Peace anxiously awaited her appearance.
He remained in his workshop silent and thoughtful.
He was calm, but it was that sort of calmness which presaged a storm.
To say the truth, he was getting tired of the quiet and respectable sort of life he had been of late leading. The old feeling of restlessness and yearning for adventure had come over him, and his mind was in a sort of chaos.
“Will she come?” he murmured, looking furtively down the lane, “or will she make some miserable excuse for stopping away when next I see her? She’s a riddle—a mystery, which I find it difficult to make out.”
Another half hour passed away, but no Nelly. The sun had already sunk, and the shades of evening were beginning to descend.
He arose from his seat, passed out of his workshop, closed and locked the door, and again looked down the lane.
He beheld in the distance the figure of a woman. It was that of Nelly. His heart leaped with delight.
“You’re precious late, my lady,” said he, as she approached.
“Be I? Well, I couldn’t get away before. It beant no fault of mine if I be late. Now, then, what be ye a-going to tell me?”