There was a long and painful pause.
"The night is getting chill," I said at length, for want of something better to say: "Father is waiting for us. Let us go home."
I led the way down the path, and he followed moodily, without a word. As he helped me over the stile I saw that his face was pale, his lips tightly compressed. And when we came into the presence of his Father, he replied to the old man's kind questions, in a vacant and abstracted manner. I bade him "good night!" at last; he answered me, but added in a lower tone, inaudible to the old man, "Young and rich and beautiful, you are beyond the reach of—a country clergyman."
The next morning while we were at breakfast, a letter came. It was from my mother. To-morrow she would come and take me from the cottage!
The letter dropped from the old man's hand, and Ernest rising abruptly from the table, rushed from the room.
And I was to leave the home of my happiest hours, and go forth into the great world! The thought fell like a thunderbolt upon every heart in the cottage.
[CHAPTER VI.]
AMONG THE PALISADES.
After an hour Ernest met me on the porch; he was very pale.