may trample on you," he would throw himself in the foul road without a word to be trodden under by these shoeless feet. There was but one command she could lay on him that he would not perform, and that was "Let me go by myself! Never come near me!" That he could not obey. The rugged moon revolves about the earth. Could the moon fly away into space were the terrestrial orb to bid it cease to be a satellite? And if it did, whither would it go? Into far off space, into outer darkness and deathly cold, to split and shiver into fragments in the inconceivable frost in the abyss of blackness. And Judith threw a sort of light and heat over this fierce, undisciplined man, that trembled in his veins and bathed his heart, and was to him a spring of beauty, a summer of light. Could he leave her? To leave her would be to be lost to everything that had now begun to transform his existence. The thought came over him now, as he walked along in silence that she might bid him let go, and he felt that he could not obey. He must hold her, he must hold her not from him on the saddle, not as merely staying her up, but to himself, to his heart, as his own, his own forever.
Suddenly an exclamation from Judith: "Jamie! Jamie!"
Something was visible in the darkness, something whitish in the hedge. In another moment it came bounding up.
"Ju! oh, Ju! I ran away!"
"You did well," she said. "Now I am happy. You are saved."
Coppinger looked impatiently round and saw by the feeble light that the boy had come close to him, and that he was wrapped up in a blanket.
"He has nothing on him," said Judith. "Oh, poor Jamie!"
She had revived; she was almost herself again. She held herself more firmly in the saddle and did not lean so heavily on Coppinger's hand.
Coppinger was vexed at the appearance of the boy, Jamie; he would fain have paced along in silence by the side of Judith. If she could not speak it mattered not so long as he held her. But that this fool should spring out of the darkness and join company with him and her, and at once awake her interest and loosen her tongue,
