But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about five o’clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves; whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again. 

 It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives the installation of another day. While thus engaged she heard the rumbling of Mr. Melbury’s wagons, and knew that there, too, the day’s toil had begun. 

 An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence as a shadow. At this a step approached the door. 

 “Are folk astir here yet?” inquired a voice she knew well. 

 “Yes, Mr. Winterborne,” said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. “Come in!” 

 The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth. He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls. 

 He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their journey with a short load that day. 

 “They are done,” said Marty, “and lying in the cart-house.” 

 “Done!” he repeated. “Your father has not been too ill to work after all, then?” 

 She made some evasive reply. “I’ll show you where they be, if you are going down,” she added. 

 They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were 

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