Why, you ain't never going yet?
Well, good-bye, my dear, and God bless ye! And now," soliloquized Mrs.Eccles, as Ruth finally escaped, "I may as well run across to Jones's, and see if _they_ know anything about the gentleman, and if he's put up at the inn." * * * * * It was a glorious July afternoon, but it was hot.

The roads were white, and the tall hedge-rows gray with dust.

A wagon-load of late hay, with a swarm of children just out from school careering round it, was coming up the road in a dim cloud of dust.

Ruth, who had been undecided which way to take, beat a hasty retreat towards the church-yard, deciding that, if she must hesitate, to do so among cool tombstones in the shade.

She glanced up at the church clock, as she selected her tombstone under one of the many yew-trees in the old church-yard.