He set out, plodding across the fields, to Barbara. There was no Miss Brown for him now.

She was in the garden, sitting in a summerhouse, reading a story. She heard his step, turned, and came out and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew tree.

“What is the matter, Richard?” she said, looking in his face with anxiety. “What has gone wrong?”

“My father has turned me out.”

“Turned you out?”

“Yes. I had to swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went.”

“Of course you did!” cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.

Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes—for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!—she resumed.

“Well, it is no worse for you than before,” she said, “and ever so much better for me!—What are you going to do, Richard?—There are so many things you could turn to now!”

“Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to teach, but I should have to wait too long—and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else.”

“I like that,” said Barbara. “Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?”

“I don’t think it will,” answered Richard, “and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In growing myself, I have grown to demand better work—better both in idea and execution.”

“It is horrid to have you go,” said Barbara. “But I will think you up to God every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you in every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me—and—and”—she was on the point of crying, but would not—“and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!”

She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy.

Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names. His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.

“I might have known him by this time!” he said. “—But just let him come near the smithy!” he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. “He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!—What are you going to do, my son?”

“Go back to my work.”