Between six and seven o’clock in the evening of the same day a young man descended¹ the hills into the valley of the Exe, at a point about midway between Silverthorn and the residence of Margery’s grandmother, four miles to the east.

He was a thoroughbred son of the country, as far removed from what is known as the provincial², as the latter is from the out-and-out gentleman of culture. His trousers and waistcoat were of fustian³, almost white, but he wore a jacket of old-fashioned blue West-of-England cloth, so well preserved that evidently the article was relegated⁴ to a box whenever its owner engaged in such active occupations as he usually pursued. His complexion⁵ was fair, almost florid, and he had scarcely any beard.

A novel attraction about this young man, which a glancing stranger would know nothing of, was a rare and curious freshness of atmosphere that appertained to him, to his clothes, to all his belongings⁶, even to the room in which he had been sitting. It might almost have been said that by adding him and his implements⁷ to an over-crowded apartment you made it healthful. This resulted from his trade. He was a lime-burner; he handled lime daily; and in return the lime rendered him an incarnation of salubrity. His hair was dry, fair, and frizzled, the latter possibly by the operation of the same caustic⁸ agent. He carried as a walking-stick a green sapling, whose growth had been contorted to a corkscrew pattern by a twining honeysuckle.

As he descended to the level ground of the water-meadows he cast his glance westward¹⁰, with a frequency that revealed him to be in search of some object in the distance. It was rather difficult to do this, the low sunlight dazzling his eyes by glancing from the river away there, and from the ‘carriers’ (as they were called) in his path — narrow artificial

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