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“How could life be ecstatic?” asked Hugh, passing up his cup to be refilled.

She threw him a quick glance. “You wouldn’t understand if I were to tell you,” she said. “It never could be–for you.”

He sighed. “I know I’m very limited. But it’s a mistake to expect too much from life, believe me. Ask but little, and perhaps–if you’re lucky–you won’t be disappointed.”

“I would rather have nothing than that,” she said quickly.

Hugh Chesyl turned and regarded her curiously. “Would you really?” he said.

She nodded several times emphatically. “Yes; just live my own life out-of-doors and do without everything else.” She pulled a long stalk of corn from the sheaf against which she rested and looked at it thoughtfully. Her eyes were downcast, and the man in the punt could not see the deep shadow of pain they held. “If I can’t have corn,” she said slowly, with the air of one pronouncing sentence, “I won’t have husks. I will die of starvation sooner.”

And with that very suddenly she rose and walked round the sheaf.

The movement was abrupt, so abrupt that Hugh Chesyl lifted his brows in astonishment. He was still more surprised a moment later when he heard her clear, girlish voice raised in admonition.

“I don’t think it’s very nice of you to lie there listening and not to let us know.”

Hugh sat upright in the punt. Who on earth was it that she was reproving thus?

The next moment he saw. A huge man with the frame of a bull rose from behind the sheaf and confronted his young companion. He had his hat in his hand, and the afternoon sun fell full upon his uncovered head, revealing a rugged, clean-shaven face that had in it a good deal of British strength and a suspicion of gipsy alertness. To Chesyl’s further amazement he did not appear in the least abashed by the encounter.

“I’m sorry I overheard you,” he said, with blunt deference. “I was half-asleep at first. Afterwards, I didn’t like to intrude.”

Doris’s grey eyes looked him up and down for a moment or two in silence, and a flush rose in her tanned face. It seemed to Hugh that she was likely to become the more embarrassed of the two, and he wondered if he ought to go to the rescue.

Then swiftly Doris collected her forces. “I suppose you know you are trespassing?” she said.

At that Hugh laid himself very suddenly down again in the bottom of the boat, and left her to fight her own battles.

The man on the bank looked down at his small assailant with a face of grim decorum. “No, I didn’t know,” he said.

“Well, you are,” said Doris. “All this ground is private property. You can see for yourself. It’s a cornfield.”

The intruder’s eyes travelled over the upstanding sheaves, passed gravely over the man in the punt, and came back to the girl. “Yes; I see,” he said stolidly.

“Then don’t you think you’d better go?” she said.

He put his hat on somewhat abruptly. “Yes. I think I had better,” he said, and with that he turned on his heel and walked away through the stubble.

“Such impertinence!” said Doris, as she stepped down the bank to her companion.

“It was rather,” said Hugh.

She looked at him somewhat sharply. “I don’t see that there is anything to laugh at,” she said.

“Don’t you?” said Hugh.

“No. Why are you laughing?”

Hugh explained. “It only struck me as being a little funny that you should order the man off his own ground in that cavalier fashion.”

“Hugh!” Genuine dismay shone in the girl’s eyes. “That wasn’t–wasn’t–“

“Jeff Ironside? Yes, it was,” said Hugh. “I wonder you have never come across him before. He works like a nigger.”

“Hugh!” Doris collapsed upon the bank in sheer horror. “I have seen him before–seen him several times. I thought he was just–a labourer–till to-day.”

“Oh, no,” said Hugh. “He’s just your hard, outdoor, wholesome farmer. Fine animal, isn’t he? Always reminds me of a prize bull.”