutes, backwards and forwards, all along the five- mile reach.’

Then Mary knew from his answer that the exercise had been of service to him, perceiving that he had been able to take an interest in his own prowess as a walker.

‘I only hope you won’t have a fever,’ she said.

‘The people who stand still are they who get fevers,’ he answered.  ’Hard work never does harm to any one.  If John Bowden would walk his five miles an hour on a Sunday afternoon he wouldn’t have the gout so often.’

John Bowden was a neighbour in the next parish, and Mary was delighted to find that her brother could take a pride in his performance.

By degrees Miss Belton began to know with some accuracy the way in which Will had managed his affairs at Belton Castle, and was enabled to give him salutary advice.

‘You see, Will,’ she said, ’ladies are different from men in this, that they cannot allow themselves to be in love so suddenly.’

’I don’t see how a person is to help it.  It isn’t like jumping into a river, which a person can do or not, just as he pleases.’

’But I fancy it is something like jumping into a river, and that a person can help it.  What the person can’t help is being in when the plunge has once been made.’

‘No, by George!  There’s no getting out of that river.’

’And ladies don’t take the plunge till they’ve had time to think what may come after it.  Perhaps you were a little too sudden with our Cousin Clara?’

‘Of course I was.  Of course I was a fool, and a brute too.’

’I know you were not a brute, and I don’t think you were a fool; but yet you were too sudden.  You see a lady cannot always make up her mind to love a man, merely because she is asked all in a moment.  She should have a little time to think about it before she is called upon for an answer.’