The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the

front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon

the grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, "In

memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined date and age. It was

the grave of Giles's father.

The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized.

"Jack, my wronged friend!" he said. "I'll be faithful to my plan of

making amends to 'ee."

When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury,

who were working at a little table by the fire, "Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after

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to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us, we'll go."

They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent

Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative.

Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no

particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his

family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which chanced

to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker

despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's business that day. To

show their sense of the unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite

slowly to the house, as if they were merely out for a ramble, and going

to nothing special at all; or at most intending to pay a casual call

and take a cup of tea.

At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne's

domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high

tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come

on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole

of the preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and

familiar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from

making Giles's bed to catching moles in his field. He was a survival

from the days when Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a

playing boy.

These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both,

were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody

before six o'clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in

his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the

blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork,

the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like

furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having

ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be

ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a

rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door

of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the

snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing

upside down on the hob to melt out the grease.




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