CHAPTER IV.
UPFOLD FARM.
Phebe rode slowly homeward in the dusk of the evening, her brain too busy with the varied events of the day for her to be in any haste to reach the end.

For the last four miles her road lay in long by-lanes, shady with high hedgerows and trees which grew less frequent and more stunted as she rose gradually higher up the long spurs of the hills, whose rounded outlines showed dark against the clear orange tint of the western sky.

She could hear the brown cattle chewing the cud, and the bleating of some solitary sheep on the open moor, calling to the flock from which it had strayed during the daytime, with the angry yelping of a dog in answer to its cry from some distant farm-yard.

The air was fresh and chilly with dew, and the low wind, which only lifted the branches of the trees a little in the lower land she had left, was growing keener, and would blow sharply enough across the unsheltered table-land she was reaching.

But still she loitered, letting her rough pony snatch tufts of fresh grass from the banks, and shamble leisurely along as he strayed from one side of the road to another.
Phebe was not so much thinking as pondering in a confused and unconnected manner over all the circumstances of the day, when suddenly the tall figure of a man rose from under the black hedgerow, and laid his arm across the pony's neck, with his face turned up to her.