But he held her still, and pressed his beard against her brown neck.  Then the sound of a trotting horse reached his ears, he started up, looked below, and saw John Grimbal passing by.  Their eyes met, for the horseman chanced to glance up as Clement thrust his head above the fern; but Chris was invisible and remained so.

Grimbal stopped and greeted the bee-keeper.

“Have you forgotten your undertaking to see my hives once a month?”

“No, I meant coming next week.”

“Well, as it happens I want to speak with you, and the present time’s as good as another.  I suppose you were only lying there dreaming?”

“That’s all.  I’ll come and walk along beside your horse.”

He squeezed his sweetheart’s hand, whispered a promise to return immediately, then rose and stumbled down the bank, leaving Chris throned aloft in the fern.  For a considerable time John Grimbal said nothing, then he began suddenly,—­

“I suppose you know the Applebirds are leaving my farm?”

“Yes, Mrs. Applebird told my mother.  Going to Sticklepath.”

“Not easy to get a tenant to take their place.”

“Is it not?  Such a farm as yours?  I should have thought there need be no difficulty.”

“There are tenants and tenants.  How would you like it—­you and your mother?  Then you could marry and be comfortable.  No doubt Chris Blanchard would make a splendid farmer’s wife.”

“It would be like walking into paradise for me; but—­”

“The rent needn’t bother you.  My first care is a good tenant.  Besides, rent may take other shapes than pounds, shillings, and pence.”

Hicks started.

“I see,” he said; “you can’t forget the chance word I spoke in anger so long ago.”

“I can’t, because it happened to be just the word I wanted to hear.  My quarrel with Will Blanchard’s no business of yours.  The man’s your enemy too; and you’re a fool to stand in your own light, You know something that I don’t know, concerning those weeks during which he disappeared.  Well, tell me.  You can only live your life once.  Why let it run to rot when the Red House Farm wants a tenant?  A man you despise, too.”

“No.  I promised.  Besides, you wouldn’t be contented with the knowledge; you’d act on it.”

Grimbal showed a lightning-quick perception of this admission; and Hicks, too late, saw that the other had realised its force.  Then he made an effort to modify his assertion.

“When I say ‘you’d act on it,’ I mean that you might try to, though I much doubt really if anything I could tell you would damage Blanchard.”

“If you think that, then there can be no conscientious objection to telling me.  Besides, I don’t say I should act on the knowledge.  I don’t say I shall or I shall not.  All you ve got to do is to say whether you’ll take the Red House Farm at a nominal rent from Michaelmas.”

“No, man, no.  You’ve met me in a bad moment, too, if you only knew.  But think of it—­brother and sister; and I, in order to marry the woman, betray the man.  That’s what it comes to.  Such things don’t happen.”