Book Three

C H A P T E R O N E: _The Hiring Fair_

ON May Day, there being a deal of stuff for market, I borrowed the Mill pony again and set out with Gideon very early, while yet the purple blossom and the green leaves of the lilac trees were all of a grey blur. I’d pulled some lilac overnight for market, so we rode with the sighing of it and the good smell of it all about us. It was a very still morning. Not a breath stirred the young red oak leaves, and even the silver birches, that will shift and shiver in any breeze, like water-weeds at the lake-side, were all becalmed like weeds far down where not a ripple comes. Save for our horse-hoofs on the wet flinty road there was no sound, neither from the grey fields on either side, nor from the water, the woods or the sky. So still! It seemed to me some miracle might come to pass on such a day. The dawn could not hold its breath more if Judgment was to break that eve, and the dead rise. When the colour came in the hedges, the bird’s eye, that was in great plenty, looked upon us, very simple and innocent, as if thousands of blue-eyed children watched us go by. The ollern-trees that fringed the road dripped with yellow catkins. Beyond stood the hills, mounded out of sapphire stones like the new Jerusalem, and all becalmed under a sky without so much as a cloud. Not a bird nor a trail of mist or smoke stirred in all the plain. It seemed to me, as I rode alongside of Gideon without a word, while he frowned and darkened, thinking of Beguildy, that it was like a great open book with fair pages in which all might read. Only it was written in a secret script like some of Beguildy’s books that he never locked away, knowing they were safe. For indeed every tree and bush and little flower and sprig of moss, every least herb, sweet or bitter, bird that furrows the air and worm that furrows the soil, every beast going heavily about its task of living be to us a riddle with no answer. We know not what they do. And all this great universe that seems so still is but like a sleeping top, that looks still from very swiftness. But why it turns, and what we and all creatures do in the giddy steadfastness of it, we know not.

I said to Gideon that it was like a book.

“Book?” he says. “Why, no, I see no book. But I see a plenty of good land running to waste, as might be under corn.”

So we see in the script of God what we’ve a mind to see, and nought else.

We came beneath a wild pear tree in early blow, and it put me in mind of Jancis.

“Now I wonder,” I said, “where Jancis’ll sleep this night?”

“At Grimbles’.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell because I say it is to be. Missis Grimble is for ever changing dairymaids, and I hear tell she’s after one this year.”

“It’s a long ways off, Gideon.”

“None the worse for that, she’ll be out of young Camperdine’s way.”

“She’ll be terrible lonesome.”

“You can write me a letter to her now and again.”

“And welcome. But how’ll she answer?”

“I thought of that.”

Gideon spoke triumphing-like.

“It’s such a great big place that they have the weaver every month or two. Weaver can write for Jancis.”

“What?” I says, with my breath very short, knowing I was going to say that name, “what, Mister Woodseaves?”

“No other.”

Why, dear to goodness, here was a queer trick of fortune for me! I was to write love-letters for him I loved to read, and he was to write letters back for me to read, once in every few weeks. I let the pony go her own pace, and we fell behind, for Mill pony was like Mill folk, and took everything sad and quiet, as if she’d been discouraged above a bit.

There’d be letters coming in the summer days, written in his own script, with his own wording and turns of speech. His hand would ha’ moved slow along every page, over and over, while he looked down at the lettering with those long-shapen blue eyes that pierced to the heart’s core. Of course they’d be letters to somebody else from somebody else, and it ud be all the wrong way round, for his would be in the name of Jancis, to Gideon, and mine would be in the name of Gideon, to Jancis. It would all be moithered and twisted and topsy-turvy like the water-lily shadows in the mere, when I’d lief it met be clear and real. Still, I could speak my heart out. I could say the things I’d thought never to say. I could lay my soul as naked afore him as I myself had been, for no eyes but hisn would read my letters. Not that my soul was anything to show, but yet I greatly desired to show it. This is a very strange thing, and ever to be found in lovers. I couldna help but laugh to think what a figure of fun Gideon would look dizened out in my soul, and how dumbfounded Jancis would be, hearing things read out of Gideon’s letters that no power of angel nor devil would ever make Gideon say, and how she’d pucker up her face and wonder if weaver was making game of her, and then think, “Oh, well, folks inna themselves when they’re writing.” I was laughing over it all when I heard Gideon shouting—

“Hi! Hi! Where bin ’e going? Pony’ll put fut in the ditch in a minute and break her leg and all the eggs in your basket into the bargain. What ails you, dreaming?”

It was but just in time. Pony and I got out of the ditch as best we might and went on, a bit crestfallen and very mim and careful. Then it came over me on a sudden that I should see the mind of Kester Woodseaves in those letters as open as the sky. I should know him as if I lived along of him. For it inna by the deal that’s said, but by what’s in the things said, that you can know a person. Just as it inna the extra length or breadth of a gown that keeps you warm, but the quality of the stuff. In all he wrote, I’d find him. For you canna write a word, even, but you show yourself—in the word you choose, and the shape of the letters, and whether you write tall or short, plain or flourished. It’s a game of _I spy_ and there’s nowhere to hide. I thought how Mister Woodseaves would go tramping home, pleased to ha’ done a kindness, and very pleased to be unlocking his own door, lighting his own fire, and keeping himself to himself. And all the while he’d have showed himself to me, let me into the house of his mind, bid me to sit down by the fire of his great kindness.

“_He brought me to his noble house._ _His banner it was love._”

“Prue!” shouted Gideon. “Dang the girl! Oh, dang the girl! Pony’s got her foot in the reins and her teeth in the grass, and here I’ve been obleeged to come back half a mile. Market day and all! Whatever ails you? Be you sickening for summat? Dear to goodness! Anybody ud think you were in love!”

After that, pony and I were very careful. We kept our thoughts on the road and the market, and as you always come, at long last, where your thoughts are, so we came to Lullingford and found the Hiring Fair just beginning.

The long row of young folks, and some not so young, who were there to be hired, began near our stall. Each one carried the sign of his trade or hers. A cook had a big wooden spoon, and if the young fellows were too gallus she’d smack them over the head with the flat of it. Men that went with the teams had whips, hedgers a brummock, gardeners a spade. Cowmen carried a bright tin milk pail, thatchers a bundle of straw. A blacksmith wore a horseshoe in his hat, and there were a tuthree of them, for a few big farms would club together and hire a blacksmith by the year. Shepherds had a crook and bailiffs a lanthorn, to show how late they’d be out and about after robbers. Though, as Gideon said, having a lanthorn is no more promise that a man’ll so much as put his nose out of the bedclothes after dark than it’s promise when a chap agrees to the text, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house,” of a Sunday that he wunna spend all the week trying to compass it. Which was just what Gideon did himself.

There were tailors and weavers, wool carders and cobblers too, for the farmers clubbed together for them also. The carders had a hank of coloured wool, and the tailors made great game running up and down the line of young women and threatening to cut their petticoats short.

Jancis laughed with the rest, but I could see she’d been crying. She looked a real picture in her print gown and bonnet, with the dairymaid’s milking stool. They were a tidy set of young women, the housemaids with broom on shoulder, the laundrymaids with dollies. It was no wonder that many a young farmer, who wanted neither cook nor dairymaid, should linger a bit, and that it should come into his mind that he wanted a wife.

“There’s Grimble,” said Gideon “I made sure he’d come, because of the bull-baiting. He’s just got a new dog, I hear tell, as fierce as fire.”

There was most always a bull-baiting after the May Fair, and it was a thing I couldna abide. I looked where Gideon pointed and saw Mister Grimble, a man with a long nose that looked as if he poked it into everybody’s business and stirred up trouble.

“Be that his missus?” I said.

Gideon looked at the woman, like a gingerbread doll, flat and baked pale, with curranty eyes, and said it was.

“Very near, and a driver,” I said.

“Well, Jancis’ll take a deal of driving. The pretty ones be always the idle ones. And she’s used to being clemmed at home. She’ll see she dunna clem too much.”

He seemed quite unconsarned.

“She’d be better, a power, at a small place with nice folk that ud treat her kind,” I said. “What for do you want her to go to Grimble’s?”

“More money. They give a better wage than smaller folk. We mun think of that first.”

“The bane!” I whispered. “The precious bane!”

For indeed this talk of money was beginning to wear on me like a song sung over and over, and a song misliked to start with. Gideon had spoken to Farmer Grimble about Jancis, so, as she never dared to go against his word, she beckoned to Beguildy and said—

“Mister Grimble’s missus’ll hire me, Feyther, if you please.”

“Oh, ’er will, will ’er? And what’ll you give me for the wench, for dree year?”

“Eighteen pound.”

“Make it twenty and you shall take her.”

“Nay, nay, it’s too much.”

“She can work if she’s a mind. She’s strong. I give you leave if you make it twenty, to drive if she wunna be led.”

“If you lay finger on my girl it’ll be the worse for ye,” said Gideon. “And _she’s_ to have the money, not you, Beguildy.”

“Hearken, hearken! Did ever you hear the like! A fellow that was born under the threepenny planet and sleeps on face and’ll come to be drowned!”

Gideon fell into a sudden rage and gave him a great clout with the flat of his hand, and Beguildy screamed out—

“I’ll pay ye! I’ll pay ye for this! Curse ye! The very spit of your dad you be. You owe me a crown,” he says, going by me on a blast of air. “And you canna leave me and mine alone. Curse ye! In sowing and harvesting. In meadows and housen. By fire and by water. A waxen man! I’ll make a waxen man this night, and call it Sarn. Slow, slow, it’ll consume away—Sarn, the sin-eater!”

Gideon looked at him, making no sign. The people drew back a bit, fearing they knew not what. Just then, elbowing through the crowd, came the young squire, Mister Camperdine’s nephew.

“I heard,” he says to Beguildy, “that Venus was come to the Hiring Fair. My aunt wants a still-room maid, and I came to see if Venus—”

“If you mean Jancis Beguildy, sir,” says Gideon, speaking quick, “she’s prenticed already.”

“What, so soon?”

“Ah, to a farmer a great way off.”

He looked hard at Mister Camperdine, and Mister Camperdine looked hard back.

“It’s a great disappointment,” says Mister Camperdine, “for my good aunt.”

“Your lady-aunt, sir,” says Gideon very dry-like, “will soon find another maid. Never faithful to one long, if I may make so bold, your lady-aunt inna, sir!”

The young squire frowned, but looking around and seeing nobody but Jancis, short and plump, he supposed the one he was after had gone already, and so thought further argling but waste of time. He sighed and said to himself—

“So Venus vanishes!” and went away. And very glad I was to see the last of him.

Beguildy and Jancis went to the inn with the Grimbles to sign the prentice paper binding Jancis for three years. She was to drive back with them that night. She was free till then, and Gideon said seeing she was going to work for Lullingford New House, she ought to have a look at it. So off they went, while I minded the stall.

I’d all but done, for the place being fuller than ordinary, the things went off pretty quick. The lines of young people had shrunken till there were only a few left that were wanted by none. These were such as were known to be over-fond of the bottle or to have a base-born child, or to be incurables of some crippling disease, or not to know rightly what was their own and what was other people’s. I used to wonder how they felt, poor folk, going jogging along in the evening, back where they came from. I was glad I worked at whome, and had no need to go and be hired, for certain sure nobody ud have taken me. It was a bitter thought, that.

The market-place was emptying fast, for the people were getting some refreshment afore the bull-baiting. But I’d still got some daffodillies to sell, and Gideon didna like anything to go back. So I sat still, in the quiet afternoon, looking down the empty street where the shadows of the lilacs and seynty trees lay very dark and pleasant. I noticed that Missis Grimble was there too.

She was packing up, and as she put each pat of butter into the basket she gave it a look as much as to say that she’d give it a bit of her mind after, for not being sold.

In a while she came across to me.

“You be sister to my new dairymaid’s young man, binna you?”

“Ah.”

“I’m in behopes they’re serious?”

“Oh, ah!”

“That’s right. I like my wenches to be walking out afore they come, and with a chap at a distance. I’ve got sons, and it’s a deal safer. And so long as the chap’s at a distance and canna be got at, it dunna hinder the work. Well, I’ll be going now. They loose the first dog on the bull in an hour, and I must get a cup of tea first. I never can enjoy anything proper, nor take notice, if I’m clemmed. Whether it’s a wedding or a confinement, a baiting or the Lord’s Supper, I canna truly enjoy it as it should be enjoyed unless I’ve got a pint or two of good strong tea inside me. Well, good day. It’s a great affliction for ye.”

She went back to her stall to gather her baskets.

There now! Never could I be left in peace. Never could I be let to get away from my misfortune. Here I sat, as peaceful as could be, till she must come up and say that. “A great affliction.” But afore she said it I’d forgotten it, so I hadna got it. I was out of the cage till she put me in again. I was vexed, and the tears stood in my eyes.

Suddenly, along the quiet road, through the shadows, and through the mist on my own eyelashes, I saw somebody coming. A man, it was. And if there be any meaning in the word as I hanna thought on, let them that read put it in. Let them put the strength and the power, the kindness and the patience, the sternness and the stately righteousness of all good men into that word, and let him wear it. For it was himself, Kester Woodseaves, the maister.

He came along without haste, as if he had some great business to attend. I saw that he was in his best—the black beaver hat, green coat, flowered weskit, and the Wellington boots.

“Weaver, weaver!” called Missis Grimble. “When’ll you work for me next?”

He looked up, and came our way.

What did I do, I, that knew his smile was my summer? Why, I got up so hasty that I upset the daffodillies. I left all our baskets and butter-cloths, and the jam-pots for flowers, and I ran from the place as if summat was after me. But, being that the market was at the end of the road, and only open in front, there was nowhere for me to go but into the market-keeper’s office, which was a dark room at the back of the market, and had a small window with no glass, looking on the stalls. So I couldna help but hear all they said.

“Why, lookye!” Missis Grimble screamed out like a cackling hen, “her’s fled away as if you were the murrain or the Lord or the bailiffs. What ails the wench? Mostly I see ’em run _to_ and not _from_ when a young chap comes along.”

“Who _be_ she?” asked Kester.

He had ever a very out-of-the-ornary voice. It was like as if, when he spoke, the sound of the speaking made the world new for itself, not caring about the old world. It was like a wide, blossomy thorn-tree on a sweltering day in early June. You could sit down under it and rest you. And it was like the still hearth-fire on a winter night, when wild Edric’s out in the forest, and the curtains be close, candles snuffed, all fast, and the master of the house raught whome.

“Who _be_ she?” he says. And even though it be only a passing thought and three words, I’m a flower that knows the sun.

“Why, her be Sarn’s sister from away yonder at the mere. Prue Sarn. The woman with the hare-shotten lip. A very queer creature. But it makes ’em queer, you mind, to be born the like of that. Some say she’s a bit of a witch.”

He said nought, but he went across and picked up my flowers, setting them in the jam-pots man’s fashion, a bit clumsy and all thumbs, enough to make you cry with love. I could see from the dark at the back of the office.

“A very neat, tidy figure she’s got,” he said. And in a minute I knew that he knew I’d heard, and so would ease the wound. Oh, most kind maister, the very marrow of Him that loved the world so dear!

“Be you going to the baiting, Mister Woodseaves?” asked Missis Grimble.

“Why, yes and no to that.”

“Eh?”

“You’ll see in good time, Missis Grimble.”

With that he went on his way. And what did I do? I did a thing I never thought to do for any man, so forrard it was. I came out of the dark room, straight into the sunlight, and step by step along the road I followed him, as if I’d no bashfulness at all, such as every girl should have. I kept a long way back, for fear he might turn about and see me, but I never let him out of my sight. It seemed as if I couldna. I was drawn on and on. If I lost sight of his green coat round a turn of the road, I was all distraught till I’d got sight of it again.

The bull-ring was well beyond the town, in a green meadow where a brook ran. And though if you’d gone a-walking in that green meadow any other day in the year, to gather lilies or forget-me-nots, or to walk beside the water, folk would have thought it a soft thing to do, it was all right and proper to-day, because they were going to kill a creature there.

The people in the road never noticed me, in my plain black, with my face hid in my bonnet. From a good way off I could see the ring, and the bright colours of the gowns and coats all jumbled together, and a deal of sad-colour from the coats of the working men who could seldom afford a best coat save the funeral coat of the family. I could see the bull, a little white one, tied to a staple in the wall of the bull-ring, which was a semicircle built of rough grey stones. The bright yellow sunshine held them all, as if they were bees in the mid of the honeycombs, and the blue air, the brown water, the green meadow were all so fair, I could not believe blood must be shed on such a day. I wonder to myself, times, if it was fair, clear weather on Golgotha when Mary looked up at the cross, and whether there was some small bird singing, and the bees busy in the clover. Ah! I think it was glass-clear weather, and bright. For no bitter lacked in that cup, and surely one of the bitterest things is to see the cruelty of man on some fair morning with blessing in it.

C H A P T E R T W O: _The Baiting_

AS I came nearer I saw that, as the custom was, not only all the women of Lullingford were there, but all the children as well. I thought it shame to bring these poor things, that would soon enough know the evil of the world, to see the dogs torn to ribbons and the hapless beast killed. I said so after to Gideon, but he thought nothing of it.

“Why, you’d make ’em as soft as ’ool,” he said. “They mun be brave and well-plucked.”

I said I couldna see that it was soft not to like to see a cruel deed, and that it seemed to me to be braver not to like seeing another’s pain.

“Well, well, we canna make the world, for it’s made already,” says Gideon.

There it all was, then, the crowd, the shouting and betting, the yapping and snarling of the dogs, people elbowing and pushing, men crying hot taters and chestnuts, apples, spiced ale, and gingerbread, children in their white pinnies watching the bull, very skeered, for it was grumbling to itself. Poor thing, it was thinking of its own big blackberry pasture at the back of Callard’s Dingle, I make no doubt. It hated neither men nor dogs, and had no grudge against any if only it could be back there, roving the meadows in the dew. There they all were, and there was Kester. I lost sight of him in the crowd, and hastened my steps, with a wonder in my heart the while what he could be doing in such a place. For I thought him to be a different kind of man from all these. Yet such faith I had in him that I was sure, if he was here, that he was here for good. And something drove me on, so that I must seek him in the crowd, and keep nigh him, as if I was his angel for that day. A poor angel, but God minds not much, I think, what like His angels be, so that they do His work proper. The shepherd’s collie that runs home to warn the missus that her man has fallen down the rock, is his angel sure enough, though he may be a mongrel of the very worst, with ears as flat as a spaniel.

Blindly and without reason, like the shepherd’s dog, I kept close to Kester Woodseaves, yet not so close that he might see me. So it was that I heard all he said to the men who stood round about the ring with their dogs, a bit apart from the crowd. And though they were men of my own countryside, and some of them known to me, yet I must say that there were among them a tuthree very evil faces. The dogs were fierce and ugly, many of ’em with great jowls, snarling and slavering and showing the red of their eyes. Yet if I had been bound to choose between men and dogs, I’d have chosen the dogs. Mostly they were terriers, but there were a good few bulldogs, and of these Grimble’s new one was far the worst, with a grin that sent me cold. There were one or two with a lot of mastiff in them, and there were a mort of mongrels.

The men all turned towards Kester when he came up, and Farmer Huglet, the chief of them, called out—

“Where’s your dawg?”

Mister Huglet was a great raw-looking man who seemed as if he’d come together accidental and was made up of two or three other people’s bodies. He was a giant, very nearly, and clumsy, with tremendous long arms, and so big round the middle that tailors who brought their own stuff always charged extra for his clothes. He’d got a mouth like a frog, and a round red snub nose, and such little eyes that they were lost in the mountains of flesh that made up his face. Whenever he couldna understand anything, he laughed, and his laugh was enough to frighten you. It came pretty often too. Grimble was hand-in-glove with him, and while Huglet stuck his red snub nose in the air, Grimble kept his long pale one down, so between them they didna miss much. They’d each got two dogs.

“Why, it’s weaver,” says Grimble. “Dunna you know weaver, Huglet?”

“Why, no, we hanna crossed paths afore. My brother-law weaves for me, you mind. Well, weaver, where’s your dawg?”

“I’ve got none.”

“No dawg? Stand aside, then.”

But he stood where he was. It so happed that he was about at the mid of the half-moon of grey stone that made the bull-ring, and the men with the dogs fell away a bit on either hand, so he was alone. Standing there so slim and straight in his green coat, with the airs blowing his hair a bit, so that a lock of it fell o’er his brow, his hat being under arm, he seemed to have nought to do with any there, but to be a part of the fair meadow, that matched his coat. He wore no beard nor whiskers, so you could see the shape and colour and the lines of all his face, which seemed to me to be a face you could never tire of looking on. Times I wonder if heaven will be thus, a long gazing on a face you canna tire of, but must ever have one more glimpse. He had a kind of arrowy look, so that though Huglet towered over him, he seemed to tower over Huglet. He looked round about and said—

“Chaps, I’ve come to ask ye to stop this.”

There was a long, bepuzzled silence. Then Huglet laughed and slapped his thigh, and roared again. Grimble looked at his boots and gave a snigger.

“Well, that’s a good un!” shouted Huglet “Stop the bull-baiting, oot, young fellow?”

“Ah. I’d lief stop it.”

“And what for would you stop it, dear ’eart?” asked Grimble in a soft, sing-song voice.

“Stop it?” roars Huglet, “he _canna_ stop it.”

“I’d lief it was stopped over all England.”

“You’d lief a deal, young man. Why, I tell ye there’s bin bull-baiting in England ever since it _was_ England! Take away the good old sport and it wouldna _be_ England!”

All this he said in the same loud roaring voice.

“I asked ye, what for would ye stop it?” repeated Grimble, soft and obstinate.

“Because it’s a cruel, miserable business.”

“It inna cruel. The dawgs like it. They enjoy it. And the bull likes it right well.”

Mister Grimble looked down at the trampled grass for all the world as if he was reading the words there.

“What’s it matter if they enjoy it or not? _I_ enjoy it!” says Huglet. “That’s enough, inna it?”

The other men drew round. For though it was the ordinary thing to hear Mister Huglet shouting fit to burst, it was out of the common to hear him shouting so long at one person. When Huglet shouted like he was doing now, folk said that the person he was shouting at always gave in and went away quiet.

“What be trouble?” asked Mister Callard, the owner of the bull. Mister Huglet turned round and spluttered out—

“This here borsted fellow wants to stop the baiting. The baiting, mind, as we all come a many weary mile to see.”

“Rising up a great while afore day,” puts in Mister Grimble.

“Dear now! And missus and me at such trouble to bring the beast along bright and early. Whatever ails the mon?”

He looked at Kester as the apothecary will look at a man a long while sick.

“Ah,” says the landlord of the _Mug o’ Cider_, “I’ve heard tell of folks as wanted to stop the long kneeling. I’ve even heard of a tuthree as wanted to stop wars and rumours of wars, but bull-baiting? Never in life! Whoever, save a few fratchety parsons, did ever want to stop a baiting?”

“He must be going a bit simple, poor fellow,” says Grimble. “Feel well, weaver?”

The miller came up and had a look, shook his head, and went away, which was a great deal for the miller to do.

“But what _for_ do ye want to stop it, like?” says Mister Callard, very puzzled.

“I’ve told ’em why. Never mind all that. Look ye, Mister Callard, ool ye sell the bull to me?”

“Sell un?”

“Ah, I wunna argle and bargle over the price.”

“But it wouldna be worth my while. I’ll get more, a power, by letting un fight. Win, and I’ll be a rich mon. Lose, and I get best butcher’s price from the ring owners, seesta?”

“What ud you make if he won?”

“Twenty pound.”

“I’ll give you twenty pound, and you can take the beast away.”

“God bless me!” says Mister Callard. “Oh, God bless me, I’m sure.”

He stared at Kester as if he was spirit-struck.

“Bargain?” says Kester.

Missis Callard, who never spoke but after Callard spoke, and then said the same thing, and never did ought but what she was told to do, came up all in a flusker, leading the bull.

“Take the gentleman’s offer, Father! Take it, my dear!” she said, all out of breath. “Take the twenty pound and us’ll lead the darling whome.”

Callard was so astounded at her daring to speak that he could only keep on saying—

“God bless me!”

“God bless ye, is it?” says Huglet, beginning to roar again. “I’ll give ye God bless ye if you do any such thing, Callard. Dang me! Spoil all our sport for twenty pound! I’ll larn ye! And you too, young man!”

“Oh, but he mun be worse than sawft or simple, he mun be stark raving mad to offer twenty pound for the little beast and then give back what he’s bought,” says Grimble. “Oh, I could cry! Yet the poor chap was all right Monday was a fortnit, weaving for us as nice as nice. But he’s gone wrong in the yead since, surely to goodness! Oh, dear me!”

He wiped his face and seemed quite taken-to.

Kester pulled out his wallet and offered Callard the money. It was pretty well all his uncle left him, I doubt.

By this, Missis Callard had called all the children to her, for they had five children as well as the baby, and she whispered ’em, and all of a sudden they cried out together, “Take it, Feyther! Take it, honoured Feyther! We beseech thee to hear us!”

At the surprise of that, Mister Callard seemed to be quite moithered, and he reached out his hand to Kester for the money. But Mister Huglet struck it down.

“I wunna be robbed of my sport!” he said. “Dunna you dare take it, Callard. We want our sport, I tell ye!”

All the men with dogs looked black and muttered—

“Ah, that’s righteous! That’s gospel! We want our sport!”

“Chaps,” says Kester, very pleading, “it be pity on so fine a day to set one poor creature to tear another. Devil’s work, it be. If it’s fighting you want, why canna you wrostle, or box man to man? Look ye! To make a bit of sport, I’ll take any six of ye on, one after other, to wrostle. The one that beats me by most shall take my coat, and the next shall take my hat and weskit. Now then!”

Nobody said anything, only they shuffled a bit, and looked here and there. Everybody seemed to know that Kester was a very good wrostler, and nobody seemed to take to the job. Mister Grimble looked at Kester as if he hated him. And it was plain, by what came next, that he did, in very truth. For now, having made up his mind not to play second any more to Mister Huglet, he up and said—

“The young man speaks well. Now, I’ll fall in with all he says and agree to the stopping of the baiting this day, on one condition.”

“Out with it,” says Kester.

“That you take on the dawgs yerself.”

Mister Grimble gave a spiteful cackling laugh, and Mister Huglet roared agen.

“Got ye there, me lad!” he shouted. And Grimble said—

“You may love the dumb creatures ooth yer purse, but ye wunna go so far as to love em ooth yer own blood!”

“Go on with the baiting!” orders Mister Huglet.

“Tie the beast up agen,” says Mister Callard to his missus, who was standing by, eager to hand it over to Kester, so as he could give it back as he said.

“Whose dawg drew first?”

Mister Huglet took no more notice of Kester, but went on with the arrangements.

“Mister Towler’s dawg drew first, and _Mug o’ Cider_ second,” said one of the owners of the bull-ring.

“Come forrard, Towler.”

Kester stood very still, eyeing Mister Grimble till he got quite put about. For he didna seem to want to meet Kester’s eye.

“That ud be the best bit of sport ever you had, eh, Mister Grimble?” says Kester at last. “To see a man baited like a bull.”

“Why, nobody ud be such a fool.”

Kester looked round.

“Chaps!” he says, “if so be as I agree to Mister Grimble’s plan and take on the dogs one by one, not to kill ’em, but to put ’em on chain with nought but my bare hands, and they as savage as you like, if I do this at my own risk, will ye give it me in writing as there wunna be another baiting in Lullingford for ten years? And if I fail to put any dog on chain, I’ve lost and the baiting goes on.”

Everybody’s tongue was loosed at that.

“God bless me!”

“Dear to goodness!”

“Domm it!”

“Well, that beats all, dang it!”

“Daze my ’ouns!”

There was a regular clack of voices.

One or two called out that they wouldna agree to it. But mostly they were very curious to see what would come of it, and as it was known that the parson didna like the baitings and had been werriting the squire to put a stop to them, everybody thought they might be stopped soon anyway, and so they might as well have the fun, for this was a chance of rare sport, and the like of it had never been seen in the place.

When Mister Huglet could speak for laughing, he explained to all the people what was doing.

“Hands up for it!” he called out.

All but about a dozen held up their hands.

“Done!” says Mister Huglet “And done _for_, my fine feller!”

I caught hold of Miller’s Tim and told him to go to Kester and whisper as Grimble’s dog was a new one, and extra bad in temper. But indeed I felt that neither this nor anything was any manner of use, and I couldna think of ought to do. But one thing I was determined on, I’d keep nigh him, and when he was down I’d rush in and drag him away, and if Grimble interfered it ud be the worse for un. There’s none so fierce as a loving woman, and it always seemed a strange thing to me that the Mother of Jesus could keep her hands off the centurion, and it could only have been because her Son had given orders afore. But indeed if it had been me, I think I should have forgot the orders.

Tim came running back, and I saw those strong blue eyes follow and settle on me for a breath. Then I hid behind Missis Callard.

“He knowed it,” says Tim. “But obleeged all the same.”

I went to the refreshment booth and stole the carving-knife. But almost afore it was hidden under my flounced skirt I saw that there was to be no need of it, anyway for a while. There was to be summat more like a miracle than anything I’ve seen afore. This was the way of it.

“Go to the mid of the wall,” says Huglet, “and fasten the dawgs to the bull chain. And if you fasten either of mine, I’ll give ye five shilling, me lad! Oh, I could bust a-laughing to see anybody be such a fool!”

“Mister Towler’s dawg!” says the head of the ring.

“Ready!”

They loosed Towler’s terrier, the savagest little beast in the place.

“At ’im! Bite ’im!” shouts Towler, and I was like to faint. And then it came to pass.

Kester stepped forward.

“Well, Bingo!” he says. “Good dog!”

Bingo stopped, looked at Towler as much as to say he’d made a mistake, and ran to Kester as pleased as Punch, wagging tail and fawning round.

“We be friends, binna we?” says Kester.

Towler gave a curse, and Huglet looked as black as night. But nobody could say it wunna fair and square, and some of the better sort laughed and said, “Good for you, lad!”

It was the same with the _Mug o’ Cider_ dog, and the next. As the owners came up to fetch them when they were on the chain, they looked very old-fashioned and taken aback.

Kester laughed.

“I like a dog,” he says. “Dumb things be my fancy. You couldna know it, but so it is, and I can only see one dog here as inna friend to me, being new-come to these parts.”

“Ah,” says Grimble, “you wunna play yer May-games with Toby. Indeed to goodness, if you get off with your life you’ll do well.”

All in a minute I thought of a better thing than the carving-knife, though I kept that in case of need. I’d run to the town for the apothecary, there being no doctor in the place, to have him there in case of harm. There were a sight more dogs yet, for they wouldna let him off any. There met be time if I was quick. So, with the carving-knife still under my dress, I edged out of the crowd, got into the road and ran for dear life. But afore I went, I took one look at him I did love, since if I wasna quick enough I might never see him alive again.

He was laughing, and Huglet was leading one of his dogs away. Though Kester didna weave for Huglet, he’d made friends with his dogs on market days, outside the _Mug o’ Cider_, seemingly. He’d such a way with animals that a tuthree minutes was enough, and they were friends to him for ever.

And as I looked back, it seemed to me, though I told myself it must be fancy, that those eyes, so live and bright, dwelt on me, and smiled at me, friended me and pled with me, being as are the eyes of a man when he looks long upon his dear acquaintance, who has given her peace for his, her soul to his keeping, and her body for his joy.

But as I ran I said to myself—

“Nay, Prue Sarn, you be nought but his angel, and a poor daggly sort of angel, too.”

And all the blue bird’s eye in the hedge banks went into a mist of tears as I ran, and looked no more like flowers, but like a blue tide of sorrow to drown me.

C H A P T E R T H R E E: “_The Best Tall Script, Flourished_”

I MAY say I went over the distance to the town quicker than it’s been done this long while. I hid the carving-knife in the hedge, for fear of tripping over it. The apothecary’s was open, as I thought, for he was churchwarden, and couldna go agen the parson. I never saw the big green and red bottles look so beautiful, as if they were full of water from Paradise river. Inside there was a pleasant dusk, for the little window was so close-set with liniments and medicines, drenches for horses, simples for cows, plaisters, cordials, and bunches of yarbs that you couldna see at all. It smelt very pleasantly of peppermint, yarbs and soap, and the apothecary looked at me kindly over his spectacles and asked what the matter was.

“Why, sir, it’s murder, pretty nigh,” I says. “I do beseech you to shut up the shop and come, or such a man as this town never saw afore, nor will again, will be done to death.”

He pulled on his boots, good man, at that.

“What remedies must I bring?” he says. “You can tell me the rest as we run.”

So I told him summat for dog-bites and summat to bring a man round when he was near death. In a minute he clapped his hat on, and off we went.

“Take a sup of brandy,” he says. “You’re nigh done.”

But I told him, no, only if I fell behind he must hasten on to the bull-ring.

I fell back just afore we got to the carving-knife, and caught up again at the field gate. As we came in I could see an awful struggle going on, for we were only just in time. He’d finished but for Grimble’s dog.

As we came up there was a roar. He’d got the dog chained. Then there was another roar, and I saw (oh, my dear love!) that the dog had got him by the throat.

I caught Grimble’s shoulder.

“Take yer dog off!” I said.

Grimble never stirred.

A second of that grip and he as I loved so dear ud be dead and cold.

I rushed forrard, I, that had never wilfully hurt any living creature, and as the great beast stood reared with his teeth in my maister’s throat, I ran him through the heart.

The blood spurted, and the heavy body fell down all of a heap, and Kester with it.

I pulled him away and dragged the dog’s jaws apart. There seemed to be no life in Kester.

“Water!” I says to Huglet, who chanced to be nighest.

“Fetch water, you murderer! Brandy, Mister Camlet, please!”

He stooped over Kester.

“I mun burn the bite,” he said. “Best do it afore we bring him round. But how to heat the iron?”

I stood up. I cared for nobody. They couldna have been more feared if I’d been a savage queen.

“Six men pick up sticks!” I says. “And quick about it! And you, Grimble, find flint and tinder.”

“I hanna got one,” he muttered.

“Find one!” I screamed like a wild thing, holding up the knife. “Find one, or—”

The fire was blazing quicker than it takes to tell it. We poured a little brandy down Kester’s throat, to keep the spark of life in, then Mister Camlet burnt the bite, and Kester awoke with a shout of agony, for being in a dead swound he hadna been ready for the pain.

“There, there, my dear!” I says. For the shriek went through my heart. “There, there. It be done now! None shall touch you now.”

Mister Camlet bound him up, and I washed his face with cold water and gave him more brandy.

“Not a deep wound,” says Mister Camlet. “We were only just in time, though.”

“We couldna help but be in time,” I says, “I be his angel for to-day.”

And with that the green field swam up afore me and I swounded clean away. When I came to myself there were Gideon and Jancis sitting by me on the grass, and all the folks were gone.

“Where be he?” I says.

“Who? Weaver?” says Jancis. “He be all right and cared for. They’ve took him back to Lullingford, and Missis Callard’ll stop with him.”

“She’s mighty pleased with the little bull,” said Gideon. “You saved that chap’s life, and no mistake, Prue. I never saw the like! We were just coming in at the field gate, and I looked across and saw you. ‘By gum!’ I says. And that was all I did say. I ran, and Jancis ran, but you’d done for the owd dog afore we could come at you. You take the medal, Prue!”

“You canna ride home, Prue. Shall I run and ask Miller to take her, Sarn? And couldna I come back and give her a hand with the work for a day or two?”

“You can ask Miller and welcome. It’s a good thought. But as for coming back, you know very well you’re Grimble’s vessel-maid now, till three years.”

“I didna want to be. It’s you and Feyther made me.”

“Well, but you’ve seen the house, hanna you? You’ll be working for that and the ’unt Ball and the silver plate.”

“Ah. I’ve seen the house, and I think it looks a dark, bitter old place, for all it’s new, and I’d liefer never go to no ’unt Ball than lead the life of a driven slave.”

She was crying, but it made no manner of difference to Gideon.

“You’ve got to go to Grimble’s and you’ve got to go to the ’unt Ball in good time, so why make such a ding-dong?”

“But why must I, Sarn?”

“Because my mind’s set.”

It was almost as if he said, “Because I’m in the stocks.” As if his maid called him to come maying, but, feet and hands, he was fast bound.

When she was gone, they gave me a sup of tea at the _Mug o’ Cider_, for I was all of a tremble still, and then Miller helped me up into the gig, and the old coach horse, that had known the merry sound of the horn tooting, and the sudden light and commotion at the turnpikes, when they rushed out in the dead dark to open, laboured into a trot. For indeed he seemed much of Missis Miller’s mind, caring not if he never saw home again. Missis Miller had nought to say, Miller as usual had nought also, and Polly was asleep. After a while Missis Miller and Tim went to sleep too. We drove on sadly in the chilly evening. It was dusk, and then it was dark. Gideon was far ahead, for Bendigo was a good trotter, though aged. The mill pony, tied to the back of the gig, clopped onwards with a sorrowful sound.

It suited me, the quiet and the melancholy, for I was sad and quiet too. He that I loved was hurt, and I couldna get to him. There he lay, as weak as a babe, and only Missis Callard to tend him. I forgot that she, having six, was well knowledged in tending helpless folk, for it is the way of lovers to think that none can bless or succour their love but their own selves. And there is a touch of truth in it, maybe more than a touch. We went on and on, through country that was neither hilly nor flat, in a night neither dark nor gleamy, feeling neither glad nor sorry. I thought we were like people bound for some place beyond the world that was neither hell nor heaven. Our six heads, counting the nag’s, all nid-nodded, and I think we were all asleep, even the old coach horse, when the miller spoke, out of his sleep, I do believe.

“I canna abide ’em,” he said, with a nod toerts his wife and children. “I wish they were kit-cats, to drown in mill-pond. I wish the world and all was a kit-cat.”

He said no more. It was like when they say the creed, solemn and choppy. That was all the miller ever said to me, and I do think he said it in his sleep. On we went, till we came to the dark mill, the soundless water, like soft black crape. The others got out and untied the pony, and Miller drove me back to Sarn. The night was full of the smell of water and moss, with a drift of primrose scent now and again. I thought of the weaver’s house, that seemed built of a spell, and him, lying there in the kitchen with the loom, his face barred with the shadow of it, cast by the rushlight, his hair all tousled and damp with the sweat of pain.

“If Missis Callard spoke unkind to him, I could slap her babby,” I thought. But I knew she wouldna. She was a good soul, though I always thought she must have had a mind like a shell, hollow, to echo other people as she did.

When we came to our place, there was Mother on the door-sill, very consarned. She said what nobody else had, and what I’d never thought of.

“You met ha’ been killed, Prue!”

She sat down and began to cry, so I had to laugh at her and ask for summat to eat, to show I was alive all right. So then she got me such a meal as never was, though she should by rights have been asleep hours. Seemingly Gideon had told her some sort of tale, but she must know more. She wasna to be satisfied, but kept on wanting more. She put on her spectacles and looked at me very attentive, sitting there in the big oak chair. I was quite put-about with her staring so, with that still look of a sitting bird when somebody comes and spies at her, and she never winks nor flinches, but just looks back with sharp brown eyes, as much as to say, “I’ll stand by what’s mine.” Mother seemed to be looking past me at summat that threatened me. Maybe it was my Fate, as she thought it to be. It was summat that threatened to do me harm, I’m sure, for after a bit Mother looked very defiant and sat up ever so straight and said—

“We’ll have the weaver.”

Just as if somebody forbade her to have him.

She said nought of all I’d told her, never a word about it being a foolish or forrard thing to save a strange young man’s life without with your leave or by your leave. She only kept on giving little nods now and again, and saying—

“Ah. Come summer, we’ll have weaver.”

Then she said she’d go to bed now, and I went and wrote in my book.

There was no change in our lives, only it was quieter without Jancis coming in of a Sunday. The Stone House seemed very lonesome lacking her, and Missis Beguildy not half the woman she had been. She seemed to cling to me, and kept talking of the little ways and sayings of Jancis as if she was dead. This made Beguildy very angry, for in truth he was sorry Jancis was gone, not only because of the young squire, but because in her unhandy way she’d got through a good bit of work. He’d say, “Now, hush thy noise, woman. The wench’ll be back in no time, with twenty pound in hand, dear me. Now, dunna go to talk of her as if she was dead, fool! A gamesome lusty young woman the like of that! Many’s the golden pound her’ll put in our pockets, when she’s learnt her duty, and given over hankering after a man as was born under the threepenny planet, and’ll come to be drowned. No offence meant, Prue, and none taken I’m in behopes. You ploughed the gorsty bit right tidy, Prue, and us’ll do word of four synnables this day, if you’ve a mind.”

Oh, there’s no doubt Beguildy was a very queer old man. I was used to think if he’d had a good education he met have been one of these great men we all think so much of. A great scholar he could have been, or a music-man, or a rhymer, or a preacher. And maybe if all of his mind had been used proper, he wouldna have brought ruination on hisself as he did. Ah! And on more than hisself. But that we cannot know. We are His mommets that made us, I do think. He takes us from the box, whiles, and saith, “Dance now!” or maybe it must bow, or wave a hand or fall down in a swound. Then He puts it back in box, for the part is played. It may be a Mumming, or a Christmas or Easter play, or a tragedy. That is as He pleases. The play is of His making. So the evil mommets do His will as well as the good, since they act the part set for them. How would it be if the play came to the hour when the villainous man must do evilly, and see! he is on his knee-bones at his prayers. Then the play would be in very poor case. There was a mommet once called Judas, and if he had started away from his set part in fear, we should none of us have been saved. Which is all a very strange mystery, and so we must leave it. But it being so, I think we do wrongly to blame ill-doers too hardly. It is a dreadful fate to be obleeged to act in a curst ugly way, when surely none would choose it. “Needs be that offences come.” How should Gabriel show his skill with a two-edged sword if Lucifer wouldna fight? “But woe be to him by whom they come.” Ah! So if the play has a murder in it, or if a good maid is brought to shame, a mommet must be found to do the bad work, though very like, if they could choose, never a one but would say, “Not me, Maister!” Only they know nought. For I think we be not very different from the beasts, that work deathly harms in the dark of their minds, knowing nothing, weltering in blood, crouching and springing on their prey, with a sound of shrieks in the night, and yet all the while as innicent as a babe. And I think we be not very much other than the storms that raven in the forest, and the hungry fire that licks up lives in a moment, and the lips of the water, sucking in our kin. It is all in the Play. But if we be chosen for a pleasant, merry part, how thankful we ought to be, giving great praise, and helping those less fortunate, and even being grateful to that poor mommet which goeth about night and day to work our destruction. For it might have been the other way.

So, in spite of all, I was always sorry for Beguildy, though, dear knows, he was the villain in our story.

We had a very middling crop that summer, both of grass and grain. Our lives went to the same tune, with no change, saving that Mother was as good as her word and did send for Kester.

I thought she seemed very busy all that June, spinning as if it was ever so, till even Gideon gave a word of praise. Then one day she said—

“There’s such a deal spun, I shall be obleeged to send for Weaver.”

But I was settled in my mind not to see him, so the day he was coming, about the end of hay harvest, I took the brummock and went hedging in the far fields where none would find me.

“I’m going hedging, Mother,” I says, “I’ll take some bread and cheese. Can you see to the young turkeys and tell Gideon he must make shift with the milking, for I shanna be back till dark.”

What must she do but begin to wring her hands and keep on saying under breath—

“Oh, the pity, the pity, to be so curst!”

But go I did. And when I raught home, there in my attic were the bits of wool and thread he’d left, and a very pleasant smell of tobacco. For he liked to smoke a bit while he worked. And just by the corner of the loom what should I find but a blue-and-white handkerchief, which I very dishonestly did put in my locker, and turned the key with great satisfaction. I said to myself in a kind of gloating way that some day I’d launder it, and roll it up with a bit of lavender, and send it back. But not yet.

Mother was full of tales about the weaver. Oh, he was such a kind man, and strong, and so considerate! I thought I could have told her that. Like a son to her, he’d been, she said. I should ha’ seen him a-sitting on the settle at his tea. I dare say, I thought, and lose my heart worse than ever! “Wanted to know if I’d any other family besides Sarn,” she said. “So I told un.”

“Oh, Mother, what did you tell him?” I said.

“I told un I’d got the best girl in the ’orld, and a good daughter to me, and very jimp and slender, with a long, silky plait to the knees, and dark, meltin’ eyes, and such pleasant ways, merry and mocking and pitiful. Ah! I told un! Proper, I did! And I told un you could do the tall script and the short, and that Beguildy was learning you to read, and that you could do words of four synnables now.”

“Dear to goodness, Mother,” I said, “what a tale you made out!”

“No tale, my dear, for ’tis the truth.”

“Did you say ought of Gideon’s letters? I mean, did you say I wrote ’em?”

“Why, no, my dear. Sarn met not ha’ liked it, nor Jancis, nor you.”

“No. You’ve got a lot of sense, Mother.”

“It was always said in our family as I had, my dear.”

“So Weaver thinks we’re a very well educated family, I make no doubt, Mother, and he’ll take it for gospel that Gideon writes the letters.”

After, when I was helping her to bed, I took courage to say—

“Did you tell Weaver I was hare-shotten?”

“No, no, my dear! What for should I do that?”

“Only he met be thinking of me a bit, seeing you said such things, and then if he met me ever—”

“Well, my dear, if he met you, and he’s the man I think him, he’d be bound to like you right well,” says Mother roundly.

When I’d tucked her in, she catched my hand.

“Prue, should you care if he’d got but one leg, or one arm, or was all pitted with the smallpox?”

“Care, Mother?” I cried out all in a minute and never thinking, “of course I shouldna care. I should love un the more for it!”

“I knowed you did, my dear,” says Mother, very contented. “I knowed you loved the man. And I’m right glad of it. Now, dunna you hide from him, Prue. Be well plucked and risk all, like a good player in the game of Costly Colours.”

“No, no! Never will I. Oh, Mother, it was unkind in you to catch me like that!”

“I only wanted to know, Prue. I be getting ancient and old, and the time draws nigh when life’ll be a burden. I’d lief know as there was good in store for the best girl ever.”

She looked out and away through the little moony window, with the dark round blots that were red roses pressed on the panes, and the silver sky dim, and not starry, but very kind-seeming, and she seemed to be listening to summat. Then she said—

“I do believe all shall be well with you, Prue. It’s come to my heart as soft as dew, and as sweet as a red rose, that you’ll get love as well as give it. After my time, though, after my time. But no matter for that, so I do know it’s to come.”

I felt a shiver of strangeness in the night.

“What is it, my dear?” I asked her. “Is it the second sight?”

“No. I see nought. But I feel it within me.”

“You be well, be you, Mother?” I said, for I was afraid she might be slipping from me, since the dying are ever so.

But she said, yes, she was in her daily health, and well, and not going to die this many a day, only it came on her at the thought of Weaver, and how he’d said—

“Well, single I am, and single shall stay, I do believe. But if ever I did think of asking to wed, it ud be just such another as that’n.”

At the end of corn harvest Gideon asked me to write his second letter to Jancis.

We were having our suppers on the bench under the dairy window. After, I fetched the ink and said what should I write? So he said I must write that he was well and hoped she was, and she was to be a good girl and work hard and not ask for any early money for clo’es or boots, but think of all that was to come, and it was a middling harvest, and her father still in the same mind about the young squire, who was about coming back from the Low Countries next year with his pockets full of money, and the big longhorn cow had calved, but dropped her calf like the gwerian she was, and to tell Mister Grimble he could do with a few lambs when he fetched them off the hills for the winter, but no sign of fut-rot, or home they’d come, dang-swang, and so no more from G. Sarn.

Then he said, “Put in as I’ll see her, Christmas market, if Grimbles ool bring her.”

I said I’d do the best I could, and did it matter if I put in a bit more? And I couldna help but laugh, for it did seem such a peculiar letter for a fellow to write to his sweetheart. And Gideon looked up very sharp and said, why did I want to write more? So I said the pen did run away sometimes, and he said he supposed it wunna easy to know quite what you were at when you started writing, and God save him from such foolishness, and so long as I put in all he’d told me I might put in some as well, if I’d a mind.

So I wrote it.

SARN. _September Twenty-six._

MY DEAR SWEETHEART—

It do seem a long while since your letter, which was a beauty, and I kissed it a good few times. You know very well how to do a love letter. I can see the two of you at it, your golden hair shining and your pretty face bent down, and Weaver smiling a bit, and looking well amused, with those eyes that would ’tice any girl away from her own man, and mind you dunna fall in love with anybody but me, if possible. Maybe I shall see you at the Christmas market. Tell Weaver that all Mother’s tales of our Prue be made-ups, for she’s very ornary in every way. Tell Mister Grimble I could do with a few lambs. Tell Weaver when he goes nigh Huglet’s he might carry a gun as well as not, for Huglet’s got an awful dog now, and I hope all’s well betwixt Weaver and Grimble. If there’s ever any sewing work Weaver wants done, being a lone womanless man, I’ve got two women in my house, Mother and sister, both glad of a job at a fair price, and red cabbage pickle and damson cheese they maken, which pays them very well to sell at half market price, and a charity to employ them. It’s a middling harvest, longhorn’s dropped her calf, young Camperdine’s expected back next year, and if they’ve gotten fut-rot, back they’ll come, dang-swang, and so good-bye for now, and take all care of self. In the beginning of a cough take a lemon and crushed honeycomb fire-hot, and you be my dearest, dearest love as I’d spend my life for very willing any time, and die for you by bite of dog or any way, my dear, and so good night, from your lover

GIDEON SARN.

That is a nice text, “The Maister be come.”

I often wondered as the autumn went on, and the cold nights, what they thought of my letter. We knew they had it all right, for one market day Gideon came back with the lambs, that Grimble had put in pen for him at the _Mug o’ Cider_, and they were good ones, with no fut-rot. But it was drawing on to Christmas when the letter came from Jancis, and I mind it was a wild night, with a lashing of rain on the window, when I read it to Gideon. But it was warm within. It made a good Christmas for me, in spite of work, and Mother very ailing, so as we had to send for the doctor’s man all the way from Silverton, for Gideon wouldna hear of the doctor, saying the expense was more than enough as it was. He kept on grumbling and saying she was a burden, and Mother would ask me: “Does Sarn think I be a burden?” So it was very awkward for me. But that letter was as heartening as a platter of good hot soup, and lest Gideon should take it to his own keeping, I made a copy of it, and this is it.

THE HIGH FARM, OUTRACK. _December 1._

MY DEAREST ACQUAINTANCE—

I am thinking of Sarn as I write this, and of the best of lovers. Mister Woodseaves ud be very glad of the sewing and the pickle and the damson cheese Sarn was so kind as to mention. Perhaps might speak to your sister one day about it. Mister Woodseaves says that is the best cough cure ever, and tried it one foggy night after getting back from here to Lullingford, but thinks it ud take a woman to mix it proper. Sorry about the harvest and the calf, but no need to worry about Huglet’s dog, not being afraid of any dog, nor of Huglet neither. But that was a near shave at the Baiting, by gum, and a plucky woman to rush in the like of that and save a poor fellow. For Mister Woodseaves hears tell it was a woman did it, a tall slim woman with beautiful dark eyes, so they do say. It inna for me to say anything, as you know, Sarn. But others will talk. Weaver says if ever he had an acquaintance he’d lief she was that sort. And so good night, and a merry Christmas from

JANCIS BEGUILDY.

I love you already, and if these things be done in the dry tree, what shall be done in the green?

C H A P T E R F O U R: _Jancis Runs Away_

IT was a Christmas Eve again a year and eight months after Kester stopped the bull-baiting. There’d been no letters from Jancis a long while, but Gideon never worried about such things. He said it was only the weather, for the roads were so waidy round about Grimble’s that nobody could come at them in bad weather. They came to market seldom in winter, but laid in a store of such things as they needed, and Mister Grimble would send half a score waggons of grain to be ground at the mill, and then they’d settle down, the farm and the two labourers’ cottages, with the horses in stable and the cattle in the near pasture and the sheep in the mangold fields close by, all snug for the winter. They were used to keep a lot of simples and cures at such farms, because no apothecary or doctor could get to them, the roads being past all telling bad, not if it was ever so.

“Woodseaves canna go there, and Jancis canna send to Lullingford, but come a bit of fair weather, we shall hear,” said Gideon.

I used to think of Jancis, mewed up with Missis Grimble, a woman I couldna abide, nor could Jancis. I thought of the high mountains and the sleat storms like a wall of ice between her and us, and the snow, thick and soft, whispering, whispering.

“It goes round the house, and round the house, and leaves a white glove in the window.”

That’s what they say of the snow at Sarn.

There were two sons, of course, to liven things up, but one of them was going to wed with the labourer’s girl, and the other was very religious and didna hold with any kind of May-games, nor pleasuring, nor even much laughing and talking. So she’d only Missis Grimble, that was a driver and a scold, and Mister Grimble, that was very awkward in bad weather, because of the rheumatics. I used to think of her a deal. For if you thought of anybody at Sarn, you thought of them a deal, it being so quiet, especially in the winter, and time standing still, so it seemed.

And whenever I thought of Jancis I called to mind a thing I saw once in June, when we had strange untoërt weather and a deal of tempest and sleat, which one day for about an hour turned to snow. And I saw the wild roses, so tender and nesh, and used to nothing colder than dew, with their pale pink petals all full of snow, and seeming to be frozen through and through, gold hearts and all. I thought of her always like that, for I was fond of her, and she seemed a child to me, though she was older. Even in spite of her making me remember that she was pretty and I was ugly, I was fond of her, and the more so when she was in trouble, for I never love folks quite so well when it’s bright weather with them. So I wished I could have sent her summat for Christmas, if it was only a hemmed kerchief of plain linen. I’d asked Gideon to inquire after her at Kester’s when he went to market, but Kester was away, and the house shut up. That was uncomfortable news, for I liked to think of him by his own fireside, in the little house I knew by sight. It seemed he was nigher then. But it was his custom to go off for a month at a time in the winter to stay at one village or another and do all the weaving there, to save going to-and-again.

It was very quiet in our kitchen. Mother was in bed, being always bed-ridden now in hard weather, and Gideon was in the woods, getting the Christmas brand. For whatever else we were stinted of, we always had that, since it took only labour to get it, and Gideon never grudged that, poor lad. I went to the door to listen if he’d finished chopping, and I could hear the axe barking, and the echo of it coming from across the mere. The trees were mounded up with snow, and the mere frozen till near the middle. The woods, as white as sugar, stood round the water so still, as if they were spelled, like folk in some old tale of witchcraft, so deep they were in trusses and bales of snow, and not a breath stirring. You couldna call summer to mind. You couldna think of the mere with lilies on it, and ripples. I held my breath, it was so quiet, till a redshank called from the far end of the mere by the church, very sorrowful, with a sound like “Mute! Mute!” Then some widgeon went over against the darkening sky, and I heard Mother give a little cough, so I knew she’d be wanting her tea. The sound of the axe had stopped, so Gideon ud be coming soon, and I set about getting the meal.

I was baking, a thing I dearly liked. Most of the work I did was men’s work, and baking seemed so light and pleasant after it I liked to see the dough rising afore the big red fire, and to get the oven ready with burning wood, raking out the ash after, and setting the loaves in rows. It was pleasant to be in the warm, glowing kitchen, full of the good smell of bread, and to look out at the grey-white fields and woods, cold and lonesome, and then to draw the curtain, and kindle the rushlight, setting the table and putting the tater pie to get hot on the gledes, and knowing that in a little while all those I cared for would be comfortable for the night. The fowl had been shut up since the first dusk, the cows and sheep were folded, Bendigo littered-up, Pussy by hearth, Mother with a bit of fire in her room and the warming-pan in the bed, and now Gideon was on the way back to his supper. The oven being still hot, I put in a batch of mince-pies, for Gideon liked a bit of good fare as well as anybody, though he’d growl times, and talk about ruination, and where’d our house be and the silver plate and all. But though I did as he said all the year round, with a bit of bread and cheese and a tater for a meal, at Christmas time I went by my own road, and we had our merrymaking almost like other folks. And since, after all that came to pass, I’ve been more glad of that bit of disobedience to Gideon than of anything in our lives then. For I can say, “Anyway, they had _that_, whatever else they didna have.”

I was singing to myself a bit, and talking to Pussy, who was almost too comfortable to purr, only if I spoke she’d partly get up, and arch herself very polite, and open her mouth to mew, and then be too bone-idle to make any sound. But she looked at me as much as to say, “I know you made this nice gledy fire to warm me, missus, and I know you’ve got summat in larder for I, and thank you kindly.”

All of a sudden there came a soft tap at the door. So tiny and timid it was, it might almost have been a poor red-breast tapping with its beak. There was one would come in hard weather, and if I was too long feeding it, it would tap on the window. I went to the door, and it being dark by now, and nobody coming our way in a month of Sundays, I may say I thought of frittening and fairies and Lob-lie-by-the-fire, and all sorts of queer things that were used to happen in time past.

I opened it.

There against the white, dreary stretch of the frozen mere, all woebegone and white in the light of the fire, was Jancis.

No sooner did I pull her in than she fell down dang-swang in a heap on the floor. The poor girl! Never did I see such a pickle. Her clothes were all torn, boots broken, hands and face scratched as if she’d been through brier hedges, which it turned out after that she had, and everything wringing wet as if she’d been dragged out of the mere. She’d fainted dead away, and I’d enough to do to get her round. When she came to, she told me she’d had no food for nearly two days, and she’d walked all the way from Grimble’s in this weather.

To think of it! The long and the short of it was that she’d run away, and she’d no money and no decent boots, and she had to slip away when she could, which chanced to be when she hadna got her shawl.

She cried and cried.

“Oh, I couldna bear it, Prue! Oh, dear Prue, dunna scold! It was more than anybody could bear. And when it came nigh Christmas and there was no news, and all of ’em ten times worse, being mewed up with the hard weather, oh, I _couldna_ bear it. And the girl at the cottage told me that the last two dairymaids ran away as well. She said why didna I run away, too? Partly she said it because she was sorry for me, and partly because Alf Grimble, that’s her young man, was paying me attentions. So she told me the best time to go, and kept ’em all out of the way, and gave me some bread and meat and a bottle of milk, and promised to tell them some tale to keep them from following me.”

She stopped a bit for breath, and there came from outside the sound of Gideon’s cart-wheels creaking along in the snow.

“What be you going to say to Gideon?” I asked her.

“Oh, dunna let him be angered with me, Prue! Dunna! I canna bear any more. When I tell you all I’ve been through, you’ll see I canna.”

Gideon came to the door, dragging the great log, that was the Christmas brand, on a chain.

“Dunna turn me out, Prue! Whatever he do say, and however angered he be at me losing the place he settled on, keep me for this night!”

So I said did she think any creature could make me turn her out at any time, let alone in such weather? And I tucked her up on settle, and said she must rest now, and afterwards she should have a sup of tea, and then to bed, and all her troubles were over. Then she smiled and whispered—

“I love ye, Prue! You bin like the Saviour to me this night,” and so fell asleep.

Times, seeing what came to pass, I’m main glad of that smile and that whisper.

Eh, but Gideon was in a rage!

“Why, she’ll lose all the money,” he says, the first minute, “and she’ll not only lose the money for the year and four months to come, but she’ll lose the wages for the year and eight months she’s been there. If they break their time, they get no money. You know that as well as I do.”

I asked how he could think of the money when she’d come to our door the like of that, all draggled and half dead.

“You always were a fool, Prue,” he says, “and I suppose you always will be.”

But my patience was out, and I talked to Gideon straight.

“I’d thank you to keep your tongue in leash this evening, Gideon! Here’s Christmas, and Jancis come to you out of death’s arms, very nearly. For it wanted but a little. If she’d lost her way again, so late, she’d have been done. And seeing I’ve taken her in and she’s to have my bed, and I’ve cossetted her for ye, she being your dear acquaintance, you’d ought to be humble and grateful to me and to them above for the savation of the poor child.”

“Dear to goodness! What a spitfire all in a minute!” says he. He laughed a bit, being startled, for I wasna used to breaking out like that. Then he went tramping into the kitchen.

“Well!” he says, very loud, for he wunna used to sick folks, and he always seemed to think they were deaf. When Mother was sick, he’d shout at her summat odd, though Mother had kept her hearing very well.

“Good evening, Sarn!” says Jancis, very small and weak.

“So you’ve raught back.”

“Ah!”

“Broke your time and all.”

She began to cry.

“Now then, dunna do that!” he says, quite taken-to. “Prue’ll give me some more tongue if you cry. I amna to say a word, not to-night. There’ll be summat to be said to-morrow, but I’m to leave you be to-night. Well, how bin ’ee?”

He stood in the middle of the kitchen and shouted it at her, so I couldna help but laugh.

“Nicely, thank you kindly, Sarn,” she says.

“You dunna do much credit to your pasture at Grimble’s. I’ll say that. See young Camperdine ever?”

“No.”

“Got an acquaintance over yonder?”

“No, Sarn. You be my acquaintance for ever and ever.”

“Not Alf Grimble?”

“No. But he was sweet on me, a bit, and pestered me. That was why I ran away.”

I never thought Jancis was so clever. But every woman’s clever when she’s in love, I do believe. She was ever so white against the black settle.

“I ran away because you be the only acquaintance I do want, Sarn.”

“So that was it! I’ll break Alf’s head for un come cattle-market.”

“No. Dunna, dunna!”

“So you ran away all those miles and miles because you didna like Alf, and because I was your dear acquaintance?”

“Ah.”

“Give us a kiss, wench!”

I ran away into the dairy at that, and Pussy with me, for she was always a bit skeered when Gideon was in. I skimmed and skimmed, and if I cried a bit, who was the worse? For I wished I was on settle with a young man shouting at _me_ from the middle of the kitchen, and then saying, “Give us a kiss, wench!” And if you should ask what manner of young man would I choose, I’d say as he’d wear a coat the colour of a May meadow, and look at you with eyes full of power and knowledge till your soul turned right over.

“I canna have what I want, Pussy,” I says. “But you can, for your wants be easy got.”

And I gave her a great saucer of cream. I did! What would Gideon have said if he’d known? But he’d got his cream in the kitchen.

“I’m giving you this, Pussy,” I says, “because I canna get my own cream. It eases me to see somebody satisfied.”

She looked at me, frittened, thinking she must be going to get slapped in a minute, since it was too good to be true. Then she lapped it up.

With that, I heard Mother calling.

“You’ve had that, anyway, Pussy,” I says. “And now, Mother, would ye like some cream with your tea?”

“Why, yes, my dear. I do dearly like a drop of cream with my tea. But what’ll Sarn say?”

“He’s busy lapping cream hisself, Mother.”

“Eh?”

Mother thought I was comic-struck.

“Well, in a manner of speaking. Jancis be come.”

“Jancis?”

“Ah. Runaway.”

“Dear to goodness!”

“Walked all the way, she did.”

“But why didna she go whome?”

I’d never thought of that. It seemed so natural she should come to us, like a clemmed red-breast.

“She was afraid of Beguildy, I make no doubt, Mother.”

“Ah. You’ll have to go and tell Missis Beguildy.”

“Boxing Day, I’ll go. Let Jancis have her Christmas.”

“Be they, as you met say, lovering at all?”

“Ah. He was took by surprise, and he gave her a kiss afore he knew it.”

We laughed a bit.

“And now for your tea, Mother. There’s getting to be a real Christmassy feeling. Cream all round! And after supper I’ll trim the house up with holly.”

“Mind you get some cream yourself, my dear.”

As I went down the stair into the kitchen, where the two were sitting very old-fashioned on the settle, I wondered what would be cream for me. All in a minute, as I was scalding the tea, I knew.

“Jancis,” I said. “You’d ought to write to Mister Woodseaves and say you’ve run away, or maybe he’ll be making shift to go over extra early to write a letter for you.”

“A’ right, Prue, seeing it’s you and not me as writes, I dunna mind. But he wunna go over there again.”

“Not go? For why?”

“I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow-day. I be so tired now.”

“All right,” I said, though I did long to hear about him.

“I’ll tell about running away to-night,” she said, but I told her supper first.

“Draw up now and take bite and sup. Then you can tell us all about it, and then I’ll write.”

I knew it would do her good to tell it. For when you’ve come through a bad time, to tell of it takes the thorn out. So she told us how she’d timed it to get to Lullingford on market day and ask Gideon to bring her back, but took the wrong road in the hills, all looking the same in the snow, and wandered far out of the way, and was benighted, and slept in one of the huts that they make of furze for lambing-time; and how she heard a breathing under the door, and thought it was the roaring bull of Bagbury, but she cried out upon the Trinity three times, as loud as she could, and it went away. Then she struggled on to Lullingford, going across fields, not being able to find the road. She was chased by a horse, which was worse than the roaring bull of Bagbury, and that was when she crept through the hedge. When she got to Lullingford, Gideon was gone, for he always started back as soon as he could. She went to Kester’s, but he being away she could get no help there. She was afraid to ask anybody else, for fear they’d send her back to Grimble’s, so she started off again. But afore she’d gone far, she was so fainty that she had to creep into a barn and wait till morning. Then when she got to the woods, she thought of a short cut, and lost her way again. And indeed it was no wonder, for in the woods about Sarn it inna all that easy to find your way in summer even.

“Dear to goodness!” says Gideon, “you want a chap to look after you, seemingly. Such a tale of foolishness I never heard.”

“And what Feyther’ll say passes me,” she went on. “He’ll be neither to hold nor to bind. He’s very set in his ways now, and if you go agen his plans he’s very crousty. If Mother knew, maybe she’d think of a way out.”

“I’ll go and see your mother, come Boxing Day,” I said.

“It’ll be a funny thing if we canna invent summat to get the better of an old moithered man, hoping you dunna mind me saying it.”

“Mind! You can say the worst you can think of about my dad, and I doubt I shanna think it’s too much. And truly he _be_ moithered, book-learning or no.”

“Set your heart at rest now. We’ll think of summat to give you time to turn round. Maybe you could get another place. Or maybe Gideon——”

“If you mean, maybe Gideon’ll want to get wed, I say, in my own good time and not afore. I’ve told Jancis if it’s a good harvest and we do well I’ll be willing to get wed at Harvest Home. And she’s willing as well.”

“I’m right glad. Loving’s never too early. And if you be fond of a girl, you mun want her to be in your house, by fireside and table, indoors and out.”

I was thinking of a little house not twenty miles away, as different as could be from ours, and one in it as was a very obstinate bachelor, and didna want any woman there, let alone poor Prue Sarn. I thought it was about time I wrote the letter.

“What shall I say in your letter, Jancis?”

She said I was to say what I liked. So I fetched ink and paper and my quill, and wrote it.

_Christmas Eve._ SARN.

DEAR MISTER WOODSEAVES—

I write to acquaint you as I’ve left Missis Grimble, being very near with the food and a driver, and maister’s rheumatics very awkward in sharp weather, and sons awkward also one way or another. I’ve broke the journey at Sarn. I may say Gideon and me think to be married come Harvest Home. I may say I be very glad, for when you do love anybody you want to be with them and canna rest, nights, wondering where they be, and if all’s well, and if they change their stockings when damp, and if they be lonesome ever.

I be more choice of him I love than of all else in the world beside.

He be so kind and so brave, and when he be there I can but say, “The maister be come.”

I love him past telling, and shall to the end, and so good night, Mister Woodseaves, and a merry Christmas, from

JANCIS BEGUILDY.

“You write a pretty tidy letter, Jancis,” I says. “Would ye like me to read it?”

“Laws, no! What for should ye? You know what’s to be said.”

“Ah. I know right well what’s to be said. Only I munna say it,” I thought. “That’s the trouble.”

I fastened the letter up and put it on the chimney-piece ready for Gideon to take next market day.

There was a strangeness about the place all that Christmas. It was the best Christmas ever we had, and there was more singing and laughing than there’d bin for many a year. And yet it was in a manner of speaking sad. It seemed to me as if the singing came from a great way off, under the water. And when Jancis sat by the window, with the light falling on her pale gold hair and pale face through the greenish bottle-glass, it made her look as if the water flowed over her.

“_Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green!_ _The fairest young lady that ever was seen._ _I’ll wash you in milk, and clothe you in silk,_ _And write down your name with a gold pen and ink._”

Ah! I can hear Jancis singing that song now, with her sweet shrilly voice, a great way off, ah, me! a great way off.

Mother let me get her up, Christmas morning, and came into the kitchen, sitting snug in the chimney corner watching the lovers with a pleased, understanding, merry look, such as I’ve often seen on the faces of old women that have lived their lives and known summat of love. It’s as if they said, as they looked at the young lovers—

“Pleased, be ye, my lad? You’ll be better pleased yet! . . . All of a twitter, be ye, my girl? Well, I can tell ye, you’ll be in more of a twitter later on, a power.”

I could see very well that when we three sang “As Joseph was a-walking,” and “Good Christian men, rejoice!” Mother was hearing other voices too, little voices like the Callard children’s, lifted up all together, shrilly and sweet. She was seeing other faces, well scrubbed and rosy, lifted up to her as she sat in the dusk of the settle, ready to smile when the solemn carols were done, and shout “Granma!”

She kept on patting Jancis on shoulder, and saying, “Pretty thing! Pretty!” and once I heard her cautioning Jancis against hares.

“When your time comes, my dear, dunna you go in the ’oods much, nor yet in the meadows. Keep near whome and you wunna come across one. ’Twould be a sad mischance, so it would.”

“Oh, Missis Sarn!” says Jancis, laughing and colouring up above a bit, “you do run on so fast! We inna so much as courting yet.”

“And so do time run on, my dear. You munna let the moss grow on the path of love. Dunna give too many nay-words. He’s a good lad when you dunna vex him.”

“But it’s Sarn more than me as wants to wait,” said Jancis.

“Foolish, foolish lad! What matter for the silver plate? What matter for so many maids and men? I’m sure I’d be content without, so as I needna tend swine again, and can have my feet to the fire and a cup of tay.”

“Sarn wants to take me to the ’unt Ball,” said Jancis. “And I be to go in afore Miss Dorabella.”

“That’s a mischievous thought. For what dun it matter who’s first so long as all be in? And what is it to go to one ball more than another?”

“But I’d like it right well, to go in afore Miss Dorabella!”

“And so thee shall!” called out Gideon from the door, where he was knocking the snow and mud off his boots. “And so thee shall, my girl, and dressed as shameless as a lady!”

He came across the kitchen with the bit of mistletoe he’d clomb the big apple tree to get, and gave her a loud, smacking kiss under it.

Mother clapped hands, as pleased as a child when kitty wakes up and plays. But even when she clapped for joy, her hands still looked like the little praying paws of a trapped mole.

“Not later than Harvest, Sarn?” she pleaded. “You wunna put it off later than that? I’ll last till then, sure. But after—the winter comes, and who knows? I’d lief see you wed afore winter.”

“Oh, we shanna put off, Mother. No danger! What need? For I shall be a rich mon when I’ve sold the corn, and it’ll cost nought to get it, for we can have a love-carriage, and I can pay back with task-work in the winter. And in another tuthree years we can shift, for the old mon at Lullingford wunna last long, and the money’ll be ready when the place comes on the market.”

So they were all merry, and when I said, “The tea’s scalded!” Gideon gave me a very affectionate pat on the shoulder and said I was a good wench.

“A right good wench if ever there was one. Now draw up! Draw up to table all! I want me tea cruel.”

But I couldna be as merry as they were. I felt outside it all. Only I took a bit of comfort, now and again, between cutting bread and frizzling rashers and pouring tea, in looking up at my letter on the mantel, with the address on it in very tall script—

Mister Woodseaves, The Weaver’s House, Lullingford.

Then Jancis told us about Kester, and of the things that had come about through Grimble’s spite, which couldna be told in letters. For it seemed that Grimble and Huglet had misliked Kester ever since he stopped the baiting, and the mislike had soon grown into black hatred. They tried to set all the other farmers agen him, saying this and that. They found fault with his weaving, which was the best in all the country round. And they said he was slow, and dear. Not content with that, they must enquire into his religion and his ways of thinking in the matter of the corn laws and the Parliament men. They hob-nobbed with Squire over that, and set him agen Kester too, worse than he was, for they said nought about the baiting, but kept to the corn. Every way they could, they worked against Kester, and very worried they must ha’ been that he didna drink or go after women, or do anything that they could have told of to the Parish Constable. But they did their best to make his life a burden, for it irked them so sore to think of no bull-baiting for ten years. So one day when he was weaving at Grimble’s and it came to evening, Mister Grimble looked at the cloth Kester had done in the day, and couldna find fault with it, neither with the quality nor the quantity. For he’d worked right well, and Jancis said it was as smooth as silk, and never a lump nor a knot in it. He said nought to Kester, and after supper Jancis fetched the paper and they began to write the letter to Gideon. And it seemed Mister Grimble couldn’t abide to see that, for he couldna read nor write, and he thought Kester was above hisself. So when he couldna keep any longer, but mun speak or burst, he says—

“If young Sarn do like damaged goods, he’ll get what he wants, and I doubt he’ll have you to thank, Weaver. Very comfortable and pleasant you be together, I must say, you and Sarn’s girl. It’s baby linen you’d best be weaving, young Woodseaves.”

And with that, Kester snatched up his hat and all his things in a fury, but saying nought. And when he got to the door, he turns round and says—

“You may get Huglet’s brother-law to weave for ye from now on, Grimble. You’ll go without weaving for all me. You bin a foul-mouthed toad and a disgrace to your parish, which is situate in hell.”

He flung out, and he never came near the place again.

I was forced to go up to the attic to think about it a bit. I did love Kester so sore for his rage. I thought I’d like to see un in a rage, though not with me, for if he was in a proper rage with me, I’d die.

On Boxing Day I went across to the Stone House, and a windy walk it was, for the snow was drifted deep along the wood path. But it was fair overhead, and a mistletoe thrush was singing, and the cuckoo’s beads were very bright on all the may-trees. Beguildy was out, for a wonder. Missis Beguildy and me had a good talk.

“Well, well, poor lamb,” she said, “to think she couldna come to her own Mother because the mester be such a pig-headed fool! Drat the man! Now what’s to do? For go back to Grimble’s she never shall. But ours’ll be roaring-mad to think of all that money gone. Keep her a bit longer till the worst’s worn off, my dear!”

“Oh, she can bide, and welcome, as long as she’s a mind.”

“May them above reward ye!” she says. For she was a very religious person, in the manner of the church. And though I’ve no wish to speak ill of her, yet I partly think she was religious, in a measure at least, to spite Beguildy. But maybe this is a wicked thought of mine.

“Gideon was telling us that Callard’s girl ran away afore winter,” I said. “She’s by lonesome there all day with the five little uns and the baby. Maybe if we went at it the right way, and made a favour of it, they’d pay the same rate as Grimbles. They’ll get nobody else till the spring, for they’re all hired now till May, and besides, Callard’s Dingle inna a place the girls like. You go and see Missis Callard, and I’ll make shift to have a lesson to keep your maister busy.”

“But you’ve left learning this long while, my dear, for you know as much as Beguildy does.”

“Ah, well, there’s summat new I want to learn, but I dunno if it’s in the books.”

“What met that be?”

“It’s an old ancient charm, Missis Beguildy, and it’s called content.”

“Oh, that! It’s in no book of hisn.”

“Nor in any book,” I said. But I thought, there’s one knows it. Please God he met learn me. But that he never will.

“Eh, but it be no manner use for me to go, Prue,” she says. “They’d set the dogs on me, very like. Callard’s very religious, you mind. And he canna abide ours. And all _he_ thinks, his missus thinks; all _he_ says, _she_ says, pat like the Sarn echo. Come to that, it’ll go hard but they’ll take Jancis in at all, whatever, being who her dada is. But maybe if _you_ went, and told them on the quiet that Jancis is promised to Sarn, they met think of it, for your brother’s beginning to be well spoken of as a man that’s bound to be rich.”

So I said I’d go. I couldna abide going, being looked at a bit sideways myself, and spoken ill of time and again. But when I saw Gideon and Jancis so pleasant and merry together in the even, playing beggar-me-neighbor by firelight, I knew I was bound to go.

“Why, Gideon,” I says, “you’re busy at it, I see. Though you canna play conquer with cob-nuts and snail-housen now, being too old, you’re beggaring somebody still.”

“Conquer!” says Mother from her corner. “Ah, what a game that is! He was always very set on it, you mind. He liked to play ooth them big pink-and-white conquers, the Roman snail, they callen it, dunna they, Prue? It was those you went after the night poor Sarn was took in his boots. Poor soul!”

She cried a bit, and went to look very small, which she always did when she was vexed.

“There, there, Mother, dunna fret, he’s in peace now.”

“Ah, poor soul! And Sarn’s took the sin. My son Sarn. Chumbled it up proper, a did. And I can see as there’ll be lads to play conquer in our kitchen yet, with the big pink-and-white uns, of an evening.”

She looked across at the settle. Gideon had just beggared Jancis, and was in very good fettle.

“Ah, boys _and_ girls,” says Mother. “For I see well as he’ll beggar her of more than cards.”

She began to laugh at the thought of the grandchildren, and at her joke, and she laughed so much that she gave herself a hoost, and I had to put her to bed.

Next day I set off for Callard’s Dingle. It was a way nobody would choose to go with snow deep on the ground, for it lay over bleak, high pastures, with northerly slopes, bitter cold and drifted up. But seeing I was on a good errand, I began to sing out on the bare pastures with none to hear.

“Open the gates as wide as the sky . . .”

And there by the farm, in a little fenced field, what should I see grazing under a dark pine wood but the white bull that Kester saved from the baiting? I stopped and looked at it a bit. There it was, not dead nor maimed, its nice white coat in good case, and looking as contented as if it was just come to heaven, and all because of Kester.

He’d kept his promise and paid the money, and then given the bull back to Callard for his children.

“If you ever come to think bull-baiting’s bad, I’d lief you told ’em so,” he said, “but not agen your conscience.”

Now Callard was a very honest man, and he felt bound to make some return, whether or no, so he took the matter up in good sadness. Jancis said afterwards that it was very amusing to see him gather all the children together round the hearth, sitting on their little stools, of an evening, the baby also being there on its mother’s knee. And Callard ud say very loud—

“Bull-baiting’s bad!”

And his missus in that melancholy voice of hers would repeat—

“Bad!” like the Sarn echo.

Then all the children would sing out, like a nest of birds—

“Bull-baiting’s bad!”

And times the baby would give a guggle, and times he’d stay quiet, considering, like. There was only one disagreeing voice, and that was old Granfer Callard’s, which was very high and trembling. He’d call out—

“No! No! It inna bad. It be a right good merry old sport!”

But nobody listened to him, for he was getting very simple. He came to the door when I knocked, and called out to his daughter-law—

“It be that there long thing young ’oman, Maria. The witch woman.”

“Well, bring her in, feyther-law.”

“Come thy ways,” he says. “Her’ll be down when the baby gives over hollering. I do wish I’d got such lungs as hisn. I be very middling. Very middling I be. Can you do cures?”

I said no to that.

“Oh! I thought Beguildy’d learnt ye. A very sinful man is that. Soaked in sin like a sheep in raddle. It wunna be any manner use for ’im to yammer at the doors o’ Paradise and say, ‘Wesh me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ For I tell ye not the Judge of all could clane ’im, even if He could spare the time to it. Ah! A wicked old man is the Wizard. I do believe he lives by sucking folks’ life away in the mid of night. Ah! sucks their blood, he does. They seyn he goes to the churchyard and digs folk up to steal their bwones and grind ’em for his spells. They seyn he fetches little children whome in his bag, and makes a meal of ’em. Oh, he be the wickedest man since Punty Pilate, no danger!”

By this, the elder children were roaring with fright, and Missis Callard called out from the top of the stair—

“Feyther-law, what be saying now? Hold thy noise!”

Mister Callard came in then, and said I’d best take pot-luck, seeing it was tea-time. So when we’d had our tea, I told them about Jancis.

“So ’er run away!” says Mister Callard. “In this weather. Well, by gum!”

“Gum!” says his missus.

“Broke her time!” says Callard.

“Time!” says his missus, sorrowful.

“Nobody ever broke their time when _I_ was a lad,” said the old man. “They darstna. They’d have been put in the stocks.”

“And you be sure it inna anything to do with Weaver?”

“Weaver!” says Missis Callard, grievous.

“Weaver! Weaver!” shouted the children, and it seemed to me as if they praised his name.

“I be as sure of that as I’m sure that I breathe,” I said.

“And she’s promised to your brother?”

“Ah. They’ll be wed come Harvest Home.”

“Then,” says Mister Callard, “the missus shall give the girl a trial.”

“Trial!” echoes Missis Callard in a hopeless sort of way, as if she thought that was what Jancis would be.

They agreed to take Jancis for six months, and to give her three pound, which was a deal for them to offer. So I went back in high feather. Next day Gideon said we could have Bendigo, so I drove Jancis to Callard’s, stopping at Beguildy’s on the way, to break the news to the old man.

Oh, dear me, but he was in a passion! And the worst of it was, that he blamed it all on to Gideon, who had nought to do with it at all.

“I’ll be even with that brother of yours for this,” he says. “Ah! A very aggravating man. His dad was the same. I couldna plan out anything or set my hand to any work but he’d come and knock it down, tiddly-bump. And young Sarn’s the same. Look at the way he’s let and hindered me over the young squire!”

But Missis Beguildy was pleased.

“And you shall come whome at the end of hay harvest, Jancis,” she said, “to make your wedding clo’es. And the wedding shall be at Michaelmas. The Glory roses’ll be in their second blooming then, and you shall have ’em for your nosegay.”

“I tell ye,” says Beguildy, “as Sarn shanna take her. You can tell un so from me, Prue Sarn. Thwarted I wunna be. I’ve cursed the man by fire and watter, and cursed he’ll surely be. Tell un neither with the ring nor without it shall he take my wench.”

“Well, good day to you, Mister Beguildy,” I said. For I thought it was time to drive on.

“Prue,” said Jancis as we drove through the water meadows between Plash and Callard’s Dingle, “what for did ye knife Grimble’s dog and take on the way you did about Weaver?”

She looked up at me with those big blue eyes of hers, and I beat Bendigo cruel so as to be busy about summat. The poor old nag gave a half look round, and my conscience pricked me, but what was I to do?

“Folk be saying it was a very out-of-the-ornary thing for a girl to do for a stranger. Ah! even as far as Grimble’s they knew it was you, though neither Grimble nor the missus told ’em, for they didna like to speak of it, being beaten over it. But everybody knows in all the country round by this.”

She kept on looking and looking at me, and the red-scarlet was burning like fire in my cheeks. I kept on thrashing Bendigo, and we went over the tumps and marshy bits at such a wallop as never was.

Jancis gave a little laugh, very knowing and aggravating.

“Poor owd Bendigo’s done nought,” she says.

“I want to get there,” I answers, foolish-like.

“Oh, I’ll be bound you’ll get there,” she says. Then she was quiet for a bit, though she watched me all the while.

“I wonder,” she said after a time, “what Weaver ud think if he knew?”

“He couldna know,” I said. “He was in a swound.”

“He met hear tell! And I wonder what he’d think if it came to his ears that Prue Sarn had foughten for un like a tiger?”

“He’d think nought. Everybody do know I’m sorry for the afflicted.”

“Well, but he inna what you’d call one of the afflicted, Mister Woodseaves inna. He’s the best wrestler in these parts, and a right proper man.”

“He was afflicted when Grimble’s Toby got ’im by the throat, wunna he?”

“Ah. But why must it be Prue Sarn that did save him? And why must she take his yead to her bosom so kind and all? Not but what he’s got very nice brown hair, and silky. I was used to notice it when he was writing the letters for me. And that Felena thinks so too. She does fairly tarment him, market days.”

“What a brazen piece! What does she do?”

I was glad to turn Jancis on to summat else.

“O she goes to the house, and leaves a great basket of mushrooms, or a frail of wimberries, or maybe a bit of mutton, if shepherd’s killed a sheep. And if she meets him in the road, she’ll look at un with them green eyes and smile as sweet as an October nut. And one night when shepherd was drunk and they were late starting whome, what must she do but go in the dusk and sing a wild song outside his window.”

“What did she sing?”

“O she sang—

‘_A vargin went a-souling in the dark of the moon._ _A soul-cake! A soul-cake!_ _O give it me kindly and give it me soon._ _A soul-cake! A soul-cake!_ _The young man he looks from his window so bright._ _Here’s a vargin come wailing in the dark of the night!_ _Now what’ll you give me for a soul-cake, my maid?_ _My body, my body for a soul-cake! she said._’

And I call that a right down improper song, dunna you, Prue?”

“What did _he_ think of it?”

“I wouldna demean myself to ask him. But she’s a very wild woman, is Felena. She’ll ’tice him and tempt him to a fall if somebody dunna keep her off. But I want to know what I be to say to Weaver if he asks me why you were so busy a-saving of him.”

“Say nought.”

“Nought’s no answer.”

“It’s all he’ll get.”

“The way you stood over the fellow like one of the angels at Eden gate, with that great knife!”

“It’s none of your business if I did.”

“Ah. It be.”

“For why?”

“Because I love ye, Prue.”

“Thanks be to goodness, we’re at Callard’s,” I said, as we came into the fold, and the house door burst open and out came the five children, Granfeyther Callard, Missis Callard and the baby, like bees from a skep.

The last thing Jancis said afore I drove away was—

“I shall be bound to send for Weaver soon.”

“Whatever for?”

“To write me a letter to Sarn.”

“Why, you be only a tuthree miles from Gideon now. Whatever do you want to write a letter for?”

“It’s none of your business if I do,” says she, very mim, and laughing to herself, “which is what you did say to me, Prue Sarn!”

C H A P T E R F I V E: _Dragon-flies_

FROM the time when Jancis went to Callard’s Dingle, through the spring and summer, there is nothing written in my book saving of my own special concerns, such as the progress I made in reading hard books and the thoughts that came to me in the attic. These, as they had no bearing on the lives of others at that time, are not of any interest, and I will not weary you with them. Gideon went to Callard’s Dingle every Sunday, and worked like three men in between. I ploughed furrow for furrow along of him, and dug spade for spade. Our farm was rich with corn. Never afore or since did I see any fields in our part of the country in such good case, for it was a year of sweet, growing weather, with enough rain to swell the grain and not enough to make it ackerspire. Sunday after Sunday I saw Gideon, on the way to Callard’s, stop and lean over the gate at the top of the sloping meadow, where you could look over the whole place, like a miser with his gold. And now and agen I went with him, and was glad to see such a glowing content in anybody’s face, but a deal more glad since it was Gideon’s, that was seldom what you met call a happy face. When he’d gone striding along, whistling pretty near out loud, I’d sit a while afore going back to Mother. I’d think to myself that when he was wed to Jancis, the corn sold and Fortune knocking at the door, then at long last he’d whistle out loud. I got a great longing to hear that, for it seemed to me an unhealthy sort of thing for folks to whistle or sing or speak to their mommets all the while.

“Come harvest!” I’d think. And I’d begin to dream of being as beautiful as a fairy.

It was a great delight to me, apart from the thought of all this, to look at the standing corn and see it like a great mere under the wind. Times it was still, without a ripple; times it went in little waves, and you could almost think the big bosses of wild onion flowers under the far hedges were lilies heaving gently on the tide; and times there was a great storm down in those hollows, like the storm in Galilee Mere, that the King of Love did still. So I watched the grain week by week, from the time when it was all one green till it began to take colour, turning raddled or abron or pale, each in his kind. And it shone, nights, as if there was a light behind it, with a kind of soft shining like glow-worms or a marish light. I never knew, nor do I know now, why corn shines thus in the nights of July and August, keeping a moonlight of its own even when there is no moon. But it is a marvellous thing to see, when the great hush of full summer and deep night is upon the land, till even the aspen tree, that will ever be gossiping, durstna speak, but holds breath as if she waited for the coming of the Lord. I make no doubt that if any read this book it will seem strange to them that a farm woman should look at the things about her in this wise, and indeed it is not many do. But when you dwell in a house you mislike, you will look out of window a deal more than those that are content with their dwelling. So I, finding my own person and my own life not to my mind, took my pleasure where I could. There were things I waited for as a wench waits for her sweetheart at the edge of the forest. This rippling and shining of the corn was one, and another which came about the time of the beginning of the troubling of the water, was the marvellous sight of the dragon-flies coming out of their bodies. We had a power of dragon-flies at Sarn, of many kinds and colours, little and big. But every one was bound in due season to climb up out of its watery grave and come out of its body with great labour and pain, and a torment like the torment of childbirth, and a rending like the rending of the tomb. And there was no year, since the first time I saw it, that I missed to see this showing forth of God’s power.

I went down by the mere to gather honeysuckle wrathes to bind besoms. And being sad in calling to mind what Miss Dorabella had said, for besoms ever made me think on it, and seeing that the troubling of the water was even now beginning, with a slow gentle simmering all over the mere, I thought I would go to a place I knew where there were always a mort of dragon-flies, and take comfort from seeing them coming out of their bodies. Dragon-fly, I say, because I doubt some wouldna know what our name for them meant. We called the dragon-fly the ether’s mon or ether’s nild at Sarn, for it was supposed that where the adder, or ether, lay hid in the grass, there above hovered the ether’s mon as a warning. One kind, all blue, we called the kingfisher; and another one, with a very thin body, the darning-needle. Mother was used to tell Gideon that if he took dog’s leave or did other mischief the devil would take needle to him and use the dragon-flies to sew up his ears, so he couldna hear the comfortable word of God and would come to damnation. But I could never believe that the devil could have power over such a fair thing as a dragon-fly.

That was the best time of year for our lake, when in the still, hot noons the water looked so kind, being of a calm, pale blue, that you would never think it could drown anybody. All round stood the tall trees, thick-leaved with rich summer green, unstirring, caught in a spell, sending down their coloured shadows into the mere, so that the tree-tops almost met in the middle. From either hand the notes of the small birds that had not yet given up singing went ringing out across the water, and so quiet it was that though they were only such thin songs as those of willow wrens and robins, you could hear them all across the mere. Even on such a burning day as this, when I pulled the honeysuckle wrathes, there was a sweet, cool air from the water, very heady and full of life. For though Sarn was an ill place to live, and in the wintry months a very mournful place, at this one time of the year it left dreaming of sorrow and was as other fair stretches of wood and water. All around the lake stood the tall bulrushes with their stout heads of brown plush, just like a long coat Miss Dorabella had. Within the ring of rushes was another ring of lilies, and at this time of the year they were the most beautiful thing at Sarn, and the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The big bright leaves lay calm upon the water, and calmer yet upon the leaves lay the lilies, white and yellow. When they were buds, they were like white and gold birds sleeping, head under wing, or like summat carven out of glistering stone, or, as I said afore, they were like gouts of pale wax. But when they were come into full blow they wunna like anything but themselves, and they were so lovely you couldna choose but cry to see them. The yellow ones had more of a spread of petals, having five or six apiece, but the white ones opened their four wider and each petal was bigger. These petals are of a glistering white within, like the raiment of those men who stood with Christ upon the mountain top, and without they are stained with tender green, as if they had taken colour from the green shadows in the water. Some of the dragon-flies look like this also, for their lacy wings without other colour are sometimes touched with shifting green.

So the mere was three times ringed about, as if it had been three times put in a spell. First there was the ring of oaks and larches, willows, ollern-trees and beeches, solemn and strong, to keep the world out. Then there was the ring of rushes, sighing thinly, brittle and sparse, but enough, with their long trembling shadows, to keep the spells in.

Then there was the ring of lilies, as I said, lying there as if Jesus, walking upon the water, had laid them down with His cool hands, afore He turned to the multitude saying, “Behold the lilies!” And as if they were not enough to shake your soul, there beneath every lily, white and green or pale gold, was her bright shadow, as it had been her angel. And through the long, untroubled day the lilies and their angels looked one upon the other and were content.

There were plenty of dragon-flies about, both big and little. There were the big blue ones that are so strong they will fly over top of the tallest tree if you fritten them, and there were the tiny thin ones that seem almost too small to be called dragon-flies at all. There were rich blue kingfisher-flies and those we called damsels, coloured and polished in the manner of lustre ware. There were a good few with clear wings of no colour or of faint green, and a tuthree with a powdery look like you see on the leaves of ’rickluses. Some were tawny, like a fitchet cat, some were rusty or coloured like the copper fruit-kettle. Jewels, they made you think of, precious gems such as be listed in the Bible. And the sound of their wings was loud in the air, sharp and whirring, when they had come to themselves after their agony. Whiles, in some mossy bit of clear ground between the trees, they’d sit about like so many cats round the hearth, very contented in themselves, so you could almost think they were washing their faces and purring.

On a tall rush close by the bank I found one just beginning to come out of its body, and I leaned near, pretty well holding my breath, to see the miracle. Already the skin over its bright, flaming eyes was as thin as glass, so that you could see them shining like coloured lamps. In a little, the old skin split, and it got its head out. Then began the wrostling, and the travail to get free, first its legs, then its shoulders and soft wrinkled wings. It was like a creature possessed, seeming to fall into a fit, times, and, times, to be struck stiff as a corpse. Just afore the end, it stayed a long while still, as if it was wondering whether it durst get quite free in a world all new. Then it gave a great heave and a kind of bursting wrench and it was out. It clomb a little way further up the bulrush, very sleepy and tired, like a child after a long day at the fair, and fell into a doze, while its wings began to grow. “Well,” I says, with a bit of a laugh and summat near a bit of a sob, “well, you’ve done it! It’s cost you summat, but you’ve won free. I’m in behopes you’ll have a pleasant time. I suppose this be your Paradise, binna it?”

But of course it couldna make any sign, save to go on growing its wings as fast as might be. So there I stood, with my armful of wrathes, and there it clung, limp on the brown rush, in the golden light that had come upon Sarn like a merciful healer. I was wasting my time, which was deadly sin at our place, and I turned to go. But just as I turned, there was a bit of a rustle, and there stood Kester Woodseaves.

I made to run away, and indeed I’d have jumped into the mere sooner than he should see me. But he put his hand on my shoulder, and for all it was gentle, it was a wrostler’s hand, and not to be said no to.

“What? Oot run away? Why, Prue Sarn?” he said.

I hung my head and wished I was the dragon-fly. I said nought.

I gave a despert pull, but it was no manner use. He only laughed.

“I do think,” he said, in the voice that made its own summer, “that it be a very funny way to treat a chap as comes to thank ye kindly for saving of his life, Prue Sarn, to take off the like of that’n, and try to jump in the lake!”

His hand sent such a throbbing through me that I could scarce stand.

“What were you looking at when I came?” he asked me.

“The damsel fly, coming out of its shroud.”

“Once out,” he says, “they’re out for good. It costs a deal to get free. But once free, they never fold their wings.”

“No,” I said, “and some of ’em go so high, I think, times, they might flitter right into heaven.”

“We’d all like to do that, I’ll be bound, if we could choose our heaven. I’m not very choice of golden streets myself. And I’d like my heaven afore I die.”

“And what ud it be?” I asked him. I was so interested, I declare I’d clean forgot my curse.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” he says, “but come a year, maybe, I’ll know.”

“There’s a long while,” I says, mocking at him, “to be hiver hovering, choosing your bit of paradise.”

“Could you think of yours sooner, Prue Sarn?” says he.

I looked at his green coat, which made him a very personable man, and I fixed on a place on the left side, just betwixt the sleeve of it and the breast of it, where I’d lief lay my head, and I said—

“Ah. I’ve thought of mine.”

“Oh! Well, what is it?”

“I said as I’d thought of it, Mister Woodseaves. But my thoughts be my own.”

He laughed. Then he says—

“You can write a dommed good letter, Prue.”

“They were Gideon’s letters.”

“I take it very kind in Sarn to tell me to change my stockings when they be wet. It inna often you find a man as thinks of such things, and Sarn least of all, I’d have said.”

He let me have the full light of his eyes, and I hung my head and found nothing to answer.

“And the sewing work, and the damson cheese and the pickle at half market price, well, I tell you, it fairly bowled me over, for I’d heard Sarn was a hard man, very near in a bargain, asking nothing and giving nothing. And then for him to offer me those victuals! I must have misjudged the chap cruel.”

But by this I’d remembered that the stockings were in the letter I wrote for Jancis after she ran away. So I said, it was Jancis mentioned stockings.

“Oh, yes, so it was!” he says. “I liked that letter. A very nice girl, that. For whoever wrote the letter, she made it up, of course!”

He looked at me again, and I found nought to say.

“‘I be more choice of him I love than of all else in the world beside!’ That’s a woman worth summat to a fellow,” he went on. “And, ‘I love him past telling, and shall to the end.’ And in especial that about, ‘spend my life any time very willing, and die for you by bite of dog or any way, my dear.’ I liked that. But when I come to think of it, ’twas Sarn said that to Jancis Beguildy. What a lover the man must be. You must be main fond of him, Prue Sarn.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, all in a flush, “I be.”

“Indeed yes, and only what you should be. Good feeling he has too, about the choice of texts, and Jancis the same. For that text, ‘The Maister be come,’ was in the letter Jancis wrote to me, as well as in the one Sarn wrote to Jancis.”

“Only natural,” I said.

“I’m coming to Sarn’s love-carriage, and I’ll be bound to thank him for his kind thoughts about the sewing and the damson cheese and the pickle,” he said.

“Oh, dunna!” I cried out, knowing how angry Gideon would be.

“There’s a grudging girl,” he says, “not wanting her brother to be thanked.”

He had a look of satisfaction on his face, as if he’d found out what he wanted to know.

“Well, it’s no use ifting and anding any more,” he says. “You wrote the letters, and you made ’em up. And all I can say is, the chap you were thinking of when you said the things you did say is a lucky chap, whoever he is.”

“I hanna got an acquaintance.”

“Dear me! That’s pity, to my mind. But anyway, you’ve got a friend. You write in your book, when you go back, that Kester Woodseaves is your friend till Time stops.”

I thanked him very kindly for that, and then he said, should we go and look for some more dragon-flies coming out of their shrouds? So we did, and had a tidy bit of talk, one way or another, about this and that. We watched the dragon-flies take off from the tops of the rushes, and we saw the water simmering in its troubling, and the lilies looking at their angels.

But it was a long time before I remembered to say, how did he know about my book that I wrote in? For it seemed I couldna remember anything very well when he was by.

“Well,” he says, “maybe a bird told me. Or an old ancient woman like a little bird.”

“But how did you get to know all the other things you do seem to know about me?”

“Well,” he said, “there’s a tuthree people know you, Prue. And there’s few know you and dunna love you. And I expect I’ve been leasing in their hearts a bit. And I think there’s not much that I dunna know about you, Prue.”

There was rest in that saying. And oh, the summer in his voice, then and always! I forgot the time and all. Yes, indeed to goodness, I forgot milking time! But when I saw the light of evening long upon the mere, and heard the evening breezes lifting up the leaves in the forest, I turned to go. Then he said—

“There’s a thing I’m bound to ask you.”

He stood looking straight into my eyes, for we were almost of a height, though he was a little the taller.

“What for did you do all you did for me that day at the baiting?” he said. “What for did you stand above me with the knife, and run to Lullingford and all, to save me?”

There was a deep silence, with only the lifting of the summer boughs, the lapping of the quiet water. How was I to answer? Yet he would have an answer, I could see.

Then I thought, seeing the lilies looking at their angels, how I’d called myself Kester’s angel at the baiting.

“Why, it was only that I was your angel for that day,” I said at long last. “A poor daggly angel too.”

“If you’re ever wanting an angel’s situation, you can send to me for a written character,” he said, and though his words were merry, his eyes were as grave as grave could be. And then, as we said good night and I turned home, he called out after me—“Not so daggly, neither!”

And I could hear him laughing in the wood.