But after all, Will, I must laugh when I think of a clergyman marrying a shepherdess.

Oh! Will, Will!" added the girl more seriously and in a deprecating tone, "thou art talking nonsense.

Think it over for a day or two, and then we'll talk about it.

I cannot stay longer--Ann will be angry." And slipping out of his grasp, she ran with light footsteps over the soft turf, Will looking after her bewildered and troubled, until she disappeared round the edge of the ridge; then he rose slowly, picked up his book, and followed her with slow steps and an anxious look on his handsome face.

He was tall and well grown, like every member of the Garthowen family; his reddish-brown hair so thick above his forehead that his small cap of country frieze was scarcely required as a covering for his head; and not even the coarse material of his homespun suit, or his thick country-made shoes, could hide a certain air of jaunty distinction, which was a subject of derision amongst the young lads of his acquaintance, but of which he himself was secretly proud.
From boyhood he had despised the commonplace ways of his rustic home, and had always aimed at becoming what he called "a gentleman." No wonder, then, that with his foot, as he thought, on the first rung of the ladder, he was pensive and serious as he followed Morva homewards.
Ebben Owens, when he had risen from the tea table, had followed his son into the farmyard, but finding no trace of him there, his face had taken a troubled and anxious expression, for Will was the idol of his soul, the apple of his eye, and a ruffle upon that young man's brow meant a furrow on the old man's heart.