beside them; but, as he stepped forward, he was suddenly aware that there was another man in the place he would have taken, embracing and protecting the girl.  He swore a loud oath, and flung himself backwards to stand by the hedge on the opposite side of the road, that he might the better review the situation.  It was all as it had been before—­that quiet autumn landscape—­only the woman appeared much interested in his sudden movements.

‘What was’t ye seed; was’t a snaike?’ she inquired loudly, at the same time moving her skirts to look for that dangerous reptile.

‘No,’ he shouted, putting his whole energy into the word.

‘What was’t ye seed, cutting them capers as if ye was shot, an’ saying o’ words neyther fit fur heaven above nor earth beneath?’

So loudly did she ask, and so resolutely did she wait for an answer, that he was forced into speech.  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, with another oath, milder than the first.

‘Well, sure enow,’ she said, still speaking loudly, ‘’ere’s somethin’ awful queer, ye says yer a man that’s got larning more ner parson, an’ ye sees somethin’, an’ can’t tell what ye’s seed.  That’s twice this short while; are ye often took bad the like o’ that?’

The bold derision of this speech fell without effect upon its object, because he perceived a gleam of mischievous intelligence in her eyes which she had intended to conceal, but she was no adept in the art of concealment.  The conviction that the woman knew perfectly what he had seen and did not in reality despise him for his conduct, took the sting from her jeers but did not make his position pleasanter.  The repeated shock to his nerves had produced a chilly feeling of depression and almost fear, which he could not immediately shake off, and he stood back against the opposite hedge, with his half-eaten bread in his hand, conscious that he looked and felt more like a whipped schoolboy than, as he had fondly imagined when he first stopped the woman, the hero of a rural love scene.  That was nothing; he was, as he had described himself, a man who devoted his life to the search for knowledge, and personal consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which the circumstances had aroused in him.  With the trained mind of one accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the woman.  His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own?  He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection.  But how?  His tact, trained by all the subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained silent.

The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs.  He supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front of her.