THE WILD-DUCK SHOOTER.
working creature like herself; while the youthful guest saw, in imagination, a beautiful and courtly lady; and both saw the same love, the same anxiety, the same terror at sight of a lonely boy struggling in the moonlight through breaking ice, with no one to help him, catching at the frozen reeds, and then creeping up, shivering and benumbed, to a cottage door.
But even as she stooped the woman forgot her imagination, for she had taken a waistcoat into her hands, such as had never passed between them before; a gold pencil-case dropped from the pocket, and, on the floor, among a heap of mud that covered the outer garments, lay a white shirt-sleeve, so white, indeed, and fine, that she thought it could hardly be worn but by a squire!
She glanced from the clothes to the owner. He had thrown down his cap, and his fair, curly hair, and broad forehead, convinced her that he was of gentle birth; but while she hesitated to sit down, he set a chair for her, and said, with boyish frankness, 'I say, what a lonely place this is; if you had not let me in, the water would have all frozen on me before I reached home. Catch me duck-shooting again by myself!'
'It's very cold sport that, sir,' said the woman.
The young gentleman assented most readily, and asked if he might stir the fire.
'And welcome, sir,' said the woman. She felt a curiosity to know who he was, and he partly satisfied her by remarking that he was staying at Been Hall, a house about five miles off. adding that, in the morning, he had broken a hole in the ice very near the decoy, but it had iced over so fast, that in the dusk he
