The beating heart

The shapely mass of her body was outlined dark against the rosy gold of the evening sky, as she sat on the top of the red brick orchard wall, looking up and down the country road on which it bordered.

She was named Apricot Marten and the Christian name given her by a fanciful mother could not have been more suitably bestowed. She was just like a golden glowing apricot in its very best condition when it hangs basking in the summer sun. She had a soft, clear skin with a warm flush in the velvet cheek, great lustrous laughing eyes of a warm golden brown, and a wealth of bright waving hair in which the sunrays seemed to have got permanently entangled. Her mouth was bright crimson and turned up at its smiling corners, and her body was supple and gracious in its full rounded contours. Altogether she was an enchanting piece of girlhood just merging into womanhood, and many were the sleepless nights passed by the young men of Fullingham village in thinking about her.

She was not entirely free from the reputation of a flirt, but deep in her heart her choice was made, and from it she never swerved however mischievously she might behave.

It was John Macpherson the Highlander, the lithe, agile, black-haired, hasty-tempered Scot who worked on the farm which adjoined her father’s cottage and orchard. But she gave this away to no one, and many thought she had her eye on Tony Morrison, whose father owned the little village shop and general store, and, in absence of all competition, did a good business. Tony served in the store, and while rather short and insignificant in physique, made up for this by the extreme care he bestowed upon his dress and personal appearance. He wore neat and becoming grey suits and townish-looking hats, and always produced a pleasing impression of great cleanliness and smartness. Tony’s heart had been given long ago to Bessie Smith in the next village, a little quiet mouse of a girl with violet eyes. Apricot was much too flamboyant a personage to please his quiet taste, but this secret devotion he also imparted to no one, and as Apricot was considered the belle of his village, it flattered his masculine vanity to be supposed one of her accepted admirers. By a quiet and modest smile he generally managed to encourage the rumours about himself and Apricot while ostensibly denying them. All of which made the heart of John Macpherson flare up with consuming anger against him.

Thus stood matters in Fullingham village on that lovely summer evening when Apricot sat humming to herself on the top of the orchard wall. The scene was truly idyllic in its beauty. Fullingham is one of the prettiest villages in the quietest and most remote part of Devonshire, and this evening the glory of pink light in the sky was so great it turned even the white road a rosy colour, and all the hedges were full of wild roses and the still warm air heavy with balmy scents.

Apricot thought it beautiful, and looked with longing eyes up and down the road. She felt she wanted to kiss somebody, to throw her arms round somebody’s neck, and who so delightful for this as the handsome Highlander, if he would only come! They had an appointment at this place and hour. She was there, but where was he? There was no one to be seen in the road except a small shock-haired boy gnawing an apple. Then, swinging lightly along, came a figure down the road.

Apricot put her hand to shade her eyes to see, but it was not John. She thought at first it was Tony, that slight, neat form in grey with the smart hat; but no, it was not he. It was a stranger.

Up went Apricot’s hand to her hair to smoothe back a tress. What would he think of her? She wondered. Would he look up as he passed?

The stranger did more than that. When he came up to the orchard he stopped and looked up.

“What are you doing up there?” he asked. His voice was gentle and courteous, and the face he turned up towards her very pleasant to look at.

Apricot did not resent his addressing her.

“What’s that to you?” she called back saucily, showing her small white teeth in a gay smile; and pulling a great red rose that grew on the wall close to her hand, she threw it down full in his face.

The stranger caught the rose and kissed it, and then stuck it in his coat.

“Come down and have a little walk with me. You look lonely up there.”

“Not so lonely as you look in the road, young man.”

“Oh, I’m lonely enough! That’s why I want your company.”

“Will you catch me?” she said laughing and leaning over.

“Certainly I will,” he answered, holding out his arms. “Come along.”

She swung her shapely legs and neat feet over the side of the wall next him, and then let herself slip down it. He caught her fine, well-developed figure in his arms, and holding her up tight and close gave her a kiss on her bright red lips.

She slapped his face, but quite gently, and struggled away from him, shaking her blue cotton gown straight that had been rather rumpled by her descend.

“Now we’ll go for a walk,” said the stranger. “Which way?”

“Oh, we’ll go towards Hawley village. That’s very pretty,” she answered. “And if you want the train you can get it there. You’re a town gentleman, aren’t you?” she added shyly.

Fullingham village is off the railway line and it was not an uncommon thing for strangers to pass through the village from Riverside where there was a station to Hawley on the other side where they could again take the train, having walked through six miles of the prettiest Devonshire scenery.

“Oh, that’ll do very well. I didn’t know you had a train so near. Yes, I’m finishing my holiday and going back to town to-night.”

They were walking slowly up the road now in the gorgeous sunset light. A moon large and pale as a thin white paper disc rose in the East before them.

Apricot had her own ideas in view in going in the Hawley direction and shipping the stranger off her hands there. She was thoroughly enjoying the new sensation of walking and talking with a London gentleman, but she was not quite sure how John Macpherson would view her little promenade, and she was not too anxious to be met or seen by him. It was quite true he had not kept their tryst, and in her own mind that quite excused her for going off with someone else. But then, he and she did not always agree about these things, and altogether it was best to take the handsome stranger out of her own village and over to Hawley in which direction the Fullingham rustics did not often walk.

Laughing and jesting and walking quite near together the two young figures passed up the sunlit road. Some little way ahead of them there was a fork, one road winding up an incline and passing through a larch plantation on the hill before it dipped down to Hawley station, the other a far prettier road following the valley and passing through a lovely wood as it worked round to Riverside.

Apricot and the stranger walked along with springing steps, taking the Hawley road. It was surely an evening to feel, if ever, the madness of Summer in one’s veins. He thought he had never seen such a lovely country girl and she, without swerving in the least from her allegiance to the fiery Macpherson, thought it was the greatest fun in the world to be admired by a town gentleman, a real London man, with London clothes and all.

“There’ll be none of this when I’m married to John,” she was reflecting inwardly. “Best have what fun I can now.”

Heated a little by their walk up hill in the warm Devonshire air, they entered the feathery larch plantation with a feeling of relief. It was full of light, shade and music; thrushes and blackbirds, robins and chaffinches not yet exhausted by their nesting cares were trilling on every side of them.

“Let’s sit down here,” he suggested as they came to a mossy bank where a tiny brooklet tinkled by, and Apricot, flushed and lovely, sat down willingly and let the stranger’s arm come round her waist. Her conscience told her it was not quite right, but oh! that wood with its rosy mystery of softened summer light and the wandering perfumes of roses and hot resin and the magic of the birds’ voices, all talking of love, what girl would not be swayed by it and made a little giddy by the sweet intoxication of it all?

Meantime, Macpherson had gone down to the store, his work being over at the farm for that day, to buy himself a new tie wherewith to charm Apricot at the trysting. He was much put out to find there only one tie and that green, a colour he thought didn’t suit him. Everyone knows the kind of village shop it was where everything is sold, but things are so seldom what one wants. Gloves are there, but only size ten. Boots are there, but only size four. Pencils are sold out, but you can have a slate pencil. Bootlaces have not come in, but you can have a ball of string. Macpherson bought his tie, and as the gawky girl who assisted Morrison, was wrapping it up in a bit of paper too small for it, he asked:

“Where’s Tony?”

“Gorn sweethearting, I ’spects,” answered the girl with a grin, “leastways, he went out all dressed up in his new soot and hat.”

Macpherson grunted, paid and left, went home, donned the tie, and then, a little late, flustered and rather put out, hurried to the appointed orchard wall. There was no Apricot—no one to be seen at all up or down the wide country road except a small boy devouring the core of an apple. Macpherson waited with glowering eyes. It was all very well for him to be a bit late. He had a man’s work to do, but girls should be punctual.

Several minutes went by, each an hour to the waiting man. Then he strode across to the boy on the other side.

“You seen Miss Apricot about here?” he asked.

The boy looked up stolidly. “I seed her a while ago.”

“Where?”

“On yon wall,” answered the boy, nodding in that direction.

“Well, where did she go?”

“Nowhere, till a gent comed along; then there wur a lot of huggin’ and kissin’ an’ she went off with he.”

Macpherson’s face was a study as he listened to this astounding statement. He stood rooted to the spot, and from his six feet glowered down on the malicious little imp in the road as if he could kill him. The boy knew perfectly well that Macpherson was “sweet” on Miss Apricot, and he thoroughly enjoyed imparting this information. He would have been afraid to make up such a story, but since he had witnessed it all and it was perfectly true and this great giant had asked him, he was going to have the fun of telling him, on the same principle that he egged on Farmer Smith’s dog to fight another dog and shook the bag when he was carrying ferrets to make them attack each other.

He was a little alarmed when Macpherson’s great paw came down heavily on his shoulder.

“You little rat! What sort of a man was it? Tell me that!”

“I dunno,” said the boy sullenly, trying to shake himself free, “a kind of a smart chap in a grey soot and hat.”

“A grey suit and hat!” The light blazed in Macpherson’s dark eyes. He shook the boy by the shoulder.

“Was it Tony Morrison at the store?”

“I dunno,” wailed the boy frightened now by the awful look of rage in the man’s face and only anxious to get away. “I never go to the store, muvver always goes.”

Another frightful shake that made his teeth rattle.

“Was it?”

“I dunno. I never saw ’is face, only ’is back as he was a-kissin’ of her. It mout be the store man, or it moutn’t.”

“Little devil!” growled Macpherson, and with a final shake sent the boy down on his hands and knees in the dust. Then he strode off up the road at a tremendous pace, his blood on fire, his mind entirely made up.

It was Tony, of course. He knew that absolutely. He was convinced of it. The grey suit and hat, the smart appearance—who else in Fullingham had that? It was Tony’s own particular property and asset. Besides, had he not just heard at the store that Tony was gone sweethearting? Of course it was all quite clear. Huggin’ and kissin’ his Apricot! The thought of her darling velvet cheek that he himself so reverently touched, her lovely smiling scarlet mouth, came to him and seemed to add boiling oil to the raging flame within him. He would do for him! He would kill him! He would break his back! The cur! The reptile! Who all along had been carrying on with his girl and who was so smug and so satisfied—always at the store so neat and clean, and always so civil-spoken and so quiet!

He had always rather liked Tony. There had been a great friendship between the men only lately a little spoiled by the slumbering suspicion in John’s mind that Tony might be “after his girl,” but Tony had always been good to him personally and he always spoke of Apricot to John as Miss Marten, which came back bitterly to John now. “I’ll ‘Miss Marten’ him when I catch him,” he said between his teeth.

A hideous thing is jealousy, blinding its victim, deafening him alike to the voice of conscience and the voice of reason hounding him on to the scaffold and the grave.

John Macpherson, good man, great soul, walked up the road that evening with red murder in his heart. When he came to the cross-roads he stopped and hesitated. Which way had they gone?

He decided they must have taken the road to Riverside. It lay before him so attractively beautiful all bathed in golden sheen; the road to Hawley was up hill and in shadow.

Before one reaches Riverside comes the wood, and as the road passes into it there is a low stile. On this stile with his back to the road and all unconscious of the desperate figure of vengeance striding along it, sat a figure in grey. It was Tony, blissfully happy; full of light-hearted innocent enjoyment swinging his legs to the tune he was whistling. He was looking back to Riverside and was counting the kisses shy little Bessie had given him that day, and thinking how sweet she had looked when she promised to marry him. Now he was on his way home to Fullingham and just pausing to rest on the stile and enjoy the sweet calm and peace of this perfect evening which suited so well his happy mood.

Suddenly as John came along the road he caught sight of the grey back rising above the stile and every drop of blood in John’s body turned to raging flame. His ears caught the gay whistle. Apricot was nowhere to be seen, but that was natural. She would be slinking home through the woods by way of Riverside and back to her father’s cottage, where she would turn up with the innocent look of the cat who has stolen the cream. Well, nothing could be better. Apricot out of the way he could deal all the more swiftly and better with his rival.

Like a bull at a fence he rushed at the stile, and Tony was knocked off and down on the ground, pinned under John’s hands at his throat before he knew who had approached.

“You weasel! You little devil! I’ll kill you!” John stormed, and lifting the prostrate man by the neck dashed him down again with all his force. There was a wide stone flag just under the stile to help matters in the muddy wintertime, and on this flag Tony’s head came down with a good bang.

“What’s up?” he gasped, as well as he could with John’s suffocating grip on his neck. “What’s this for, Mac?”

“Huggin’ and kissin’!” ground out John between his teeth. “I’ll teach you to come after my girl!”

“I haven’t! I haven’t!” cried Tony. “Let up, Mac, let up! You’re mad.”

“If I’m mad you’re dead. I’m going to kill you, you little beast!” Bang! “Where were you this afternoon?” Bang! “Answer me that.” Bang!

Tony’s lips were going white. His thoughts were scattered by the blows on his head. He managed to gasp out: “Riverside! I’ve been to Bessie—I haven’t seen your girl.”

“You’re a good liar,” scoffed John. “You were seen huggin’ my girl and I’ll see you never do again. Now go on with more of your lies.” Bang! Bang!

But Tony’s lying or speaking at all had come to an end. His face went grey; his jaw dropped; his body fell limp in the fierce hands which held him.

John let him slide down and struggled to his feet. Instantly his rage fell from him. He was face to face with the awful fact—he had killed a man.

Sane now, calm, his anger utterly spent and gone from him, John stood panting there, looking about him. He was quite alone in the golden evening; everything was exquisitely calm about him, a thrush near by was pouring out his song, and the figure, a few moments before sitting whistling on the stile, was now lying limp and motionless at his feet. Those few moments of blind, dark rage had turned one man into a corpse, the other into a murderer.

Murder! It was hanging for that.

A wild longing to undo what he had done possessed him. He went down on his knees.

“Tony!” he called. “What’s the matter with you? Tony, wake up!” But the man lay still and grey before him. He undid his coat and felt his heart; there was no movement.

He passed his trembling arm under his head and raised him and put his own face down close to see if any breath touched his cheek; but there was none. Limp, nerveless, the body lay across the flagstone, seeming to ask him, “What will you do with me now?” And John, wrapped in that awful horror, that awful responsibility of his deed, rose from his knees and stood shuddering by the stile.

Then terror came and seized him. He must conceal his act. He must hide the body. It must never be known he had murdered Tony. He might never be discovered. If Tony’s body were found later, in the wood, what would tie this deed to him, Macpherson? Tony might have been murdered by a tramp in the wood.

Shivering as if with mortal cold, John stooped over the body and dragged it by the shoulders out of the path, and into the little wood. Parting the flowering bushes by the side of the track, he pushed into the thick undergrowth and there left the motionless form under some wild azaleas.

Then with, the cold, clammy fingers of his crime clinging to him, unnerved and shaken, with his heart in a black terror, he crept out, a criminal, from the shade of the trees and took the sunfilled road again.

He looked all round the stile, but there was no trace of the crime committed there. He brushed the white dust of the path from his own clothes. Then he stood and listened.

Not a sound to mar the lovely serenity of the golden air. Even the thrush had finished his beautiful song and all was silence.

John Macpherson, the same in outward appearance, but within a miserable, broken and craven man, entered the village pot-house as the sunset faded and the moon grew brighter, and called for a glass of beer.

When he got it he took it to one of the side benches, where he sat down away from the rest of the company and swallowed it in silence.

What an awful sense of guilt clung round him; but the man deserved it, he kept telling himself. Why did he come sneaking round after another man’s girl? If it ever came out that he had killed him, everyone would allow that he had been sorely tried. As he sat there, black and moody, with eyes fixed on the sawdust-covered floor, scraps of conversation floated over to him from the bar where the men had gathered. He heard nothing at first; then a sentence pierced his preoccupied brain.

“Smart young fellow, wasn’t he? Did you see him, Bill?”

And then Bill’s answer struck dully on his ears:

“I just seed him go by. I was at the window there, an’ I looks up. ‘Why, there’s Tony, ses I’ bein’ as ’ow he was all togged up in grey. And I calls out, ‘Tony!’ ’cos I wanted them bootlaces he promised me. And the feller turns round and I couldn’t help larfin’, for it wasn’t Tony at all, but this other chap.”

There was a general laugh at Bill’s expense.

“I could have told you Tony was off for the day. I met him going to Riverside just after dinner-time.”

“An’ what was this young feller doin’ down here, this London chap, I mean?” came another question.

“Oh, just walking through Fullingham, as they do, you know, to see the country. He went up by Marten’s orchard last thing I see of him, going to Hawley, for sure.”

The talk drifted on then; but John Macpherson, seated near the open door whence the delicious balmy air, heavy with the scent of new-mown hay, came in and mixed with the beer and baccy of the bar, grew cold with horror as he sat and heard. An icy conviction gripped him to his inner being strangling him.

He had killed the wrong man!

He knew it. He felt sure of it. Tony’s gasping words came back to him backed up now so unexpectedly by this man at the bar. Tony had been to Riverside, he had “gorn sweethearting” but to his own legitimate property, his own girl. It was the other man in grey who—oh, the horror of it! He’d go mad if he sat there another minute. He got onto his feet and was just about to cross the threshold when another phrase from the little knot of men arrested him. They had got onto a prize-fight now. They were discussing it, as one of the men had seen it in a neighboring town.

“And there he lay, and nothin’ they could do seemed to bring him round. I thought he was dead, sure. Then another bloke comes along, and whether he tips brandy down ’is throat or what he does, I don’t know; but up springs my fine fellow as gay as you please, and they sets to again.”

A sudden ray of hope seemed to split the darkness in John’s mind. Suppose—suppose Tony was not quite dead? Oh! the wonderful joy of the thought. Suppose, like that other man, he could come round! Oh, if such a thing might happen now and let him out of this cold cell of terror he seemed shut up in, he swore within himself he would never lift hand against man, woman or child again!

He had his whiskey-flask in his pocket. Full of a new determination he turned and walked to the bar.

“Six-penn’orth?” asked the barman, as John handed him the flask.

“Fill it right up, man,” said John briefly. And when this was done and paid for, he turned and went out without a word.

The barman shook his head. “Macpherson looks bad to-night,” he remarked.

“Bin drinkin’ perhaps; or p’raps that girl’s leading him a dog’s life. She’s a termagant.”

Outside John sped up the road, new hope, dim, faint uncertain, but still hope glimmering in his heart. The full moon was up in a rich purple sky, and the night was soft and full of beauty. But John could see nothing. He felt the hangman’s cord about his neck, and for the wrong man—the wrong man!

All seemed quite still, calm as he had left it when he reached the wood. The silvery light filtered gently through the leaves and fell on his little path, showing him the way.

He stepped aside to the clump of azaleas and pushed them back. There lay the still body, just as he had left it. It had not stirred.

With a thumping heart and a prayer on his lips John knelt beside it, and raising the head pushed the neck of the open flask between the pallid lips.

There was no movement, but some seemed to go down the throat, but he could not be sure. Then he got desperate, and getting his handkerchief just soaked it in the spirit and rubbed it violently all over the man’s face and eyes.

“Tony man, wake up, I say!” he muttered, scrubbing his forehead with the fiery spirit.

At last, oh, God! that was a sigh! He was breathing!

John’s hand trembled so that he nearly spilt the rest of the flask.

Tony opened his eyes.

“Why, what’s this?” he uttered faintly. “Where am I?”

“Here, drink some more,” said John feverishly, tipping the flask up and sending a fresh stream down Tony’s throat.

He never touched spirits and it burnt him like fire.

He sat up, John supporting him, and looked round. “Is that you, Mac?” he said. “Oh, I remember. You nearly bashed me to death under the stile. What’s it all about, Mac?” His voice was rather weakly; his eyes wandered over John’s anxious face and then up to the tracery of boughs over them.

“It was all a mistake, Tony, and I am more sorry than I can say. But you’re not hurt much, are you?”

Tony was sitting up now. His face looked very white. His hat, carefully picked up by Macpherson and put beside him under the azaleas, was there still. His forehead looked damp, and the whiskey-soaked locks of hair hung loose over it. He leaned his cheek on his hand as he answered:

“I’ll have you up before the beak for this,” he said calmly. Tony was mostly calm.

“You won’t?” exclaimed John anxiously.

“It’s six months’ hard for ’sault and battery, and it’s two years quod for manslaughter,” remarked Tony.

John felt a cold sweat break out on him.

“But I’ve said it was a mistake,” he urged. “I thought it was you—” Then he began to stammer. After all, Apricot was his girl and he was not going to give her away.

“Well, why didn’t you find out before you came and knocked me about?” asked Tony in an aggrieved voice. “Spoiled my hat, too.” And he took it out from the azaleas and smoothed its battered brim in his hands.

“Look here, Tony,” said John desperately, “you must overlook this. Not a word must come out. Say how I can make up to you and I’ll do it.”

“There’s that fifty pounds you’ve saved up,” remarked Tony mildly, still stroking his hat.

John fell back flabbergasted. Fifty pounds! The savings of his whole life! The sacred sum put by so that when it grew to a hundred he could set up house with Apricot!

“What do you mean?” he asked with trembling lips.

“It won’t be nice doin’ hard for six months; and it’s two years if they bring it in manslaughter.”

“But I didn’t kill you, man! They can’t call it that!”

“You meant to, though; and you nearly did me in. Oh, my head! it do feel bad!” And Tony leant against a bush beside him and closed his eyes.

John seized his flask and made him take another gulp.

“You better take me home,” he said weakly. “I’d like to die in the old house.”

John was desperate.

“Look here, Tony, if you don’t die and don’t say a word you shall have the fifty, I promise you.”

Tony straightened himself a little.

“I’ll do my best, Mac,” he said feebly. “How soon can I have the money? Soon as I’ve got it I’ll say I had a fit; then if I dies you’re safe, anyway; and I’ll leave Bessie the fifty.”

“You’re a cool one,” growled out John. “Fifty pounds is a lot of money, Tony.”

“Well, don’t pay it, don’t pay it, Mac. Maybe you’ll find it all right in quod. Two years ain’t long, you know.”

Cold shivers went down John’s spine. Prison for one of the Highland Macphersons! And Apricot alone and unprotected for two years! She’d never wait for him; nor would old Marten ever let him have his daughter then. He knew Tony had some knowledge of the law. His grandfather had been a solicitor in a small way, and on this account many were the knotty points referred to Tony by the villagers. But he hated like anything to lose his cherished fifty, and made another effort.

“Look here,” he said, “I don’t see what’s to prevent my denying the whole thing. It’s your word against mine.”

Tony shook his head solemnly. “I’d have the truth on my side, and the truth’s a fierce thing to be up against.”

John considered. He felt that Tony was right. He could never stand up and call God to witness that he had not laid a finger on Tony. He felt he’d be struck dead or blind if he did.

“An’ a man’s dying oath is always took in evidence,” added Tony in a mournful tone.

“How can it be a dyin’ oath if you don’t die?”

“If I think it’s my dyin’ oath it’s the same thing.”

“’Spose it all comes out, anyway?”

“Can’t,” said Tony, sitting up and speaking with more vigour. “I’f I gets your fifty I’m mum unless I feels like dyin’. If it’s that way, I’ll say I have had a fit; and if I say it’s a fit, a fit it is.”

John gave in. “All right,” he said with a long sigh. “I’ll get you the money to-night. Now let’s get back.”

He assisted Tony to his feet and put his battered hat on his head.

“Oh, it do ache!” groaned Tony.

“That’s all the whiskey you’ve drunk,” returned John unsympathetically.

“Maybe it is, and maybe it’s the bashing it’s had,” returned Tony. And after that, in silence, the two men emerged from the wood onto the moonlit road.

John walked along in black gloom, pondering alternately on his lost fifty and on Apricot.

He wondered if she had walked as far as Hawley with the stranger; if she had got back home by now; if there was the smallest chance of his seeing her to-night. He thirsted for the touch of her red lips to console him for all he had suffered in emotion that day.

Oddly enough he did not feel angry with her. It is a curious point of ethics with the lower classes that what is done with a gentleman does not count. There is not considered to be anything serious about it; it’s only “a bit of a lark”; and while the thought of Tony supplanting him had filled him with red fury against him, he had nothing at all against the gentleman from town who had stolen a kiss from his girl in passing through the village. In fact, far away in the recesses of his heart there burnt a spark of pride that Apricot’s beauty could not be resisted by anyone.

The two men reached the village with hardly a word exchanged, Tony occasionally stopping to lean on his companion’s arm.

John left him at the store and went dolefully enough to fetch the price of his folly. He brought over the small tin box in which he had saved it and added to it through so many years, and put it into the other’s hands in the back bedroom behind the shop. He could not bear to see it counted out by the smiling Tony, but with a hoarse mutter of: “It’s all there. Mind you keep your word, durn you!” he hurried away.

The night was exquisitely lovely, full of sweet scents, and all the whispers of Summer in the air. He walked past Marten’s orchard and looked longingly up to the wall where the trees hung their branches heavy with fruit over the top.

But there was no one to be seen, and finally he walked away disconsolately back to the farm.

All the next day he longed to see Apricot; but it was not till the evening when all the village was dipped in soft violet shadows that he at last met her, just as she was coming out of the store. She looked so lovely his heart rose in a great bound, and he threw his arm around her and pressed his lips into the side of her creamy neck.

“What you been to the store for?” he asked jealously.

“Only for a bit of ribbon; but I stopped to talk to Tony. Oh, John! Think! He’s going to marry Bessie Smith in a month, and he’s got fifty pounds to start housekeeping! Some folks do save wonderful, don’t they?”

“Yes, and some has things given ’em,” said John savagely. “But we’ll be getting married, too. What would you say if I put the banns up to-morrow?”

Apricot lifted two soft arms and put them about his neck. They were sheltered by an old oak that grew near the store, and there was no one to see. Her upturned face and glowing eyes looked very fair and sweet in the dusk.

She loved her John and meant to marry him, and no one else in this world, but walks and talks like yesterday’s with the stranger were very great fun and she was afraid they might be few and far when she was Mrs. Macpherson. Her scarlet mouth closed on John’s as she murmured back:

“I think I’d say, John dear, don’t be so hasty!”