Miss Bingham, well aware of the hostility, did not know whether her heart were hardened or softened by it. It was as if she stood in the thick of a northern March—sunshine on one side of the hedge, sleet and a bitter wind on the other. But there came a day when she carried her troubles to a little, ferny glen hidden deep among the pastures and the heather. Their morning's route had brought them near to Hawes, the grey village that gathers the spreading Yorkshire dales into its hand as a lady holds an open fan. The camp was busy, dining on odds and ends—mutton, cabbage, herbs, all stewing fragrantly in a pot reared gipsy-wise over a fire of wood—and Miss Bingham heard their laughter come up the breeze.
They had purchased a barrel of home-brewed ale from a neighbouring tavern, and were toasting Blake at the moment.
"Here's to li'le Blake, who never tires," said the Squire.
"Why should he?" put in Michael. "Women have never troubled him, I wager."
"At your age, youngster, to go flouting the good sex!" growled the Governor.
"Your pardon, sir. The sex has flouted me. I'm envying Blake because he had mother-wit to steer wide of trouble. Even Elizabeth, who dotes on me, is full of the most devilish caprices."
Kit grew impatient of it all. He was in no mood for the banter and light jests that eased the journey home to Nappa. There was a fever in his blood, a restlessness whose cause was known to every man in camp except himself. He sought some hiding-place, with the instinct of all wounded folk; and his glance fell on a wooded gorge that showed as a sanctuary set in the middle of a treeless land.
He came down the path between the honeysuckle and the flowering thorns. There was a splash of water down below, and he had in mind to bathe in some sequestered pool and wash away the heat and trouble of the times.
He found the pool, green with reflected leafage, deep and murmurous, and saw Miss Bingham seated at its brink. She turned with a smile of welcome.
"I knew that you would come, my Puritan. There is room beside me here. Sit and tell me—all that the waterfall is singing—the might-have-beens, the fret and bubble of this life—the never-ending wonder that men should die for their King when there are easier roads to follow."