He was going with Jake Williams to see a cock-fight at Dunley Town that evening, regardless of certain injunctions anent late hours.
The road was rough after the soft springiness of the meadow, and Michael paused once to shake out a stone which had slipped sideways into his buckled shoe.
As he did so, the unexpected trifle, which was to change his whole life, happened.
Bounce!
Only the falling of a soft ball from over a high wall near.
An absurdly trivial thing!
It would have been so easy to throw it back, especially as he had caught the sound of a childish cry of dismay from the other side. But Michael did not throw it back. Instead, he climbed like a monkey up the wall, hanging on to sturdy strands of ivy till he had swung himself to the top.
"Ah!"
It was a mutual exclamation.
The boy, looking down, saw a vision of the daintiest of seven-year-old maidens,—a study in brown, from her little, brown, flowered-cotton dress with its quaint fichu, to the brown curls, partly hidden by a muslin cap, whilst great brown eyes, soft as velvet, and coy under their long lashes, were raised shyly to his.