Instead of leaving the spot by the gate, he flung himself over the fence, and pursued a direction towards the river under the trees.  And it was now, in his lonely progress, that he showed for the first time outwardly that he was not altogether unworthy of her.  He wore long water-boots reaching above his knees, and, instead of making a circuit to find a bridge by which he might cross the Froom—the river aforesaid—he made straight for the point whence proceeded the low roar that was at this hour the only evidence of the stream’s existence.  He speedily stood on the of the waterfall which caused the noise, and stepping into the water at the top of the fall, through with the sure tread of one who knew every inch of his footing, even though the of trees rendered the darkness almost absolute, and a false step would have him into the pool beneath.  Soon reaching the boundary of the grounds, he continued in the same direct line to traverse the valley, full of and to the main stream—in former times quite impassable, and impassable in winter now.  Sometimes he would cross a deep gully on a not wider than the hand; at another time he ploughed his way through beds of spear-grass, where at a few feet to the right or left he might have been sucked down into a .  At last he reached firm land on the other side of this , and came to his house on the rise behind—Elsenford—an ordinary farmstead, from the back of which rose indistinct breathings, belchings, and snortings, the of halters, and other familiar features of an agriculturist’s home.  
While Nicholas Long was packing his bag in an upper room of this , Miss Christine Everard sat at a desk in her own at Froom-Everard manor-house, looking with pale at the candles.
 
‘I ought—I must now!’ she whispered to herself.  ‘I should not have begun it if I had not meant to carry it through!  It runs in the blood of us, I suppose.’  She to a fact unknown to her lover, the marriage of an aunt under circumstances somewhat similar to the present.  In a few minutes she had penned the following note:-
 
October 13, 183-.
 
DEAR MR. BEALAND—Can you make it convenient to yourself to meet me at the Church to-morrow morning at eight?  I name the early hour because it would suit me better than later on in the day.  You will find me in the chancel, if you can come.  An answer yes or no by the bearer of this will be sufficient.
 
CHRISTINE EVERARD.
 
She sent the note to the rector immediately, waiting at a small side-door of the house till she heard the servant’s footsteps returning along the lane, when she went round and met him in the passage.  The rector had taken the trouble to write a line, and answered that he would meet her with pleasure.
 
A dripping fog which in the next morning was highly to the scheme of the pair.  At that time of the century Froom-Everard House had not been altered and enlarged; the public lane passed close under its walls; and there was a door opening directly from one of the old parlours—the south parlour, as it was called—into the lane which led to the village.  Christine came out this way, and after following the lane for a short distance entered upon a path within a belt of , by which the church could be reached .  She even avoided the churchyard gate, walking along to a place where the turf without the low wall rose into a , enabling her to mount upon the coping and spring down inside.  She crossed the wet graves, and so round to the door.  He was there, with his bag in his hand.  He kissed her with a sort of surprise, as if he had expected that at the last moment her heart would fail her.
 
Though it had not failed her, there was, nevertheless, no great ardour in Christine’s bearing—merely the of an antecedent impulse.  They went up the together, the bottle-green glass of the old lead admitting but little light at that hour, and under such an atmosphere.  They stood by the altar-rail in silence, Christine’s skirt visibly quivering at each beat of her heart.
 
Presently a quick step ground upon the ^{<............}