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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Greene Ferne Farm, by Richard Jefferies
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Greene Ferne Farm
+
+Author: Richard Jefferies
+
+Release Date: August 12, 2011 [EBook #37046]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREENE FERNE FARM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Greene Ferne Farm
+By Richard Jefferies
+Published by Smith, Elder, & Co, London.
+This edition dated 1880.
+Greene Ferne Farm, by Richard Jefferies.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+GREENE FERNE FARM, BY RICHARD JEFFERIES.
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+"UP TO CHURCH."
+
+"Fine growing marning, you."
+
+"Ay, casualty weather, though."
+
+Ding--ding--dill!  Dill--ding--dill!  This last was the cracked bell of
+the village church ringing "to service."  The speakers were two farmers,
+who, after exchanging greeting, leant against the churchyard wall, and
+looked over, as they had done every fine-weather Sunday this thirty
+years.  So regular was this pressure, that the moss which covered the
+coping-stones elsewhere was absent from the spot where they placed their
+arms.  On the other side of the wall, and on somewhat lower ground, was
+a pigsty, beyond that a cow-yard, then a barn and some ricks.
+"Casualty," used in connection with weather, means uncertain.  Mr
+Hedges, the taller of the two men, stooped a good deal; he wore a suit
+of black, topped, however, by a billycock.  Mr Ruck, very big and
+burly, was shaped something like one of his own mangolds turned
+upside-down: that is to say, as the glance ran over his figure,
+beginning at the head, it had to take in a swelling outline as it
+proceeded lower.  He was clad in a snowy-white smock-frock, breeches and
+gaiters, and glossy beaver hat.
+
+This costume had a hieroglyphic meaning.  The showy smock-frock
+intimated that he had risen from lowly estate, and was proud of the
+fact.  The breeches and gaiters gave him an air of respectable antiquity
+in itself equivalent to a certain standing.  Finally the beaver hat--
+which everybody in the parish knew cost a guinea, and nothing less--
+bespoke the thousand pounds at the bank to which he so frequently
+alluded.
+
+Dill--ding--ding!  Ding--dill--dill!
+
+The sweet spring air breathed softly; the warm sunshine fell on the old
+grey church, whose shadow slowly receded from the tombstones and low
+grassy mounds.  The rounded ridge of the Downs rose high to the south--
+so near that the fleecy clouds sailing up were not visible till they
+slid suddenly into view over the summit.  Tiny toy-like sheep, reduced
+in size by the distance were dotted here and there on the broad slope.
+Over the corn hard by, the larks sprang up and sang at so great a height
+that the motion of their wings could not be distinguished.  The earth
+exhaled a perfume, there was music in the sky, a caress in the breeze.
+Far down in the vale a sheet of water glistened; beyond that the forest
+of trees and hedges became indistinct, and assumed a faint blue tint,
+extending like the sea, till heaven and earth mingled at the hazy
+horizon.
+
+Humph--humph!  The pigs were thrusting their noses into a heap of
+rubbish piled up against the wall, and covered with docks and nettles.
+Mr Hedges leant a little farther over the coping, and with the end of
+his stick rubbed the back of the fattest, producing divers grunts of
+satisfaction.  This operation seemed to give equal pleasure to the man
+and the animal.
+
+"Thirteen score," said Ruck sententiously, referring to the weight of
+the said pig.
+
+"Mebbe a bit more, you,"--two farmers could by no possibility agree on
+the weight of an animal.  "Folk never used to think nothing of a peg
+till a' were nigh on twenty score.  But this generation be nice in
+bacon, and likes a wafer rasher as shrivels up dry without a lick of
+grease."
+
+"It be a spectacle to see the chaps in the Lunnon eating-houses pick
+over their plates," said Ruck.  "Such a waste of good vittels!"
+
+"There'll be a judgment on it some day."  The click of the double
+wicket-gates--double, to keep other people's sheep out and the rector's
+sheep in--now began to sound more frequently, as the congregation
+gathered by twos and threes, coming up the various footpaths that led
+across the fields.  Very few entered the church--most hanging about and
+forming little groups as their acquaintances came up.  The boys stole
+away from their gossiping parents, and got together where a projecting
+buttress and several high square tombs formed a recess and hid their
+proceedings.  A broad sunken slab just there was level with the turf;
+the grass grew over at the edges.  They had scraped away the moss that
+covered it; the inscription had long since disappeared, except the
+figure 7, a remnant of the date.  Something like the chink of coppers on
+stone might have been heard now and then, when there was a lull in their
+chatter.
+
+Dill--dill!
+
+"Squire Thorpe got visitors, yent a'?" asked Hedges, perfectly well
+aware of the fact, but desirous of learning something else, and getting
+at it sideways, as country folk will.
+
+"Aw; that tall fellow, Geoffrey Newton, and Val Browne, as have set up
+the training-stables."
+
+"Warn he'll want some hay?"  This was a leading question, and Hedges
+rubbed away at the pig to appear innocently unconcerned.
+
+"I sold his trainer eighty ton o' clauver," said Ruck.  "A' be a
+gentleman, every inch of un."
+
+"Stiffish price, you?"
+
+"Five pound ten."
+
+Whew!
+
+"Ay, ay; but it be five mile to cart it; and a nation bad road."
+
+"What's that long chap doing at Squire's?  He 'as been to Australia."
+
+"A' be goin' to larn farming."
+
+"Larn farming!"  Intense contempt.
+
+"A' be down to Greene Ferne a' studying pretty often," said Ruck, with a
+wink and a broad grin.
+
+"Wimmen," said Hedges, giving an extra hard scrape at the pig, who
+responded Humph--humph!
+
+"Wimmen," repeated Ruck still more emphatically.
+
+"There be worse thengs about," said a voice behind.  It was the clerk,
+who, having put the rector's surplice ready, had slipped out for a
+minute into the churchyard to communicate a piece of news.  He was a
+little shrivelled old fellow.
+
+"Nash was allus a gay man," said Ruck.
+
+"So was his father afore un," added Hedges.  "It runs in the family."
+
+"Summut in the blood, summut in the blood," said Nash, not to appear to
+value the hereditary propensity too highly.  "Did ee never notice that
+shart men be a'most sure to get on with th' wimmen?  I got summut to
+tell ee."
+
+"What be it?" from both listeners at once.
+
+If the Athenians were eager for something new, those that dwell in the
+fields are ten times more so.
+
+"You knows Mr Valentine Browne as built the new stables?"
+
+"Sartainly."
+
+"He have took my cottage for the trout-fishing."
+
+"Aw!  You calls un Hollyocks, doan't ee?" said Ruck.
+
+"A' bean't very far from Greene Ferne, be a'?" asked Hedges.
+
+"Wimmen," said the clerk meaningly.  "'Pend upon it, it be the wimmen!"
+
+"Lor, here um comes!" said Ruck.
+
+Two young men walked quickly round the tower, coming from the other
+side, down the gravel path past the group, and opening the wicket-gate
+went out into the field.  Nash bowed and scraped, Ruck lifted his
+beaver, but neither seemed to observe these attentions.
+
+"It be the wimmen, and no mistake," said Ruck.  "Thaay be gone to meet
+um.  The Ferne folk be moast sure to come up thuck path this sunny day,
+'stead of driving."
+
+"Marnin', shepherd," said the clerk to a labouring man who had just
+entered the churchyard.  "I was afeared you'd be late.  'Spose you come
+from Upper Furlong.  How's your voice?"
+
+"Aw, featish [fairish].  I zucked a thrush's egg to clear un."
+
+"Arl right, Jabez; mind as you doan't zeng too fast.  It be your fault,
+shepherd, it be your fault."
+
+For Jabez was the leader of the choir.  "Nash!" cried a stern voice, and
+the clerk jumped and tore his hat off at the sound.  "Catch those boys!"
+
+It was Squire Thorpe, whose magisterial eye had at once detected the
+youthful gamblers behind the buttress.  Nash rushed towards them; but
+they had scented the Squire's arrival, and dodged him round the big
+tombstones.  Thorpe turned to the two farmers, who lifted their hats.
+
+"Grass coming on nicely, Hedges," said he.  "Ought to be a good hay
+year."
+
+The Squire was as fond of gossip as any man in the parish; but he was
+rather late that morning; for he had hardly taken his stand by the wall
+when the "dill-dill" of the bell came to a sudden stop.  The two
+gentlemen who had gone out into the field returned at a run.
+
+"Ah, here you are!" said the Squire; and the three walked rapidly to the
+chancel door.
+
+Ruck and Hedges, however, showed no signs of moving.  A low hum arose
+from the hand-organ within; still they leant on the wall, deferring
+action to the last moment.
+
+The sound of voices--the speakers clearly almost out of breath, but none
+the less talking--approached the wicket-gate, and three bonnets appeared
+above the wall there.
+
+"It be the Greene Ferne folk," said Hedges.  "Measter Newton and t'other
+chap was too much in a hurry."
+
+Three ladies--two young and one middle-aged--entered the churchyard.
+The taller of the two girls left the path, and ran to a tomb inclosed
+with low iron railings.  She carried a whole armful of spring flowers,
+gathered in the meadows and copses _en route_, bluebells and cowslips
+chiefly, and threw them broadcast on the grave.
+
+"Miss Margaret don't forget her feyther," said Hedges.
+
+The three, as they passed, nodded smilingly to the two farmers, and went
+into the church.
+
+"May Fisher be allus down at the Estcourts", said Ruck.  "S'pose her
+finds it dull up on the hills with the old man."
+
+"Mrs Estcourt looks well," said Hedges.  "Warn hur'll marry agen some
+day.  Miss Margaret do dress a bit, you."
+
+"Nation gay.  Hur be a upstanding girl, that Margaret Estcourt.  A' got
+a thousand pound under the will."
+
+"And the Greene Ferne Farm when the widder goes."
+
+"Five hundred acres freehold, and them housen in to town."
+
+"A' be a featish-looking girl, you."
+
+"So be May Fisher; but a' bean't such a queen as Mother.  Margaret walks
+as if the parish belonged to her."
+
+"If a' did, her would sell un, and buy a new bonnet.  These yer wimmen!"
+
+The sound of singing came from the open door under the tower hard by.
+
+"Dall'd if it bean't `I will arise.'"
+
+"S'pose us had better go in."  They walked to the tower-door.  It was
+arched and low--so low that to enter it was necessary to stoop, and
+inside the pavement was a step beneath the level of the ground.  Within
+stood the font, and by it some forms against the wall, on which the
+school children left their caps.  There was a space behind the first
+pillar of the side-aisle unoccupied by pews, being dark and not
+affording a view of the pulpit.  Now it was possible to tell the rank of
+the congregation as they entered, by the length of time each kept his
+hat on after getting through the door.  The shepherd or carter took off
+his hat the moment he set his hobnailed boot down on the stone flags
+with a clatter.  The wheelwright, who had a little money and a house of
+his own, wore his hat till he got to the font.  So did the ale-house
+keeper, who had the grace to come to church.  So did the small farmers.
+Ruck, who could write a cheque for a thousand pounds, never removed his
+till he arrived at the step that led down to the side-aisle.  Hedges,
+who was higher in the rank of society, inasmuch as he had been born in
+the purple of farming, kept his on till he reached the first pillar.
+One of the semi-gentlemen-farmers actually walked half-way to his
+pew-door wearing his hat, though the congregation were standing
+listening to Jabez and the choir get through the introductory chant.
+
+Entering from the beautiful sunshine, the church gave the impression of
+a rather superior tomb.  It struck chilly, as if the cold of the last
+five or six centuries had got into it and could not be driven out.  Cold
+rose up from the tombs under the aisles--cold emanated from the walls,
+where slabs spoke of the dead--cold came down from the very roof.
+Whitewashed walls, whitewashed pillars--everything plain, bare, hard.
+The only colour to be seen was furnished by two small stained-glass
+windows, and the faded gilt and paint of the royal arms over the
+chancel; the lion and the unicorn in the middle, and the names of the
+churchwardens who reigned when it was put up on either side.  The pews
+in the centre were modern; those in the side-aisles high, like boxes.
+There might, perhaps, have been forty people in the church altogether--
+all crowded up towards the chancel: the back seats were quite empty.  If
+a modest stranger went into such a back seat, and helped himself to the
+Prayer-book he might find there, the covers came off in his hand, and
+displayed a mass of sawdust-like borings thrown up by the grubs that had
+eaten their way right through the prayer for King William IV.  A
+cheerless edifice--tomb-like; and yet there were some to whom it had
+grown very dear in the passage of years, and others to whom it was
+equally dear because of associations.  So it was that this chilly,
+harsh, repellent place--squat rather than built on the edge of the
+hills--was beloved far more by some of the worshippers therein than
+those grand vaulted cathedrals whose vastness seems to remove them from
+human sympathy.  But how marked the contrast between the sunshine, the
+blue sky, the song of birds, the soft warm air, the green leaf and bud
+without!
+
+Squire Thorpe's pew of black oak occupied one entire side of the
+chancel; the choir and the barrel-organ were together, far down the
+side-aisle.  From the raised dais of the chancel every member of the
+congregation could be discerned with ease.  While the Rev Basil
+Thorpe, cousin of the Squire, "droned in the pulpit," or rather
+reading-desk, the Squire, sitting, kneeling, or standing, surveyed with
+keen glance every nook and corner.  This severe and continuous
+examination did not in the least interfere with his devotions.  Such is
+the dual character of the mind, that he uttered the responses earnestly
+in his sonorous tones, and at the same moment noted the two wenches
+giggling with the plough-boy behind the pillar.  His imagination
+followed the lesson and saw the patriarchal life on the plains of
+Chaldea, while his physical eye watched the grey-haired "fore-father" in
+his blue smock-frock, who, leaning his chin upon his ashen staff, traced
+the words with his horny finger on the book.  The school children sat on
+forms placed endwise down the centre aisle.  He saw one near the top
+stealthily produce an apple, and after taking a bite hand it to the
+next.  All down the row it went, each nibbling in turn, and the final
+receiver putting the core in his pocket.  Such innocent tricks did not
+annoy him in the least--his mind was broad enough to make allowances for
+the little weaknesses of human nature--the one thing that hurt him was
+the empty pews.  He looked to see who was absent.  He knew every
+inhabitant of the parish, and as it were checked them off mentally.  It
+was a process he went through every Sunday with the same depressing
+result.  The church was practically deserted: he hardly dared own to
+himself how small was the percentage that attended.  Now the Squire felt
+no animosity against Bethel Chapel--he was candid enough to own that
+Basil was dull in the pulpit and somewhat mistaken in the tone of his
+intercourse with the poor.  Still, to desert the church was as if a man
+turned his back on his own father, and preferred to sit at a stranger's
+hearth.  He could not help associating it with that general divorce, as
+it were, of the people from authority, the general contempt for property
+and capital, the loss of respect for institutions of all kinds, that is
+so striking a feature of modern English life.  Then his gaze fell on the
+group of three ladies in a high old-fashioned pew, and he marked
+Margaret's bonnet.
+
+"Another," was his thought--"another since last week.  But she is
+singularly handsome, and so like her poor father."  And his gaze grew
+gentle, noting the empty corner of the pew where the stalwart frame of
+his oldest friend had sat till darkness closed the eye of the boldest of
+riders and keenest of shots.  Involuntarily he looked across at the
+marble tablet on the opposite wall of the chancel--set there at his own
+special wish--and read:
+
+  To The Beloved Memory
+  of
+  Warren Estcourt.
+
+The black lettering on the pure white marble grew dim; his eyes became
+misty.  Then came the sorrowful, and yet assured, prayer:
+
+"Make them to be numbered with Thy saints: in glory everlasting."
+
+Rude voices chanted it--voices used to the roaring of the wind in the
+trees and the hiss of the rain on the hill.  Yet as they stood there and
+gave forth the old, old words that have been linked with human fate so
+many centuries, there came a meaning through the hoarse harsh notes.
+
+A tear fell on the broad yellow page of the old Prayer-book the Squire
+held so closely to his face.  This was why the low grey church was so
+dear to him; it was full of the past.  Shadowy forms hid behind the
+pillars; faces looked down from the worm-eaten rafters; bright and yet
+quick-fading groups of other days appeared through the greenish-yellow
+panes of the windows.
+
+"I am an old fool," he said to himself.  "If these young fellows see me,
+they will laugh."
+
+But the young fellows by his side were otherwise engaged.  They too had
+noted the extravagant bonnet; but their thoughts went no farther than
+the face beneath it.  The old man thought of the father; the young men
+of the living daughter.  But, indeed, Margaret Estcourt could not but be
+observed, standing so manifestly apart from, and yet among, that simple
+congregation.  A single flower in a gloomy room will sometimes light it
+up as with a glory--the eye instantly rests upon it; a single violet
+will fill the place with perfume.  She was the violet in that ancient
+building.  Yet there was nothing extraordinary about her--no marvellous
+hyacinthine or golden tresses, no burning eye flashing with southern
+passion.  She was simply very near the ideal of a fair young English
+girl, in the full glow of youth and with all its exquisite bloom.
+Perhaps at the first glance the beautiful pose of the tall and graceful
+figure seemed her most distinctive characteristic.  The slight form of
+May Fisher brought her still more into relief.
+
+So to the young men in the chancel pew the old grey church began to grow
+very dear, and the first part of the service slipped by speedily,
+despite Basil's droning.  Then the choir gave out a hymn with all their
+might, sturdily drowning the organ, stimulated to an extra effort by the
+presence of visitors in the Squire's pew.  Jabez the shepherd sang like
+a giant refreshed with wine, and got through four verses magnificently.
+But in the triumph of the moment he forgot the clerk's warning not to
+"zeng too fast."  The verse finished with the word "Jacob:" Jabez
+unfortunately got a little in advance of the time, and desperately
+struggling to lengthen it out, an ale-house chorus slipped from his
+tongue: "Ja-aa-fol-de-rol-cob!"
+
+When Basil went up into the pulpit the Squire quietly folded a silk
+handkerchief as a cushion to protect the back of his head from the hard
+oak of the pew, and slumbered peacefully till at the Rector's "Fifthly,
+and in conclusion," the stir of relief that ran through the congregation
+awoke him, as it usually did.  Thorpe waited in the churchyard for Mrs
+Estcourt, and walked with her as far as the wicket-gate, his own
+carriage waiting at the road entrance.  There at the wicket the group
+paused a moment on the edge of the green fields.  The sweetness of the
+air coming from the Downs, after the close and yet chilly atmosphere of
+the church, was in itself an exquisite pleasure.  The larks still sang,
+the sun still shone, and the clouds came over the hill.  Yet there was
+something more beautiful still in the mantling colour of Margaret's soft
+check.  Youth and love--youth and love and May-time!
+
+Cuckoo--cuckoo! from the bird on the elm below the hill.
+
+"O, look!" said Mrs Estcourt, suddenly, in some alarm, yet laughing.
+"My poor shepherd"--for Jabez worked for her.  Wildly he fled over
+grassy grave and tombstone, chased by a mob of smock-frocks and boys
+yelling "Fol-de-rol-cob!" at his heels, till, reaching the wall, he
+leaped, hitched his toe in the coping, and fell prone among the docks
+and nettles and pigs.
+
+The Squire laughed heartily.  By-and-by, as he leaned back in his
+carriage, the thought came into his mind that this was human life in
+little.  First, pathos in the memory of his old friend; next, love--for
+he shrewdly suspected Geoffrey and Val--and beside that love the grim
+tomb and sad low mound; finally, the grotesque.  Wherefore the old
+monks, seeing that all life came to the church in their day, carved
+fantastic faces on the gargoyles grinning down, sneering and mocking at
+it.  And even sweet young love brought its regret.  "For," thought he to
+himself, as he narrowly scanned the faces of the young men sitting
+opposite, "I fancy I detect a coldness and distance already between
+these boys, who used to be more than brothers.  Margaret has come
+between them."
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+"THE SWEET NEW GRASS WITH FLOWERS."
+
+Baa--baa!  A long-drawn pettish bleating that sometimes sounded absurdly
+like the "Ma--ma!" of a spoilt child.  The lambs gambolled in the genial
+sunshine over the daisies; the ewes, arrived at the age of common sense,
+fed steadily on the young sweet grass, and did not notice the flowers.
+
+Geoffrey Newton looked at them from the other side of the hedge, where
+indeed he had no business to be.  He had carelessly wandered in a
+day-dream from the footpath, and was now in the midst of mowing-grass,
+to walk in which is against the unwritten laws of country life, because
+when trampled down it is difficult to mow.  Yet there is a great
+pleasure in pushing through it, tall grasses and bennets and sorrel
+stems reaching to the knee--the very dogs delight in it.  See a spaniel
+just let loose; how he circles round, plunging over it!--visible as he
+bounds up, lost to sight next moment in the matted mass; the higher it
+is the more he likes it.
+
+Baa--maa!
+
+"For how many thousand years have the lambs been happy in the
+spring-tide?" thought Geoffrey.  "And yet it is said that the world is
+growing old!  Nature is always young.  Earth was never younger than she
+is to-day.  Goethe was right there:"
+
+  Thy works sublime are now as bright
+  As on creation's day they rose.
+
+"If we could only somehow translate that eternal youth into our own
+lives--if!  The dew still lingers here in the shade.  How slumberous it
+is even in the morning!  Unseen lotos-flowers bloom in the spring, and
+the odour makes us drowsy."
+
+His eyelids fell as he walked on, and his slow steps led him whither
+they would.
+
+When a thoughtful man feels an overpowering love--a great passion rising
+within him--his ideal often becomes a kind of judge.  All the creed of
+life that has grown up in the mind is passed in review: will the
+half-formed scepticism, the firm dogma, the theory, stand before the new
+light thrown upon them by the love that is in itself a faith?
+
+So he dreamed of Margaret, and saw and did not see the beauty around
+him.  His feet, sinking into the soft green carpet, were dusted over
+with the yellow pollen of the buttercups.  The young shoot of the
+bramble projecting from the bush caught at his sleeve; but the weak
+tender prickles, not yet hardened into thorns, gave way, and did not
+hold.  Slender oval leaves on a drooping willow-bough lightly brushed
+without awaking him.  The thrush on her nest sat still, seeing with the
+intuition of a wild creature that no harm threatened her.  Finches sang
+on the boughs above, and scarcely moved as he passed under.
+
+"Crake--crake!" from the thickest of the grass where the bird crept
+concealed.  Butterflies fluttered from flower to flower in their curious
+sidelong way.  Every branch and bush and blade of grass--the air above
+where the swallow floated, the furrow in the earth where the mice ran--
+all instinct with life; the glamour of the sunshine filling the field
+with a magic spell.
+
+A little brook slipped away without a sound past the tall green rushes
+and the water-plantains and the grey chequered grass that lifts its
+spear-like points in moist places; a swift shallow streamlet winding
+through the meadow, its clear surface almost flush with the sward.  Now
+running water draws a dreamer; so he followed it across the mead, past
+the footpath and the stepping-stone that had sunk into the stream: past
+the dark-green bunches of the marsh marigolds, whose broad golden petals
+open under the harsh winds of early spring, and not far from the
+peewit's nest; for she rose and flew round him, calling plaintively, her
+pure white breast almost within reach, till finding that her treasure
+was unheeded, she slowly dropped behind: past the dog-violets, blue but
+not sweet, that looked up more boldly than their forerunners, whose
+modest heads had scarce appeared above the dead leaves on the bank.
+Yonder the roan cattle were feeding; and in the midst stood an ancient,
+gnarled, and many-twisted hawthorn, whose bark had become as iron under
+the fierce heats and fiercer storms of years; yet its branches were
+green, and crowned with the may--white virgin may-bloom scenting the
+air--and under its shadow a young heifer meditated.  Past hollow
+willows, till presently the turf beneath grew soft and yielding as
+velvet, his foot sinking into the pile of the moss, and the shade of
+trees fell on him, where the bank of the brook became steep, and low
+down in its bed it rushed into the wood.
+
+After awhile oak and elm gave place to black and gloomy firs that hung
+over and darkened the water.  Large flecks of grey lichen clung to them,
+and from above a red squirrel peered down.  Here the thick branches
+forced his steps aside from the stream, and out among the ashpoles where
+the wood-pigeons built their nests, and: in the strength of their love
+looked down upon him fearlessly from their feeble platforms of twigs.
+Under an ash-stole he saw a rare plant growing, and stooped and went on
+his knees to reach it, and so pushed aside the thick boughs, and, as it
+were, looked through a screen, and his heart gave a great bound.
+
+There was a narrow space clear of wood, where a green footpath little
+used went by, and a large, gnarled, crooked-grown ash-stole opposite,
+forming a natural arm-chair, well lined with soft dry moss, and canopied
+overhead with leafy branches, drooping woodbine, and climbing briar,
+whose roses would soon bloom.  The brake fern, young yet and tender,
+rose up and gave itself for her footstool--for Margaret sat there,
+leaning back luxuriously in her woodland throne.  He thought she must
+have heard the rustling of the boughs he had parted, and kept still as
+an Indian hunter, holding his breath for fear lest she should see him
+thus spying.  A minute passed, and there was no motion; then he saw that
+her right arm hung down listlessly--that the head leaned a little to one
+side, the face rather away from him--that her hat had evidently dropped
+from her hand, and an open book had fallen at her feet.  She was
+slumbering.
+
+His chest pressed on the green fern, bluebells hung over his feet.
+
+"Coo-coo-oo!" the dove with burnished neck called gently to his mate,
+sitting on the ivied tree.
+
+"Jug-jug-jug!" sang the nightingale hard by in the hawthorn--the
+nightingale that by night is sad, but whose heart is full of joy in the
+morning.  The goldfinches swept by overhead with a gleam of colour from
+their wings, coquetting on their way to the apple-trees.
+
+The sun looked on the world with glorious eye.  A ray, warm, but yet not
+fiercely so, fell aslant between the leaves of the great oak boughs
+above, and lit up one delicate ear--small, white, with pink within, as
+in the shell the cameo-cutter graves with his tool; or rather, pink like
+the apple-bloom, that loveliest of flowers--for as a blossom it peeped
+forth beneath her brown wavy hair.  Her lips were slightly parted: "Thy
+teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from
+the washing."  For their backs are level and white, and glisten with the
+water.  The highly-arched eyebrows did not meet above the straight nose,
+but left a space there.  In some old magic-book he had read that this
+space was the peculiar precinct of the Queen of Love.  A briar had
+jealously snatched at the loose sleeve of the right arm, which hung
+down, baring the wrist--a round, soft, white arm, veined with blue, an
+exquisite polish on the skin.  The fingers were long and slightly rosy;
+from them a few flowers had dropped on the open page of the book.
+
+So still was he that a weasel came along the green path, his neck erect
+like a snake in the grass, stopped, looked him straight in the eyes, and
+went by without fear.  He gazed, rapt in the devotion of the artist,
+till a sense came over him like that feeling which the Greeks embodied
+in the punishment that fell on those who looked unbidden upon the
+Immortals.  It was the strength and the perfect purity of the passion
+that held him there that also impelled him to withdraw.  Slowly he
+worked his way backwards noiselessly, till, sufficiently far away, he
+rose to his feet, and hesitated.
+
+Then he made a detour, and stepped into the green footpath thirty or
+forty yards distant from her throne, and began to make a noise as he
+approached her.  He rustled the fern with his foot; he seized a branch
+and forcibly snapped it, causing a sharp crack.  A woodpecker, startled,
+flew off with a discordant "Yuckle!" the dove ceased to coo; the brown
+nightingale was silent, and sought a distant hazel-thicket.  He lifted
+his voice and sang--he had a naturally fine voice--a verse of the dear
+old ballad, his favourite:
+
+  "If she be dead, then take my horse,
+  My saddle and bridle also;
+  For I will unto some far country,
+  Where no man shall me know."
+
+Off came his hat--she had risen and faced him, blushing faintly.  Her
+deep grey eyes looked down, and the long eyelashes drooped over them, as
+she held out her hand.
+
+"I was coming to Greene Ferne," said he, "and lost my way in the copse."
+
+"You must have gone a long way round."
+
+"Never mind--my instinct guided me right;" then, seeing that the meaning
+he expressed behind the words still further confused her, he added, "It
+was quite accidental."
+
+Now Margaret had roamed out into the fields under the influence of a
+dawning feeling, which as yet she hardly admitted to herself, but which
+seemed to desire solitude.  And he had surprised her dreaming of him.
+So she walked silently before him--the path was narrow--glad that, he
+could not see her face, leading the way to the farm.  Outside the copse
+he came to her side, ruthlessly trampling down the mowing-grass again.
+There was a slight movement among the cattle in the next field, and they
+saw several persons approaching.  They were May Fisher, Valentine
+Browne, the Rev Felix St Bees, and a tall, ill-dressed, shambling
+fellow hanging in the rear, whom they called Augustus.  Instantly the
+thought occurred to Margaret that they would at once conclude her
+meeting with Geoffrey was prearranged.
+
+"We were coming to find you," said May.  "We have lost you all the
+morning."
+
+Valentine looked sharply from one to the other, jealously suspicious,
+and barely acknowledged Geof's greeting.  So Felix and he fell into the
+rear, Margaret went on with May, and Valentine accompanied them.
+
+St Bees, a little quick-mannered man, was one of that noble band who
+may be said to give their lives for others.  With ample private means,
+he accepted and remained in the curacy of Kingsbury, the stipend paid
+for which was nominal.  Many of the workmen in the town walked in daily
+from the villages, and Felix visited them at their homes; frequently
+preaching, too, for Basil Thorpe at Millbourne, the village of which
+Greene Ferne was a tithing or small hamlet.  He and Newton were old
+friends--his own love for May no secret.  Augustus Basset was a specimen
+of humanity not uncommonly seen on large farms--the last stray relic of
+a good family, half bailiff, half hanger-on, half keeper, half poacher,
+and never wholly anything except intoxicated.  An old soldier (he had
+served as a trooper in the Guards), his appetite for tobacco was
+insatiable, and as he walked he mumbled to himself, louder and louder,
+till by-and-by gaining courage he asked Geoffrey for a cigar.  Newton at
+once handed him his case, when Mrs Estcourt, coming out from the house,
+and detecting this piece of begging, told him to go and see about
+engaging some mowers, who would soon be required.
+
+"There ain't no mowers to be got," grumbled Augustus, as he shambled
+off.  "If you don't look out, you won't have a man on the farm; there'll
+be a strike.  Just as if a man couldn't be trusted in the cellar, her
+keeps the key in her pocket!"  Intense disgust.
+
+They had some lunch at the farm; then Geoffrey and Valentine, feeling
+that they had no excuse for remaining longer, left together.  But three
+fields distant, Valentine remarked that he must go down and see to his
+cottage, simply an excuse to part company.  So each pursued his way
+alone.
+
+Passing into the highway road that ran through the hamlet, Valentine, as
+he went by the Spotted Cow, a small wayside inn, saw Ruck and Hedges
+sitting with others outside, enjoying a pipe and gossip under the elm
+from which the sign was hung.  On the rude table before them stood some
+mugs.  Valentine beckoned to Ruck, who came.
+
+"Have you sent up the clover?"
+
+"Eez, eez."
+
+"And the oats?"
+
+"Thaay be goin' up this arternoon, sir."
+
+"My trainer said your last hay was not so good."
+
+"Did a'?  Then he doan't knaw good clauver when a' sees it.  This be
+vine tackle, I can tell ee."
+
+"Well, I hope it is.  Good day."
+
+"A' be terrable sharp about his osses," said the old man, when he got
+back to his seat; "but I thenks zumtimes as thur be volk that be sharper
+than he."
+
+"Who do ee mean?" asked his crony, Farmer Hedges.
+
+"Aw, we shall zee.  I've got half a mind to tell un; but he won't take
+no notiss of such as we."
+
+"Not a mossel of use," said Hedges sententiously.  "These yer quality be
+such a akkerd lot;" and he knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the
+iron-bound edge of the trestle-table.  The object of this armour was to
+prevent the labourers sticking their billhooks into it when they called
+for a quart, for hedge-cutters are apt to strike their tools into the
+nearest piece of wood when they want their hands free.  Having filled
+the pipe again, and finding he had no match, he stepped into the
+inn-kitchen to light it at the fire, and instantly noticed a large
+red-hot nail in a log of burning wood.
+
+"Missis, missis!"  The landlady came running.  "Look ee thur--thur's a
+crooked nail in thuck log.  Draw un out--doan't ee waste un.  Nails be
+amazin' useful thengs."
+
+"Zo um be," said Farmer Ruck.  "Volk used to save um.  I knowed them as
+had a gallon measure full of hoss-stubs: thaay be the toughest iron, and
+makes the vinest gun-barrels."
+
+"Them cut nails be as rotten as matchwood," said Bill the
+"wunt-catcher," i.e. mole-catcher, throwing down his wooden traps.
+"Time o' day to ee, missus;" nodding to her over the mug, and meaning
+good health.  "The vinest gun as ever you seed wur thuck long un up to
+Warren.  Mebbe you minds Kippur Mathew?"
+
+"I minds un," said Farmer Ruck.
+
+"Thuck gun would kill your chain.  Thur wur a hole in the barrel as yer
+med put yer vinger in.  Mathew, he squints along at the geame, and I
+holds a dock-leaf auver this yer hole, and he lets vly, and kills half a
+score o' quests," [wood-pigeons].
+
+[This expedient of the dock-leaf over a crack in the barrel was actually
+put in practice.]
+
+"A' wur a chap to fiddle," said Hedges.  "A' made hisself a fiddle out
+o' thuck maple as growed in Little Furlong hedge.  Hulloa, Pistol-legs!"
+
+This was addressed to an aged man who had crawled up on two sticks.  His
+legs, bent outwards--curved like the butt of a pistol--had obtained him
+this nickname.
+
+"Nation dry weather," said the ancient, lifting his head with some
+difficulty.  "Gie me a drap."
+
+A labourer leaning against the elm handed him his quart.
+
+"Ay, ay; thur bean't no such ale as thur used to be;"--after he had
+taken his fill.
+
+"I say, Gaffer," said another fellow, a carter, who had left his horses
+by the drinking-trough--"I say, Gaffer Pistol-legs, how old bist thee?"
+
+"Aw," said the patriarch, shaking his head, "I be amazin' old, I be.  I
+be vourscore and five year come Christmas."
+
+"Warn you minds a main deal?"
+
+"I minds when the new water-wheel wur put in Fisher's mill."
+
+"When wur thuck?"
+
+"Aw, about dree-score year ago."
+
+"Anything else, Gaffer?"
+
+"Eez; I minds when your grandfeyther wur put in the stocks."
+
+"Ha, ha! and after all your 'sperience, Pistol-legs, what do ee think be
+the best theng of all?" said Hedges.
+
+"Aw," said the ancient, picking up his sticks, and delivering his
+philosophy of the _summum bonum_ with intense gusto.  "The vinest theng
+of all be a horn o' ale and a lardy-cake!"
+
+"S'pose I must be gettin' on," said Hedges presently, and stuffing some
+hay, which had worked out, into his boot again--for he used hay instead
+of stockings--he got up, and with Ruck walked down the road.
+
+"A pair of skinvlints," said the wunt-catcher, looking after them.  "One
+night up to West Farm they was settling a dealing job between um.  Zo
+thur wur a fire, for the snow wur on the ground.  Ruck he says, `A fire
+be a terrable waste, you.  Let's put he out.'  Zo they doughted the
+fire, and both got their feet thegither in a zack."
+
+By a stile the two farmers thus careful of their fuel were gossiping
+before parting.  "Tell ee what," said Ruck, in a mysterious tone; "this
+here dark hoss as Val Browne be training for the autumn yent no go.  He
+doan't know, and it bean't no good to tell un--these yer quality be so
+uppish.  But thur be a screw loose somewhere; his trainer be a bad un.
+Doan't ee put a crownd on un."
+
+"Aw, to be zure," said Hedges.  "That there Guss Basset will catch it
+zum ov these yer days.  Squire's kippur says a' be allus in th' wood
+a-poaching."
+
+Then they parted, and a curious sight it was.  First one would go a few
+paces, and then stop and talk, and presently come back to the stile
+again.  Then both would walk away, and turn when ten yards distant and
+gossip, till by degrees they met at the stile once more.  Not till this
+process had been repeated at least five times did they finally separate.
+
+Later in the afternoon Geoffrey strolled out from Thorpe Hall into the
+park, and sat down under the shade of a huge beech-tree, on the verge of
+the wood, whence he could just see the roof of Greene Ferne in the
+meadows far below.  There he reclined and pondered--"Where thy treasure
+is, there will thy heart be also."
+
+"Tu-whit--tu-what!" came the sound of a scythe being sharpened in a mead
+below.
+
+Presently he became aware of a heavy footstep approaching; the massive
+trunk of the beech hid him from sight.  It was a milker going to the
+pen.  Geoffrey heard him turn his bucket bottom upwards and sit down
+upon it.
+
+"Danged ef it bean't vour, I knaws," he muttered.  "The sun's over
+Kingsbury steeple.  Wurs Rause (Rose): bean't hur a-coming?"
+
+Then he began to sing, as milkers do to their cows.
+
+"Thee's got a voice like a wood-pigeon," said a woman whom Geoffrey
+heard get over the gate at the corner of the wood.  "Thee mumbles,
+Tummas, like a dumble-dore in a pitcher!"
+
+Geoffrey peeped round the tree, and saw a stout girl in short
+petticoats, corduroy gaiters, brown hair, and dark eyes.
+
+_Tummas_: Doan't thee say nought: I hearn thee in church like a charm o'
+starlings.
+
+_Rause_: Thee go on to milking.
+
+_Tummas_: I wunt.  Come and zet on my knee.
+
+_Rause_: I'll zee thee in the pond vust with thee gurt vetlocks
+uppermost.
+
+_Tummas_: Aw, wooll ee?
+
+_Rause_: Eez, ee wooll.
+
+_Tummas_: Bist a-goin to haymaking to year?
+
+_Rause_: Eez, in the Voremeads to-morrer.
+
+_Tummas_: Zum on um means to gie out and axe for a crownd more.  Gwain
+to strike, doan't ee zee?
+
+_Rause_: A passel o' fools.
+
+_Tummas_: Arl on um ull join.  They be going to begin at Mrs Estcourt's
+vust down to Greene Ferne.  Her be sure to gie in to um, cos her's a
+'ooman.
+
+_Rause_: Odd drot um!
+
+_Tummas_: I zay, Rause.
+
+_Rause_: Eez, you.
+
+_Tummas_: When be we a-goin to do it?
+
+_Rause_: What dost mean?
+
+_Tummas_: Up to church.
+
+_Rause_: Thee axe Bob vust--he'll mash thee.
+
+_Tummas_: I'll warm his jacket ef he puts a vinger on ee.  Let's go up
+to paason.
+
+_Rause_: Get on with thee.
+
+Geoffrey heard a sound of struggling and two or three resonant kisses.
+
+_Tummas_: Wooll ee come?
+
+_Rause_: Go on whoam with thee.
+
+_Tummas_: Danged ef I'll stand it!  I wunt axe thee no more!  Look ee
+here!
+
+_Rause_: What's want?
+
+_Tummas_: Woot, or wootn't?
+
+Off went Rause at a run, and Tummas clattering after.  Thought the
+listener, "Was ever the important question put in straighter terms?
+Woot, or wootn't?  Will you, or won't you?"
+
+Tu-whit--tu-what!  Steadily the scythe was swung, and the swathe fell in
+rows behind it.
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+THE NETHER MILLSTONE.
+
+The huge water-wheel in the mill by Warren House went slowly round and
+round, grinding the corn.  The ancient walls of the mill trembled under
+the ponderous motion, trembled but stood firm, as they had for
+centuries; so well did the monks see that their workmen mixed their
+mortar and dressed their stone in the days of the old world.  A dull
+rumbling sound came from the chinks in the boarding that sheltered the
+wheel from the weather; a sound that could only be caused by an enormous
+mass in movement.  Looking through into the semi-darkness, a heaving
+monster, black and direful, rolled continually past, threatening, as it
+seemed, to crush the life out of those who ventured within reach, as the
+stones within crushed form and shape out of the yellow wheat--the
+individual grain ground into the general powder.  Yet the helpless corn
+by degrees wore away the solid adamant of its oppressor.  Under the
+bowed apple-tree, clothed with moss, hard by, stood a millstone, grey
+and discoloured by the weather, thus rendered useless by the very corn
+it had so relentlessly annihilated.
+
+Old Andrew Fisher sat at the mullioned western window of the house that
+stood higher up above the mill-pond, listening drowsily to the distant
+clack of the hopper.  The mill, the manor-house, and many hundred fair
+acres of meadow and ploughed land and sheep-walk on the Down behind were
+his, and had been his forefathers' down from the days of the last Harry.
+More than one fair fortune had the mill ground out for them in the
+generations past; money--accumulated coin by coin, like the grains that
+together fill the bushel--accumulated by one and dissipated by the next.
+If report spoke truly, still another fortune had slowly piled itself up
+in Andrew's withered hand--weak in its grasp on his staff, but firm in
+its grasp on gold.  Rich as he was known to be, he lived in the rude old
+way, spoke in the old rude tongue, and seemingly thought the old rude
+thought.  His beehive chair was drawn up close to the open window, so
+that the light air of the hot summer afternoon might wander in and
+refresh him.
+
+High up in the cloudless azure, the swift, extending his wings like a
+black crescent, slid to and fro; the swallows, mere white specks in the
+dizzy blue, wheeled in ceaseless circles.
+
+For ninety seasons, as man and boy--for three generations of thirty
+years each--had Andrew looked from that window.  There he played in his
+childhood; there he rested from his labours in the time of manhood;
+there he sat in his old age.  The deep gashes he had made with his first
+boy's clasp-knife still showed in the edge of the oaken window-seat.
+They were cut when the First Napoleon was winning his earlier victories.
+There on the seat he had drummed with his knuckles--one heavy knock
+with the left hand, then two with the right in quick succession, and an
+inch apart on the board to change the sound, imitating the noise of the
+mill.  Thence he had noted the changing seasons and the cycle of the
+years.
+
+Ninety times the snowdrop had hung her white flower under the sheltering
+wall.  For ninety springs the corncrake's monotonous cry had resounded
+in the mowing-grass.  The cuckoo came and went; the swallows sailed for
+the golden sands of the south; the leaves, brown and orange and crimson,
+dropped and died; the plover whistled over the uplands; the rain beat
+with pitiless fury against the pane, and swept before the howling blast
+along the fallow, ninety times.
+
+Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of Andrew Fisher.  The
+green buds of spring, the flowers of summer, the fruits of autumn, the
+dead leaves of winter--all the beauty and the glory of nigh on a century
+touched him not.  Unchanged at heart still, like the everlasting hills
+around him.  But even they bear flowers--ling, loved by the bees, and
+thyme.
+
+As flower and bird and leaf came and went, so the strong men with whom
+he had battled in his rude youth flitted away one by one to the meads of
+asphodel, but did not return in the spring.  The carter whom he had
+partly blinded by a blow from his whip-handle, which injured an eyeball;
+the plough-boy he rode over and lamed; the fogger whose leg he broke
+with a kick in the old, old days, when brute force ruled irresponsibly
+on the wild hills--they slept peacefully under the greensward and the
+daisy.  No more their weary bones would ache in the rain and snow; no
+more their teeth would grind the hard crust of toil.  So, too, the old
+boon companions dropped away.  Squire Thorpe--not the present, but the
+ancient one of evil days, wild and headstrong--was still enough at last
+in the vault under the chancel.  He could swear and drink no more, nor
+fight a main of cocks every Sunday afternoon on his dining-room table.
+With his horny stiffened fingers Andrew could count up the houses in the
+hamlet at the Warren; there was not one that the hearse had not emptied.
+The hamlet of his youth had passed away.  It is the aged that should
+see ghosts; there should be a spectre in every chair.  The big black
+horse that carried him in the mad steeplechase at Millbourne--still
+talked of by the country-side--and in many a run with the Hunt in the
+vale, lay eight feet deep in the garden, and a damson-tree had grown
+over him.
+
+Ninety times; and the scythe was busy in the grass, and the corn would
+soon turn colour yet once more.
+
+Peggy was dead too--nut-brown Peggy, with her sloe-black eyes,
+_retroussee_ nose, and mischievous mouth, who had reaped and gleaned and
+garnered her master's evil passion among convolvulus and poppy.  Sweet
+Peggy, cast aside like the threshed-out straw, crushed, and broken, the
+light gone out in her eye, had forgotten her misery now the yew dropped
+its red berries on her resting-place.  Fifty guineas, a heavy bribe in
+those days, the bailiff took to marry her.  What a ghastly farce was
+celebrated that morn before God's holy altar!  But the vicar's bulbous
+lips, that uttered those solemn words and jested, shall dip no more in
+the rosy wine they loved.  He broke his neck when his horse fell at the
+double mound; but Andrew lives still.  Peggy's boy, chained to the
+plough like a born serf, but full of his real father's fiery spirit,
+poached and stole, and worse, and at last laid his bones in the
+Australian gold rush.
+
+Ninety times; and yet once more the wheat came on apace.
+
+And Annica, Andrew's wife, cursed and beaten and bruised; and Andrew the
+younger, his lawful son, and Alice _his_ wife, who were treated as dogs,
+and wore out their lives up at the farmstead farther in the hills: in
+Millbourne churchyard the moss has grown over their names graven on the
+sides of the great square tomb.  May, their child, alone lived, a blithe
+and gentle creature, dreading her grim grandfather, only breathing
+freely when she could get away down to Greene Ferne, yet trying and
+schooling herself to love him; but hating Jane, the old snuff-taking
+housekeeper, as intensely as so affectionate a nature could hate
+anything.
+
+Yet once more the swallows were wheeling in the summer air.
+
+On the keystone of the porch was chiselled Anno 15--; the other figures
+effaced, but cut some time in the century that saw the Armada.  A vast,
+rambling, many-gabled, red-tiled building, with vines and cherries
+trained against the grey walls, and honeysuckle creeping about the
+porch.  The steep Downs rose behind, barely a gunshot distant; from
+Andrew's window there was an open view of the vale.  The pool almost
+surrounded the garden--part moat, part fishpond, part mill-pool--and was
+crossed by a wooden bridge.  There the moorhens swam and threw up their
+white-marked tails as they thrust their beaks under water; the timid
+dab-chick, which no familiarity with man can reassure, dived at the
+faintest footstep; the pike basked in the sunshine warming his cold
+blood, and the sturdy perch with tremulous tail faced the slow stream.
+By the stones of the sluice dark-green ferns flourished exceedingly.
+The sheep crept along the steep coombe-side cropping the short sweet
+grass; the shepherd sat on the edge and cut his own and his sweetheart's
+name in the turf.  Time was when Andrew could run up the hill there
+light as a hare.  Now his slow walk, hard bearing on blackthorn staff,
+in summer went no farther than the green before the porch, where the
+sundial stood with the motto on its brazen face, bidding men to number
+none but the happy hours, and to forget the dark and shadowy--a bitter
+mockery at fourscore and ten.  In winter he crept twice or thrice a day
+across the courtyard to the barn, where, despite steam, he kept three
+old men at work on the threshing-floor--not for charity, but because he
+liked to listen to the knock-knock of the flails.
+
+Ever round and round, without haste and without rest, went the massive
+wheel in the mill--ceaseless as the revolving firmament--to the clack of
+the noisy hopper and creak of the iron gudgeons, and the flousing splash
+of the mill-race.  Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of
+Andrew Fisher: does time soften the gnarled stem of the oak?
+
+So he sat by the open window in his beehive chair that summer afternoon
+drowsily listening to the mill.  In the window was the escutcheon of his
+family in coloured glass, and the name "Fischere" in old-fashioned
+letters.  Fishere of the Warren was fined one hundred pounds as a noted
+malignant in the days of fear and trembling that followed Worcester
+fight.
+
+The shadow stole forward on the dial, and there came the dull hollow
+sound of horse's hoofs passing over the wooden bridge.  Presently Jane
+the housekeeper, who, by virtue of her necessity to him in his
+infirmities, used no ceremony nor courtesy of speech, came in.
+
+"There be a paason wants to see thee," said she.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Dost hear?"
+
+A grunt.
+
+"Wake up!"--shaking him.
+
+He struck at her with his blackthorn that ever lay between his knees.
+
+"Thee nistn't hoopy at I--I can hyar as well as thee," he growled.
+
+"A paason wants to see thee."
+
+"Axe un in."
+
+"Come in, you!" shouted the old hag, without going to the door.  "Shall
+I put thee jug away?"  This to Andrew, and meaning the jug of weak
+gin-and-water which he kept constantly by him to sip.
+
+"Let un bide."
+
+Felix St Bees came into the room.  He had ridden up to ask for the hand
+of May, his darling.  It was not a reception to encourage a lover.
+
+"Good afternoon, sir," said Felix.
+
+"Arternoon to ee."  To Jane, "Who be it?"
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"What's your wull wi' I?"
+
+"I want a little private conversation with you, sir."
+
+"Get out, you!" to the ancient hag, who reluctantly walked from the
+room, but left the door ajar.
+
+"Wull ee shut the door?"
+
+Felix went and closed it.  "This is a fine old house," he began, trying
+to get _en rapport_ before opening his mission.
+
+"Aw, eez."
+
+"And a beautiful view."
+
+"Mebbe."
+
+"You have had great experience of life, sir."
+
+"Likely zo."
+
+Andrew had had a good education in his youth, but lapsed two generations
+ago into broad provincialism.  Now it had got about (as such things
+will) that Andrew was backing Val Browne's dark horse heavily, and May
+was anxious about her grandfather's intercourse with the trainer, who,
+except in his employer's eyes, was far from perfect.  She dreaded lest
+he should be cheated and lose the money--not so much for the sake of the
+amount, but because at his age and with his terrible temper it was
+impossible to say what effect it might have upon his health.  So Felix,
+as a clergyman, wished to warn the aged man; but a little nervous (as
+might be pardoned under the circumstances) he did not, perhaps, go about
+it the right way.
+
+"And you have seen, sir, how uncertain everything is--even the crops."
+
+"Wheat be vine to year."
+
+"Well, even your mill-wheel stops sometimes from accidents, I suppose."
+
+"Aw, a' reckon ull last my time.  Wull ee drenk?"
+
+"No, thank you.  The fact is I'm anxious to warn you about betting on
+Mr Browne's horse.  _He_ is upright--but--"
+
+"Hum!"
+
+In the depths of his beehive chair the glitter of the old man's grey eye
+was not observed by Felix.
+
+"As you cannot get about and see for yourself, it seemed my duty to say
+something--for Miss Fisher's sake."
+
+"Aw!" ominously low and deep.
+
+"I say for Miss Fisher's sake, because I am in hopes, with your
+permission, to visit her as her--her future husband, and as I am sure
+her happiness and--"
+
+Crash!
+
+The blackthorn whizzed by St Bees' head and smashed the jug on the
+table.
+
+"Jim!  Bill!  Jane!  Jack!" shouted the old man, starting out of his
+chair, purple in the face.  "Drow this veller out!  Douse un in th'
+hog-vault!  Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod!  [Little contemptible
+scarecrow] I warn thee'd like my money!  Drot thee and thee wench!"
+
+Poor Felix could do nothing but beat a retreat with half a dozen
+grinning chawbacons watching him over the bridge.  On hearing their
+master's angry voice in the porch, they ran together from the rick-yard
+in the rear.  For some distance Felix could hear the old man howling and
+telling the men to "zet th' dogs at un."  When he got fairly out of
+sight of the mill his indignation disappeared in his sense of the
+ludicrous, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then sobered
+down again.  "For," thought he, "it is a wholesome doctrine--reverence
+for old age; and yet how little there is to revere!  Ask this aged man's
+advice--you would suppose he would tell you of the vanity of the world,
+and instruct you to turn your mind to higher things.  Not at all; he
+would say, `Get money; dismiss all generous feelings: get money.'  In
+the last decade of a century of life his avarice prompts him to risk
+heavy sums on this horse.  But I must write and explain that _I_ do not
+want his hoards."
+
+Calling at Greene Ferne on the way home to see May, he found everyone
+discussing the attitude of the labourers on the farm, who seemed
+inclined to neglect the haymaking, or even to leave it altogether.  As
+the weather was fine and a large quantity of grass had been cut, it was
+a serious matter.  Next morning Geoffrey Newton called on Felix at his
+cottage in Kingsbury to tell him that the men had actually struck work,
+and that Mrs Estcourt was anxious for his advice.  For Felix, besides
+being a friend, was known to possess great influence among the working
+classes.  Kingsbury town, though situate in the midst of a purely
+agricultural country, and not more than four or five miles distant from
+the oaks at Greene Ferne, was the seat of a certain manufacturing
+industry, which had immensely increased its population.  It was the high
+wages paid in the factories and workshops there that made the
+agricultural labourers discontented; many walked miles daily to and fro
+to receive them.  There was unfortunately a reverse side to the medal,
+for the overcrowded town had become notorious for disease, drunkenness,
+and misery.  Now this was why Felix, with many opportunities of
+preferment, chose to remain a simple curate, in order that he might work
+among that grimy and boisterous people.  Rude and brutal as they were,
+the little figure in black penetrated everywhere without risk, and was
+treated with the utmost respect.
+
+It chanced to be his morning for visiting certain purlieus, so Geoffrey
+went with him.  They were to go over to Greene Ferne in the evening.
+Down in the back streets they found that Melting-Pot, the pewter
+tankard, in full operation.  Men and women were busy keeping it full,
+while their children, with naked feet, played in the gutter among the
+refuse of the dust heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth.  The
+ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser metals into gold; in
+these days whole townships are at work transmuting gold and silver into
+pewter.  All the iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes
+in the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter tankard.  When
+honest labour takes its well-earned draught it is one thing, or when
+friendship shares the glass; but the drinking for drinking's sake is
+another.  Side by side with the Melting-Pot the furniture marts did a
+roaring business--marts where everything is sold, from a towel-horse to
+a piano or a cockatoo--sold beyond recall, all in the way of trade, and
+therefore quite legitimately.  Is it not strange that while the law
+imposes fine and penalty on the pawnbroker, and strict supervision, the
+furniture mart, where the wretched drunkard's goods are sold for ever,
+seems to flourish without let or hindrance?  "Money advanced on goods
+for absolute sale," is the notice prominently displayed, which to the
+poor artisan, being interpreted, reads, "`Walk into my parlour,' says
+the spider to the fly."  Geoffrey, who had been to Australia, found he
+was mistaken in thinking that he had seen the world.  There were things
+here, close to the sweet fields of lovely England, not to be surpassed
+in the darkest corners of the earth.  At the end of a new street hastily
+"run up cheap" and "scamped," they found a large black pool, once a pond
+in the meadow, now a slough of all imaginable filth, at whose
+precipitous edge the roadway stopped abruptly, without rail, fence, or
+wall.  Little children playing hare and hounds, heedless of their steps,
+fell in, and came out gasping, almost choked with foul mud.  Drunken men
+staggered in occasionally, and came out stiff, ghastly, with slime in
+the greedy mouths that had gorged at the Melting-Pot.  Yet this horrible
+slough was on the very verge of beauty; it was the edge and outpost of
+the town.  Across this dark pit were green meadows, hawthorn hedges, and
+trees.  The sweet breeze played against the dead red brick; odours of
+clover were blown against the windows; rooks came over now and then with
+their noisy caw-cawing.  Shamefully "scamped" was the row of six-roomed
+houses--doors that warped and would not shut, and so on.  Upstairs, in
+one of these, they found a tall young fellow lying on his bed in the
+middle of the summer day.  The sickly fetid smell of the close room told
+of long confinement.  Poor fellow, he had been sore beset; unmarried,
+untended; no woman to potter about him, nursed anyhow, only the strength
+of his constitution carried him through; and now he lay there, weak and
+helpless, in spirit all but dead, as strong men are after tedious
+illness.  A mass of iron had fallen on his leg in one of the factories
+some time before, as it was supposed through the carelessness of a
+fellow-workman not recovered from his weekly orgie of drink.  The sturdy
+limb, though it had long ago united, was still feeble in the extreme.
+His dull eye lit up when he saw them.
+
+"You bean't from Millbourne, be you?" he said.
+
+"We know many there," said Felix.
+
+"I thaut perhaps uncle Jabez had found me out and sent ee.  Do you knaw
+uncle Jabez, as works at Greene Ferne?"
+
+"I recollect the shepherd," said Geoffrey.
+
+"I wur under-shepherd thur till I took to factory work.  Look at them
+lambs thur!"
+
+They looked out of the window.  Beneath, the green fields came right up
+to the dead brick wall.  Away, some fifty yards distant, stood an
+enormous pollard oak, its vast gnarled root coiled round just above the
+earth, forming a broad ledge about the trunk.  Half a dozen lambs were
+chasing each other, frisking round and round the rim, glad in the summer
+sunshine.
+
+"Look at um," said the whilom shepherd, "an' I be choked for aair."
+
+"Why not open the window?"
+
+"He wunt open."
+
+They examined it; the sashes were shams, _not made to open_.  Neither
+was there a fireplace; the man was poisoned with the exhalations from
+his own weak frame.
+
+"This is dreadful," said Geoffrey.  "Is there no law--"
+
+"Law enough," said Felix, bitterly; "but who troubles to enforce it for
+the sake of--a navvy?  Why are crowded places sinks of misery and crime?
+For want of a Master, like the colonel of a regiment.  It makes me sigh
+for a despot."
+
+"I'd a' smashed un fast enough," said the shepherd, "if I'd a-dared; but
+thaay ud 'a turned me out into the street, an' I couldn't abear the
+workuss.  Is ould Fisher dead yet, zur?"
+
+St Bees was busy with his penknife cutting away the putty, and did not
+for the moment answer.  The pane came out speedily, and the breeze came
+in with a rush, and with it a bee that buzzed round and went forth
+again, and a scent of new-made hay, and the "Baa--maa" of the lambs, and
+behind it all the low roar of the railway and the factories.
+
+"What did you say about Fisher?" asked Felix, turning.
+
+"Be a' dead yet, th' cussed old varmint?"
+
+"Hush, hush! whom do you mean?"
+
+"I means ould Fisher of Warren Mill.  He be my grandfeyther.  Mebbe you
+minds Peggy Moulding, what married th' bailie?  Hur wur my granny.  My
+feyther died in Australia.  Th' cussed ould varmint--a' let us all
+starve; he got sacks a' gold.  I wants to hear as th' devil have got
+un."
+
+"You must not bear malice," said Felix; but being a man as well as a
+clergyman, he halted there.  The contrast was too great.  He thought of
+the brutal miser on the hills.
+
+"I wants to get back to Greene Ferne," said the invalid.  "Do you knaw
+Mrs Estcourt?  Hur be a nice ooman; a' wunder ef hur ud have me agen.
+Wull ee axe hur?"
+
+"I'll ask her," said Geoffrey.  "I'm sure she will, though the men are
+on strike there now."
+
+"Be um?  Lord, what vools!  I wants to get back to shepherding.  Axe
+uncle Jabez ef I med come to his place and bide wi' he a bit.  I thenks
+I should get better among the trees.  I could a'most drag a rake, bless
+'ee, now ef I had some vittels."
+
+"You shall have food," said Felix, "and we will get you back to the
+hamlet."  This poor fellow, rude as he was--so pathetically ignorant as
+to suppose, as ignorant people do, that strangers understood his private
+affairs--was in a sense distantly related to his darling May, and thus
+had a more than common claim upon him.
+
+In the afternoon they went over to Greene Ferne, and Mrs Estcourt at
+once sent a trap for the injured man.  His uncle Jabez, the shepherd,
+was greatly concerned, and ready to receive him.  Yet, with the curious
+apathy of the poor, he had made no inquiries about him previously.
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+THE WOODEN BOTTLE.
+
+"Gee, Diamond!  Now, Captain!" cried Margaret, imitating the gruff voice
+of the carter.  Crack!  The long-knotted lash of the waggon-whip, bound
+about the handle with brazen rings, whistled in the air and curled up
+with a vicious snap.  She was in one of her wild impulsive moods.  Away
+trotted the two huge carthorses, the harness merrily jingling and the
+waggon jolting.  Jabez the shepherd could hardly keep pace with it,
+running beside the leader, Diamond.  Margaret and May were riding.
+Crack!  Crack!
+
+"Aw, doan't 'ee now--doan't 'ee, miss!" panted the shepherd.  "Us ull go
+right drough th' winder!  Whoa!"
+
+For they were steering straight for the great window at Greene Ferne
+that opened on the lawn.  It was wide open that beautiful midsummer
+morning.
+
+"What are those children doing?" said Mrs Estcourt, in some alarm.
+"Why, they have harnessed the horses!"
+
+Valentine, Geoffrey, and Felix, who were there, crowded to the window.
+
+"Whoa, Diamond!  Captain, whoa!" cried Margaret, bringing up her convoy
+on the lawn in fine style.  "Now, mamma dear, jump up!  We're all going
+haymaking, as the men won't."
+
+"She has solved the problem," said Valentine.  "Here's one volunteer!"
+And he sprang up.
+
+That very morning they had been holding a council to see if anything
+could be suggested to put an end to the strike.  It had now lasted
+nearly a fortnight Felix in vain argued with the men; they listened
+respectfully, and even admitted that he was right; but all they would
+say was that "they meaned to have th' crownd."
+
+Slow to take action, there is no one so stubborn, when once he has
+resolved, as the agricultural labourer.  They had timed the strike with
+some cunning.  They had let the mowers cut some sixty acres of grass,
+and then suddenly stopped work.  They knew very well that if cut grass
+is allowed to remain exposed to the sun longer than just sufficient to
+make it into hay, it dries up so much as to be of little value.  Now the
+burning brilliant summer sunshine had been pouring down upon the
+withered grass for days and days, expelling every particle of the
+succulent sap, and turning it to a brittle straw.  The shepherd, Jabez,
+remained at his work, and he and Augustus Basset, the "bailie," did a
+little, throwing up a mead or two into "wakes" for carting; but their
+exertions were of small avail.  While they talked and deliberated,
+Margaret, beckoning May, slipped out and went down to the stables.
+Diamond and Captain were led out into the sunshine, and stood like
+statuary, waiting to be bidden.  For the beauty of simple strength
+nothing equals a fine cart-horse: the vast frame, the ponderous limb,
+the massive neck, speak of power in repose.  Their large dark lustrous
+eyes followed the girls with calm astonishment; but, docile and gentle,
+they gave implicit obedience to orders.  The heavy harness,
+brass-mounted, was as much as ever the two girls could manage to lift;
+and when it came to hoisting up the shafts of the waggon they were at a
+loss.  But Jabez, hearing a noise at the stables, came up; and after him
+slouched Augustus, muttering to himself, as usual.  So just when the
+council indoors was beginning to wonder what had become of Margaret and
+May, crack, crack, and the jingling of harness put an end to their
+deliberations.
+
+Geoffrey quickly followed Valentine; Felix, more thoughtful, brought a
+chair for Mrs Estcourt, who, half laughing, half protesting, against
+Margaret's wilful fancy, got up.  Augustus sat on the shafts, Jabez
+stood by the leader, and, seeing them all in, started for the field.
+
+"If you were to bring out a thirty-six-gallon cask," said Augustus,
+whose red nose peered over the front part of the waggon, "and set it up
+on a haycock, I'll warn them chaps would come back fast enough."  This
+was one word for the haymakers and two for himself.
+
+"I'm sure I don't grudge them some ale," said Mrs Estcourt.  "But they
+are really very unreasonable.  One of the servants took a mower a quart
+of beer.  He said he did not like it, and didn't want so much, and
+poured it out on the grass.  Next day only a pint was sent to him: `Why
+y'ent you brought me a quart?' said he.  `Because you flung it away,'
+was the reply.  `Aw, that don't matter.  You bring I a quart.  I'll have
+my mishure,' [measure]; nor should I mind paying the extra five
+shillings; but you see, Felix, if I pay it, all the farmers round--for
+they have only struck work on my place, thinking, no doubt, that, being
+a woman, I must give way--will be obliged to do so, and some of them are
+not able.  Many have called and begged me not; and Mr Thorpe says the
+same.  Yet I don't like it.  We have always been on good terms with the
+men."
+
+"O yes, you pets 'em up," said Augustus, "just like so many children;
+and, of course, they ain't going to work for you."
+
+"The struggle of capital and labour," began Felix learnedly, when a
+sudden jolt of the springless waggon threw him off his balance, and he
+had to cling to the sides.
+
+"O, mind the gatepost!" cried Mrs Estcourt, in some alarm.
+
+While they were near the house Jabez went slow; but the moment he
+reached the open field away he started, and what with the jingling of
+the harness, the creaking of the wheels, and the necessity for holding
+on tight, conversation became impossible.  The waggon rose up and sloped
+down over the furrows of the meadow as a boat pitches in a sea.
+
+"Woaght! whoa!" shouted Jabez, drawing up among the hay.  "This be it;
+the prongs be in the ditch."
+
+When they had descended, he went to the hawthorn bush, pulled out some
+prongs, and then scrambled up into the waggon himself.  "Now then, you
+lards and gennelmen, one on 'ee get each side, and pitch up thaay wakes
+[ridges of hay put ready for the purpose of loading], and mind as you
+doan't stick your farks into I.  The wimmen--I means the ladies--wull
+rake behind, and paason can help um--th' rakes be hung on th' hedge.
+Now, bailie, look arter them 'osses."
+
+Though hay looks light and easy to lift, yet when the fork has gathered
+a goodly bundle, to hoist it high overhead, and continue the operation,
+is really heavy labour.  Valentine was physically a smaller made man
+than Geoffrey, whose broad shoulders had also been developed both by
+athletic exercise at home and by work in Australia--work done from
+choice, not necessity.  But though smaller, Valentine was extremely
+tough, wiry, and nimble, as is often the case with gentlemen who "fancy"
+horses.  Quick in his movements, he caught the knack of "pitching"
+almost immediately.  He hastily flung up his "wake" as far as the horse
+in the shafts, and then walked to the rear of the waggon where Margaret
+was raking, leaving Geoffrey still engaged.
+
+Margaret and May were looking at a nest of harvest-trows, as the tiny
+mice are called that breed in the grass.  Valentine began to talk about
+his horses, knowing Margaret was fond of animals, and said that a
+"string" of his would pass Greene Ferne in the evening _en route_ to his
+stables.  Now Geoffrey, glancing back, saw the group apparently in
+earnest conversation from which he was excluded; and noting Margaret's
+attention to Valentine, grew jealous and angry.  Just as he finished
+"pitching," and was about to join them--
+
+"Tchek!" from Augustus, and on the horses moved, and he had to
+recommence work.  Valentine ran with his prong, and again, by dint of
+great exertions, finished his side first, and returned to Margaret.
+
+"Tchek! woaght!"
+
+The third time Valentine essayed the same task, delighted to leave
+Geoffrey in the cold, and to exhibit his superior prowess.  But Geoffrey
+by now had learned how to handle his fork.  His muscles were strung, his
+blood was up, he warmed to his work, and pitched vast bundles that all
+but buried and half choked Jabez, who was loading on the waggon.
+
+"The dust be all down my droat!  Aw, doan't 'ee, measter!" he cried, in
+smothered tones.
+
+"Tchek!" and this time Valentine was far behind, and Geoffrey had gone
+back to talk to Margaret.  At the next move Geoffrey not only cleared
+his side up to the horse in the shafts, but by using his great strength
+to the utmost, went ahead up the wake eight or ten yards, and thus
+secured himself twice as long with her, while Valentine had to remain
+"pitching."  To Jabez the shepherd, on the waggon, it was fine sport to
+watch the rivalry of the "gennelmen."  A labouring man thoroughly enjoys
+seeing the perspiration pouring from the faces of the well-to-do.  He
+bustled about as fast as he could, and kept the horses moving.  By
+superior muscular force Geoffrey remained ahead.  To Valentine it was
+gall and wormwood.
+
+"We be getting on famous, zur," said Jabez.  "Tchek!"
+
+Mrs Estcourt had meantime left the field, after beckoning to Augustus,
+who followed her.  While she was present there was some check on their
+rivalry; but no sooner did they perceive that she was gone than it rose
+to a still greater height.  Valentine, pulling himself together, and
+taking advantage of a thinner wake than usual, ran ahead, and went back
+to the rear.  Seeing this, Geoffrey hurled the hay up with such force
+and vigour that he literally covered the shepherd, who could barely
+struggle out of it.
+
+"Lord, I be as dry as a gicks!" said Jabez, when he did get free, and
+meaning by his simile the stem of a dead hedge-plant.
+
+"And here's bailie wi' th' bottle.  Bide a bit, my lards."
+
+By this time "my lards" thoroughly understood why haymakers like their
+ale, and plenty of it.  Working under the hot sun, with the dust or dry
+pollen flying from the hay, causes intense thirst.  So the waggon stood
+still, and Valentine, hot and angry, took the bottle--being the
+nearest--from Augustus, and essayed to drink.  This "bottle" was a
+miniature cask of oaken staves, with iron hoops, and a leathern strap to
+carry it by.  It held about a gallon.  To drink, the method is to put
+the lips to the bung-hole, situate at the largest part of the
+circumference, toss the barrel up, and hold the head back.  Valentine
+could not get more than the merest sip, though the bottle was quite
+full.  This, scientifically speaking, was caused by the pressure of the
+atmosphere.  There is the same difficulty in drinking from a flask.
+
+"Let th' aair in--let th' aair in!" said the shepherd, himself an adept.
+"Open th' carner of yer mouth."
+
+But attempting to do that Val let too much "aair" in, and spilt the ale,
+to his intense disgust.
+
+"Put th' cark in, zur, and chuck un up to I."  Jabez caught the "bottle"
+as tenderly as a mother would her infant and quitted not his hold till
+half the contents had disappeared, nor would he have left it then, had
+not Augustus grumbled and claimed his turn.  Mrs Estcourt now returned,
+attended by a servant carrying a basket of refreshments for which she
+had gone, not forgetting the more civilised bottles issued by the divine
+Bass.  Throwing down forks and rakes, they assembled in the shade of the
+tall hawthorn hedge and sat down on the hay.  When the delicate flavour
+of his cigar floated away on the soft summer air, even Valentine's
+acerbity of temper relaxed.  Opposite, at some distance, stood the
+waggon now fully loaded; Diamond and Captain eating the hay put for
+them, and the shepherd lying at full length on the grass.  Augustus, the
+"bottle" by his side, and his hand laid lovingly on it, fell asleep in
+the shade of the waggon.
+
+The wild-roses on the briars that stretched out from the hedge towards
+the meadow opened their petals full to the warmth.  The breeze rustled
+the leaves of the elm overhead.  Rich flute-like notes of music came
+from the copse hard by--it was the blackbird.
+
+"Ah, this is merry England," said Felix, who loved his cigar, watching
+the tiny cloud float away from its tip.  "The blackbird sings in the
+scorching sun at noonday, when the other songbirds are silent.  You did
+not know Geof was a writer, did you?"  He drew forth a piece of paper,
+when Newton began to protest, and would have taken it from him by main
+force, had not the ladies insisted on hearing the contents.  So Felix
+read the verses.
+
+  Noontide in the Meadow.
+
+  Idly silent were the finches--
+      Finches fickle, fleeting, blithe;
+  And the mower, man of inches,
+      Ceased to swing the sturdy scythe.
+
+  All the leafy oaks were slumb'rous;
+      Slumb'rous e'en the honey-bee;
+  And his larger brother, cumbrous,
+      Humming home with golden knee.
+
+  But the blackbird, king of hedgerows--
+      Hedgerows to my memory dear--
+  By the brook, where rush and sedge grows,
+      Sang his liquid love-notes clear.
+
+Margaret, toying with a June rose--the white petal delicately tinted
+with pink between her soft rosy fingers--dreamily repeated half to
+herself,--
+
+  "All the leafy oaks were slumb'rous."
+
+Valentine glanced at her swiftly, and inwardly resolved to remove the
+impression on her mind.  He took out his pocket-book.
+
+"My verses," said he, "are only copied, but they seemed to me a gem in
+their way.  It is a piece of Bacchic meditation from the Vaux de Vire,
+exquisitely translated by some clever author whose name I have
+forgotten.  You are gazing at our friend Augustus' bibulous nose," he
+nodded towards the recumbent figure with the hand on the bottle, "and
+see it through your own glass:
+
+  "Fair nose! whose beauties many pipes have cost
+  Of white and rosy wine;
+  Whose colours are so gorgeously embossed
+  In red and purple fine;
+  Great nose, who views thee, gazing through great glass,
+  Thee still more lovely thinks.
+  Thou dost the nose of creature far surpass
+  Who only water drinks."
+
+It was so appropriate to poor Augustus that they could not choose but
+smile.  Valentine begged Margaret to sing: they all joined in the
+request, and she sang with a faint blush, looking down--for she knew,
+though the rest did not, that it was Geoffrey's favourite--the beautiful
+old ballad of the "Bailiff's Daughter of Islington."  With the wild-rose
+in her hand, the delicate bloom on her cheek, the green hedge behind,
+the green elm above, and the sweet scent of the hay, she looked the
+ballad as well as sang it.
+
+"Ah," said Felix, "no sign of study in those old ballads, no
+premeditation, no word-twisting and jerking; rugged metre so involved
+that none can understand it without pondering an hour or two.  This is
+the way we criticise poetry now-a-days, in our mechanical age--just
+listen: somebody has been measuring Tennyson with a foot-rule.  I read
+from a professor's analysis--`The line is varied by dactylic or iambic
+substitution, as well as by truncation and anacrusis;' `the line is
+varied by anapaestic and trochaic (rarely dactylic) substitutions, and
+by initial truncation.'  As Faust says, not all these word-twisters have
+ever made a Maker yet."
+
+Crash!--splintering of wood and breaking of boughs.
+
+"Here gwoes!  Come on, you!  Hoorah!  Us ull put it up, missus; doan't
+'ee be afeared! you bin a good missus to we.  So into't, you vellers!"
+
+Eight or ten men came crashing through a gap in the hedge, and seizing
+the prongs and rakes that were lying about with no more explanation than
+these brief ejaculations, dashed out to work.  Heartily tired of
+rambling idly about, hands in pockets, seeing no prospect of the men on
+the other farms joining them, they had been hanging round the place in a
+sheepish way, till, finally observing the ladies working, the sense of
+shame got the better, and they made a rush for the hay, and gave up the
+strike.  For there is sterling worth and some rude chivalry in these
+men, though simple enough, and easily led astray; the more the pity that
+no one has yet taken the lead among them with a view to their own real
+and solid advancement.
+
+"I will go home and send them some refreshment," said Mrs Estcourt.
+All the party rose and accompanied her.  In the next field they passed
+the mowers preparing to begin mowing again.  Geoffrey and Valentine both
+tried to mow, but utterly failed; the point of the scythe persistently
+stuck into the ground.
+
+"A' be a' akkerd tool for a body as bean't used to un," said the eldest
+of the men, taking out his stone rubber from the sling at his back,
+preparatory to giving the scythe a touch up after such rough handling;
+"and um bean't what um used to be when I wur a bwoy."
+
+"How do you mean?" said Felix.
+
+"Aw," said the mower, tilting his hat back, "th' blades be as good as
+ever um wur--thaay folk at Mells be th' vellers to make scythes.  Thur
+bean't none as good as thaim.  But it be th' handle, look'ee, as I
+means.  I minds when thaay wur made of dree sarts of wood, a main bit
+more crooked than this yer stick, and sart o' carved a bit; doant 'ee
+see?  It took a chap a week zumtimes to find a bit a' wood as ud do.
+But, bless ee, a'moast anything does now."
+
+Swish went the keen blade through the tall grass.  They watched him a
+few minutes.
+
+"Thur be some blight about," said the man; "scythe do scum up terrable,"
+and he showed them the blade all covered with a greenish-white froth,
+supposed to be caused by insects.  "Thur be blight up thur, look."
+
+He pointed to a dark heavy cloud that seemed to float at a great height
+in the east.
+
+"It will thunder," said May.
+
+"Aw, no it wunt, miss," said the mower.  "A' reckon as it'll be nation
+hot; thuck cloud be nothing but blight.  Spile the fruit, bless'ee."
+
+"So even the scythe handles used to be artistic," said Felix, as they
+walked away.  "There used to be art and taste and workmanship even in so
+common a thing.  It was made of three distinct pieces of wood, carefully
+finished off; men took days to find a piece.  Now it is nothing but a
+stick smoothed by machinery.  I _hate_ machinery.  I like to see the
+artist in his work; to see the mark of the knife where the chip has been
+taken out.  But the spirit of art flies when things are sent forth by
+machinery--hundreds exactly alike."
+
+To May it was a great pleasure to hear him dilate in this way.  Near the
+house they met Augustus, radiant with smiles, and perfectly loaded with
+the wooden bottles for the men.
+
+"I knows I'm a fool," said he; "at least I ought to, since I'm told so
+forty times a day.  But a fool must be sometimes right.  'Pend upon it,
+there's nothing like ale!"
+
+At Greene Ferne, May found a letter for her which spoilt the day.  It
+was from her grandfather, Andrew Fisher, of the Warren, written in great
+anger, and commanding her immediate return home, and to mind and bring
+that rug with her that had been at Greene Ferne ever since Christmas.
+The old grasping miser, in his rage, remembered such a trifle as a
+travelling-rug.  Fisher had sent a verbal message for his granddaughter
+before, which she had ventured to put off; now he wrote in a furious
+temper, and added at the foot that if that parson ever came a-nigh the
+Warren again he'd have him ducked in the mill-pool.  So bitter had the
+mere thought made him that Felix wanted his money.  There was nothing
+for it but for May to return, and she asked for her horse to be saddled.
+Felix could hardly suppress his annoyance.  May was much downcast, but
+Margaret cheered her.
+
+"I will go with you," she said.  "He was always nice to me.  He is a
+regular old flatterer,"--(she peeped in the glass)--"only think,
+flattering at ninety!  But a man must flatter, if he's a hundred!  I
+shall get over him!  I'll ride my chestnut, and I can stay with you,
+dear, can't I? and come back next evening."
+
+So they left together.  Geoffrey, in shaking hands with Margaret, tried
+to whisper, "May I come and meet you to-morrow evening?" but could not
+well manage it, Valentine being near.
+
+"Be sure and return by the road, dear," said Mrs Estcourt--"the Downs
+are very lonely if you come by yourself, and you may lose your way."
+
+"Oh, no," laughed Margaret.  "I love the hills, and I know them all.  I
+must come over the turf, mamma dear."
+
+Now, Geoffrey heard this, and mentally noted it.  He had his horse at
+Thorpe Hall, and he determined to ride and meet Margaret on the morrow.
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+EVENING.
+
+"Aw, aim for th' Tump, measter; aim for th' Tump," said the carter,
+slanting his whip to indicate the direction.  "When you gets thur,
+look'ee, go for th' Cas'l; and when you gets thur, go athwert the Vuzz
+toward th' Virs; and when you gets drough thaay, thur be Akkern Chace,
+and a lane as goes down to Warren.  Tchek!  Woaght!"
+
+At the foot of the Downs, along whose base the highway road wound,
+Geoffrey had paused to take counsel of a carter, who had just descended
+with a load of flints, before venturing across the all-but-trackless
+hills.  The man very civilly stopped his waggon and named the various
+landmarks by which he would have guided his own course to Andrew
+Fisher's.  Geoffrey had started early in the evening, intending to go
+all the way to Warren House, for he carried with him the rug (strapped
+to the saddle) which Margaret and May had forgotten, and for which the
+rude old man had written.  This rug, which Mrs Estcourt gave him, was
+in fact his passport, for he scarcely knew how Margaret would take his
+coming to fetch her in that rather abrupt way.  Guessing what the man
+meant more by the slant of his whip than his words, he turned off the
+road on to the sward, and ascended the hill.
+
+A long narrow shadow of man and horse, disproportionately stretched out,
+raced before him along the slope.  The hoofs of the grey hardly cut the
+firm turf, dry with summer heat; the vivid green of spring had already
+gone, and a faint brown was just visible somewhere in the grass.  Dark
+boulder stones--sarsens--bald and smooth, thrust their shoulders out of
+the sward here and there; hollowed out into curious cuplike cavities, in
+which, after a shower, the collected raindrops remained imprisoned in
+tiny bowls hard as the fabled adamant of mediaeval story.  Round white
+bosses--white as milk, and globular like cannon-shot--dotted the turf,
+fungi not yet ripened into the dust of the puff-ball.  Now and again the
+iron shoes dashed an edible mushroom to pieces, turning the pink gills
+upwards to shrivel and blacken in the morrow's sun.  The bees rose with
+a shrill buzz from the white clover, which is the shepherd's sign of
+midsummer.  Swiftly the grey sped along the slopes, the shadow racing
+before grew longer and fainter as the beams of the sun came nearly
+horizontally.  Already the ridges cast a shadow into the hollows--into
+the narrow coombes, where great flints and chalk fragments had rolled
+down and strewed the ground as with the wreck of a titanic skirmish.
+Thickets of green furze tipped with yellow bloom, and beneath, peeping
+out, the pale purple heath-flower.  On the stunted hawthorn bushes
+standing alone, stern sentinels in summer's heat and winter's storm,
+green peggles hardening, which autumn would redden and ripen for the
+thrush.  Odorous thyme and yellow-bird's-foot lotus embroidering the
+grassy carpet; wide breadths of tussocky grass, tall and tough, which
+the sheep had left untouched, and where the hare crouched in her form,
+hearkening to the thud of the hoofs.
+
+On past the steep wall of an ancient chalk-quarry, spotted with red
+streaks and stains as of rusty iron, where the plough-boys search for
+pyrites, and call them thunderbolts and "gold," for when broken the
+radial metallic fibres glisten yellow.  Past a field of oats, rising
+hardly a foot high in the barren soil--in the corner an upturned plough
+with rusty share and wooden handles painted red.  Down below in the
+plains between the hills squares of drooping barley and bold upstanding
+wheat, whose tender green the sun had invaded with advancing hues of
+gold.  Over all the brooding silence of the summer eve, one brown lark
+alone singing in the air above the plain, far away from the distant
+ridge the faint tinkle of a sheep-bell.  Now the sun was down the lower
+eastern atmosphere thickened with a dull red; the shepherds discerned
+the face of the sky, and said to-morrow would be fine.
+
+Up the steep side of the "Tump" at last, slackening speed perforce, and
+checking the grey on the summit.  It was a great round hill, detached,
+and somewhat like a huge bowl inverted, with a small circular level
+space, on what at a distance seemed an almost pointed apex, a space bare
+of aught but close-cropped herbage.  Westwards was the dim vale, a faint
+mist blotting out steeple and tower--a mist blending with the sky at the
+horizon, and there all aglow.  Eastwards, ridge upon ridge, hill after
+hill, with spurs running out into the narrow plains between, and deep
+coombes.  He gazed earnestly over these, looking for signs and
+landmarks, but found none.  The rough trail was lost--the hoof marks cut
+in the winter when the earth was soft were filled up by the swelling
+turf, and covered over with thyme.  Those who laboured by day in the
+plains, weeding the fields, were gone down to their homes in the hamlets
+hidden in the valleys.  At a venture he struck direct for the east,
+anxious to lose no time; for he began to fear he should miss Margaret,
+and soon afterwards luckily crossed the path of a shepherd-lad,
+whistling as he and his shaggy dog wended for "whoam."
+
+"Which is the way to Mr Fisher's?" asked Geoffrey.
+
+"Thaay be goin' into th' Mash to-morrow," answered the boy, whose
+thoughts were differently engaged.
+
+"Tell me the way to Mr Fisher's--the Warren."
+
+"We be got shart o' keep; wants zum rain, doan't 'ee zee?"
+
+"Can't you answer a question?"
+
+"Thur's a main sight o' tackle in the Mash vor um."
+
+He was so used to being stopped and asked about his sheep that he took
+it for granted Geoffrey was putting the same accustomed interrogatories.
+Every farmer cross-examines his neighbour's shepherd when he meets him.
+The "Mash" was doubtless a meadow reclaimed from a marsh.  "Land be
+terrable dry, zur."
+
+"Will you listen to me?" angrily.  "Where's the Warren?"
+
+"Aw, mebbe you means ould Fisher's?"
+
+"I mean Mr Fisher's."
+
+"A' be auver thur," pointing north-east.
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Aw, it be a akkerd road," doubtfully, as he looked Geoffrey up and
+down, and it dawned on him slowly that it was a stranger.
+
+"I'll give you a quart if you will show me."
+
+"Wull ee?  Come on."  The beer went at once right to the nervous centre
+and awoke all his faculties.  He led Geoffrey across the plain and up a
+swelling shoulder of down, on whose ridge was a broad deep fosse and
+green rampart.
+
+"This be th' Cas'l," said the guide, meaning entrenchments--earthworks
+are called "castles."  In one spot the fosse was partly filled up, and
+an opening cut in the rampart, by which he rode through and found the
+"castle," a vast earthwork of unknown antiquity.
+
+"Mind thaay vlint-pits," said the boy.
+
+The flint-diggers had been at work here long ago--deep gullies and holes
+encumbered the way, half-hidden with thistles and furze.  The place was
+honeycombed; it reminded Geoffrey of the Australian gold-diggings.  He
+threaded his way slowly between these, and presently emerged on the
+slope beyond the "castle."
+
+"Now which way is it?" he asked, glancing doubtfully at the hills still
+rolling away in unbroken succession.
+
+"Yellucks," said the boy, meaning "Look here," and he pointed at a dark
+object on a distant ridge, which Geoffrey made out to be a copse.
+"Thur's Moonlight Virs."
+
+"Well, and when I get to Moonlight Firs, which way then?"
+
+"Thee foller th' ruts--thaay'll take ee to Akkern Chace."
+
+"The ruts?"
+
+"Eez, th' waggon ruts; thaay goes drough Akkern Chace down to Warren.
+Be you afeared?" seeing Geoffrey hesitated.  "Thaay'll lead ee drough
+th' wood; it be main dark under th' pollard oaks:
+
+  Akkern Chace
+  Be a unkid place,
+  When th' moon do show hur face.
+
+"Wur be my quart?"
+
+Geoffrey gave him sixpence; he touched his forelock, called his dog, and
+whistled down the hill.  Geoffrey pushed on as rapidly as his horse, now
+a little weary, would go for the firs.  In half an hour he reached it,
+and found a waggon track which, as the boy had said, after a while led
+him into a wood--scattered pollard oaks, hawthorn bushes, and fir
+plantations.  Now two fresh difficulties arose: the grey first limped
+and then went lame; and the question began to arise, Would Margaret
+after all come this way?  In the gathering twilight, might she not take
+the circuitous, but safer, highway?  She might even have already passed.
+By this time he was well into the wood--it consisted of firs there.
+The grey went so lame he resolved to go no farther, but to wait.  He
+dismounted, threw himself at length upon the grass beside the green
+track, and the grey immediately applied himself to grazing with steady
+contentment.
+
+The tall green trees shut out all but a narrow lane of sky, azure, but
+darkening; not the faintest breath of moving air relieved the sultry
+brooding heat of the summer twilight.  From the firs came a fragrance,
+filling the atmosphere with a sweet resinous odour.  The sap exuding
+through the bark formed in white viscous drops upon the trunks.
+Indolently reclining, half drowsy in the heat, he could see deep into
+the wood, along on the level ground between the stems, for the fallen
+"needles" checked vegetation.  A squirrel gambolled hither and thither
+in this hollow space; with darting rapid movements it came towards him,
+and then suddenly shot up a fir and was instantly out of sight among the
+thick foliage.  In the stillness he could hear the tearing of the fibres
+of grass as the grey fed near.  A hare came stealing up the track, with
+the peculiar shuffling, cunning gait they have when rambling as they
+deem unwatched.  Limping slowly, "Wat" stayed to choose tit-bits among
+the grass--so near that when an insect tickled him and he shook his head
+Geoffrey heard the tips of his ears flap together.  Daintily he pushed
+his nose among the tussocks, then craned his neck and looked into the
+thickets.  Where the track turned at the bend the shadows crept out,
+toning down the twilight with mystic uncertainty.
+
+Suddenly the hare rose, elevated his ears--Geoffrey could see the
+nostrils working--and then, with one thrust as it were of his lean
+flanks, flung himself into the wood.  The grey ceased feeding, raised
+his head, and listened.  In a few moments came the slow thud of hoofs
+walking.  From behind the bushes Geoffrey watched the bend of the track.
+Then the sweet voice he knew so well floated towards him.  Margaret was
+singing, little thinking any one was near:
+
+  "And as she went along the high-road,
+  The weather being hot and dry,
+  She sat her down upon a green bank,
+  And her true love came riding by."
+
+Her chestnut whinnied, seeing the other horse on turning the corner.
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+"Sir!" blushing, and resentful that he should have surprised her.  She
+had been thinking of him.  She felt as though he had caught her and
+discovered her secret.  She instantly took refuge in hauteur.
+
+"I came to meet you."
+
+"Thank you," extremely coldly; she was passing on.
+
+"You do not mind?" he took hold of her bridle.
+
+"Mr Newton!" angrily.  Her countenance became suffused with a burning
+red.  He felt he had blundered.
+
+"At least you will let me ride back with you," he said humbly, dropping
+the bridle.
+
+She immediately struck the chestnut--the mare sprang forward and
+cantered down the lane.  Quite beside himself, half with annoyance with
+her, half with himself, he ran to the grey, mounted, and tried to
+follow.  But the horse was lame.  He did his best, limped, stumbled,
+recovered himself, and shambled after painfully.  When Geoffrey reached
+the edge of the wood, Margaret, a long distance ahead, was riding out
+upon the Downs--horse and horsewoman a dark figure, indistinct in the
+gloaming.  Fearful of losing her, he called on the grey; but she glided
+away from him swiftly over the darkening plain and up the opposite hill.
+For a moment he saw her clear against the sky-line, then she was over
+the ridge and gone.
+
+He thrashed the grey, and forced him rather than rode him up the hill,
+but there the long-suffering animal stayed his wretched shamble and
+walked.  Wild with anger, Geoffrey dismounted, ran to the edge of the
+hill, and looked for Margaret.
+
+Deep in the wide hollow lay a white mist, covering all things with its
+cloak.  Beyond was a black mass, with undulating ridge against the sky.
+"The chestnut _must_ walk up that," he thought; and, without a moment's
+pause, dropped his whip, and raced down the slope headlong.  What he
+should say or do if he overtook her he did not stay to think; but
+overtake her he would.  His long stride carried him quickly to the
+bottom.  He imagined he should find a thick fog there as it had looked
+from above; but now that he was in it there was nothing more than an
+impalpable mist, through which he could see for some distance.  But
+upwards the mist thickened, and the hill above was hidden now.
+
+He listened--not a sound; then rushed across the level, and threw
+himself against the next ascent.  Panting, he reached the summit; it was
+but a narrow ridge, and over it another coombe.  Instead of a sea of
+mist here, one long streak, like a cloud, hung midway.  No horse
+visible.  Again he dashed forward, and passed through the stratum of
+mist-cloud as he went down, and the second time as he climbed the
+opposite rise--more slowly, for these Downs pull hard against the
+strongest chest.  Then there was a gradually rising plateau--dusky,
+dotted with ghostly hawthorn bushes, but nothing moving that his
+straining eyes could discern.
+
+But as he stood, and his labouring heart beat loudly, there came the
+faint sound of iron-shod hoofs that clicked upon stray flints, far away
+to the right.  Like an arrow he rushed there--unthinking, and therefore
+baffled.  For instead of crossing the steep ridges, she had ridden round
+on the slope; and he, running on the chord of the arc, had not only
+caught her up, but got some distance in front.  If he had remained where
+he was, she would have passed close by him.  But running thus to the
+right in his wild haste, he lost great part of his advantage.  Suddenly
+he stopped short, and saw in the dim light a shadowy figure stretching
+swiftly into the mist.
+
+"Margaret!" he called, involuntarily.  The earth-cloud of mist closed
+round her, and the shadowy figure faded away.  On he went again,
+stumbling in the ruts left by wheels in winter, nearly thrown by the
+tough heath, and the crooked furze stems holding his foot, and fast
+losing his wind.  He struggled up the slope, and finally, perforce, came
+to a striding walk.  Suddenly he stopped--a low neigh floated in the
+stillness up from a vale on his left.  Her path turned there, then; he
+would cut across the angle.  But, taught by experience, he paused at the
+edge of the descent, and listened before going down.  In a minute or two
+another faint clicking of flints sounded behind him.  "By Jove, I begin
+to think--aha!"  The flints clicked in the stillness away on his right.
+Then after a brief while a dark indistinct object crossed in front of
+him.  "All round me," said Geoffrey, aloud.  "I understand."  He bounded
+forward, refreshed by his short pause.  In three minutes the dark object
+resolved itself into the chestnut, standing still now on the verge of a
+gloomy hollow.
+
+Then, close upon his quarry, the hunter slackened speed.  It was his
+turn now; he strolled slowly, halted, even turned his back upon her, and
+looked up at the sky.  The stars were shining; till that moment he had
+not realised that it was night.  By-and-by he went nearer.
+
+"Geoffrey!" she called, faintly.  No reply.
+
+"Geoffrey!"--louder--"is that you?"
+
+"Yes, dear."  The first time he had used the word to her.
+
+"Do come to me!" in a tone of distress.  He ran eagerly to her side.
+
+"It is dark," she said, in a low voice, "and--and I have lost the way."
+
+"I thought you had; you rode all round me."
+
+"Did I?  O, then I am lost, indeed; that is what people always do when
+they are lost on the hills--they go round and round in a circle.  Where
+is your horse?"
+
+"I left him lame, a long way behind."
+
+"How unfortunate!  And `Kitty'"--stroking the mare's neck--"is weary
+too.  But perhaps you know the way--try and look."
+
+He did look round to please her, but with little hope.  It was not
+indeed dark--unless there are clouds, the nights of summer are not
+dark--but the dimness that results from uncertain definition was equally
+bewildering.  The vales were full of white mist; the plains visible near
+at hand grew vague as the eye tried to trace a way across.  The hills,
+just where the ridges rose high, could be seen against the sky, but the
+ranges mingled and the dark slopes faded far away into the mist.  Each
+looked alike--there was no commanding feature to fix the vision; hills
+after hills, grey shadowy plains, dusky coombes and valleys, dimly seen
+at hand and shapeless in the distance.  Then he stooped and searched in
+vain for continuous ruts or hoof marks or any sign of track.  She
+watched him earnestly.
+
+"It is difficult to make out," he said.  "You know I am a stranger to
+these Downs."
+
+"Yes, yes; what shall we do?  I shall not reach Greene Ferne to-night."
+
+"I will try very hard," he said, venturing to take her hand.  But in his
+heart he was doubtful.
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+NIGHT.
+
+Margaret did not remove her hand from Geoffrey's grasp, partly because
+her mind was occupied with the difficulties of the position, partly
+because she naturally relied upon him.  That position, trying to her,
+was pleasurable enough to Geoffrey, but he was too loyal to prolong it.
+
+"I was told to look for the Tump," he said.  "Other landmarks were the
+Castle and Moonlight Firs.  I think I should know the Tump, or the
+Castle, but cannot see either.  Can you recognise Moonlight Firs?"
+
+"Every hill seems to have a Folly," she said, looking round.  "I mean a
+clump of trees on the top.  Yes,"--after a second searching gaze--"I
+believe that must be the Firs; it is larger than the rest."
+
+He took Kitty's bridle, and led the chestnut in the direction of the
+copse.  The distance was increased by the undulation of the ground, but
+in twenty minutes it grew more distinct.
+
+"Yes, I am sure it is Moonlight Firs," she said hopefully.  "We shall
+find the track there."
+
+Kitty laboured up the steep slope wearily; Geoffrey patted and
+encouraged the mare.
+
+"But what trees are these?" said Margaret, with a sudden change of tone
+as they reached the summit.
+
+"I am afraid they are beeches," said he.  He ran forward, and found that
+they were.  There were no firs.  Margaret's heart sank; the
+disappointment was very great.
+
+"Look once more," he said.  "From this height there is a better view.
+See, there are three copses round us; is either like the Firs?"
+
+"They are all just alike," she said, in a troubled tone; then
+pleadingly, "Geoffrey--_think_."
+
+"There are the stars still," he said.
+
+"Ah, yes," eagerly, and looking up.  "I know the north star; there it
+is," pointing to the faint sparkle that has been the lamp of hope to so
+many weary hearts on foaming ocean and trackless plain.  "And the Great
+Bear; the men call it Dick and His Team; it shines every night opposite
+my window, over the dovecot.  Why, of course, all we have to do is to
+turn our backs to it, and ride straight to Greene Ferne."
+
+"Not quite, I fear," smiling at her impetuosity, for she was turning
+Kitty's head.  "You see we should start from a different base, and our
+straight line might be projected for eternity before it came to your
+window."
+
+"Then what's the use of astronomy?" said Margaret promptly.
+
+"Well--really,"--puzzled to give a direct reply, "the difficulty is the
+longitude.  But tell me, are there any roads crossing the Downs?"
+
+"One or two, I think."
+
+"Then we will go towards the north star; that will at least keep us in a
+straight line, and prevent us from going round in a circle.  Sooner or
+later we must cross a road."
+
+"Is that all the stars can do for us?"
+
+"Under present circumstances--yes."
+
+They descended the slope; on the level ground he began to run, urging
+the tired mare to trot.
+
+"Do not do that," she said; "you will be quite knocked up."
+
+"I do not mind in the least--for your sake.  It is getting late, and we
+must hasten."
+
+He was now seriously anxious, for her sake, to seek a road, and pushed
+on as hard as he could.  The mare, however, walked up the next rise; at
+the summit, Margaret pointed to the east.
+
+"The clouds are coming up," she said.  Low down was a dark bank--a
+thicker night--rising swiftly, blotting out the stars one by one.
+Another burst forwards, and another walk, as Geoffrey began to feel the
+exertion.
+
+The "messengers"--small detached clouds, that precede the rest--were
+already passing overhead.  The white glow on the northern horizon,
+indicating the position of the summer sun just beneath, was covered.  On
+three sides the edges of the cloud rose up and began to meet above.  "I
+trust it will not rain," thought Geoffrey.
+
+"It is getting still warmer," said Margaret presently; "the Great Bear
+is hidden now."  Under the mass of vapour the temperature, warm before,
+became sultry and oppressive.
+
+"Stand up!" said Geoffrey sharply to the mare, as they descended a
+steeper slope, and she stumbled.  Then to Margaret, "The mist is gone."
+It had insensibly disappeared as the clouds came over; they had now
+covered the sky, and it was dark.
+
+"Will it thunder?" she asked anxiously.  "It is very hot, and I believe
+I felt a drop of rain--and another."
+
+"Only heat-drops," said Geoffrey, but his mind misgave him.  The clouds
+swept over at a rapid pace, yet there was no breeze; they were carried
+on an aerial current far above the earth.  The pole star was hidden;
+still Geoffrey kept on walking as fast as he could, trying to keep a
+straight line.  He spoke to and cheered the mare frequently; she
+stumbled, and seemed nervous.  There was an intense electrical tension
+in the atmosphere.
+
+"Oh, where are we now?" said Margaret, as Kitty's knees rustled against
+something, and she stopped and dragged at the bridle.  "What is this?"
+
+In the gloom a white shimmering surface stretched out.
+
+"A wheat field," said Geoffrey; "we must go round it."  Kitty resisted,
+wanting to nibble at the succulent stalks, not yet dried into straw by
+the sun.
+
+"If it is wheat we are certainly wrong," said Margaret.  "We ought not
+to get on the plain among the ploughed fields; our proper road is on the
+turf somewhere.  Pluck me a wheat-ear, please; the stalk is sweet, and I
+am thirsty."
+
+He did so.  Crushed by the teeth, the stalk yielded a pleasant sweetness
+to the parched mouth.  "It is the wine of the corn," she said.  He
+wanted to lead the mare round the field; but beyond was another of
+barley, and Margaret was so certain that it was the wrong direction that
+he gave it up, and felt his way back to the hill as he thought.
+Proceeding along the ridge, a clump of trees loomed large close at hand.
+
+"Moonlight Firs!" cried Margaret joyfully, urging the mare.  "Please go
+and see what trees they are," she said.  "It is difficult to
+distinguish."
+
+He ran forward, and in two minutes returned, silent.  "Yes?" she said
+impatiently.
+
+"Beeches," he replied; "the same beeches."
+
+"We have toiled round in a circle.  What shall we do?--now we are lost
+indeed!"  Her voice went straight to his heart, and roused him to fresh
+exertions.
+
+"It is strange that we see no lights," he said; "there must be
+farmhouses or cottages somewhere."
+
+"They all go to bed by daylight in summer--to save candles.  Do let us
+go on--somewhere."  He easily understood her nervous desire to move.
+The darkness seemed to increase; but he led the mare slowly.  Every now
+and then a lark rose from the turf--they could not see, but heard the
+wings--and fluttered away into the gloom.
+
+"Hush!" whispered Margaret suddenly.  "What was that?  I thought I heard
+footsteps."
+
+"It was nothing," said he, peering into the darkness.  He had himself
+heard steps distinctly, but he would not let her be alarmed if he could
+help it.
+
+"There!" she caught fast hold of his arm and drew him close.  The heavy
+steps were distinctly audible for a moment, and then stopped.
+
+"Who goes there?" shouted Geoffrey, startling her with the sudden noise.
+His voice sounded hollow and dead in the vastness of the mighty hills.
+They listened: no answer.
+
+"Let us go on quick," she said.  Kitty moved again, painfully; her rider
+glanced back.
+
+"I am sure I saw something far off moving," she whispered.
+
+"Nothing but a hawthorn bush," said Geoffrey; yet he had himself
+discerned a shadowy something.  Margaret had heard of the shepherds'
+stories of the weird shapes that haunted the desolate places on the
+Downs.  Kitty, obeying her impulse, pushed on more rapidly; when they
+looked back again there was nothing.  But almost suddenly the darkness
+increased; it seemed to thicken and fall on them.  In a few moments it
+was so intensely black that they could barely see each other.  With it
+came a strange sense of oppression--a difficulty of breathing.  Her hand
+on his shoulder trembled; even the man felt a sense of something
+unusual, bent his brow, and steeled himself to meet it.  With her other
+hand she covered her face.  In that pitch-black darkness, that almost
+sulphurous air, it seemed as if a thunderbolt must fall.  The mare stood
+still.
+
+In a minute there came a rushing sound--a rumbling of the ground; it
+swept by on their left at a short distance.  A faint "baa" told what it
+was.  "A flock of sheep," said Geoffrey.  "They have leapt the hurdles."
+
+"They always do when the clouds come down," said Margaret, recollecting
+what the shepherds said.  "It will thunder."
+
+But it did not.  The noise of the frightened flock grew less as they
+raced headlong away.  Shortly afterwards the extreme blackness lifted a
+little.  Presently something like a copse came indistinctly into view
+ahead.  This roused Margaret's fainting hope; it might be Moonlight
+Firs, and they advanced again slowly.  After a short while Kitty stood
+stock-still and would not move, neither for word nor blow; she backed
+instead.
+
+"There must be something there," said Geoffrey, leaving the bridle and
+walking forward.  His feet caught in some bushy heath; he went on his
+knees and felt.  In a yard his hand slipped into space--there was a
+chasm; he drew it back, then put his hand again and took up some earth
+from the side.  It was white; then, dimly, he saw a white wall as it
+were beneath.  An old chalk-quarry.  "Thank Heaven for Kitty's
+instinct!" he muttered.  "We should have walked into it."  He did not
+tell Margaret that it was a quarry; he said it was a steep place.  She
+wanted to go on to the copse; with regret he noticed the weariness of
+her voice; she was tired.  He led Kitty far on one side of the quarry,
+giving it a wide berth, and taking the line of the sheep, who had
+avoided the precipice more by luck than any sense they possess in that
+way.  The extreme darkness had now passed; but the clouds remained, and
+it was gloomy.  He walked slowly, thinking now of possible flint-pits.
+Suddenly Margaret drew rein, and slipped out of the saddle.
+
+"I can't ride any longer," she said.  "I am so tired; let me walk."
+
+She took his arm; in a few minutes she began to lean heavily upon it.
+With the other hand he upheld the mare; thus the woman and the animal
+relied upon the man.  But Margaret's spirit was unbroken--she walked as
+fast as she could.
+
+"Ah, this is not the Firs either!" she cried, as they reached some low
+underwood--nut-tree and hawthorn and thick bramble, overtopped by some
+stunted beeches, with but two or three firs among them.  Passing round
+the small copse they came to an opening, and in the dimness saw some
+large grey stones inside.  Utterly wearied and disappointed she left his
+arm, sat down on the soft turf, and leaned against a boulder.  He looked
+closer.
+
+"There is a dolmen under the trees," he said.  "Margaret dear, have you
+ever heard of this place?"
+
+"These are Grey Wethers," she said, in a low tone.  "And no doubt what
+you call the dolmen is the Cave."
+
+"Then you know where we are?"
+
+"Oh, no; just the reverse.  I have only heard people talk of it; I have
+never been here before; all I know is we must have been going right away
+from Millbourne, just the opposite direction."
+
+"Do not trouble, dear; it seems a little lighter.  Stay here while I go
+out of the copse and look round."
+
+"You will not go far away?"  She could not help saying it.
+
+"No, indeed I will not."  He went out some thirty yards, and then
+stopped, finding the ground began to decline.  As she sat on the turf
+she could see his form against the sky; it was certainly lighter.  In a
+rude circle the great grey boulders crouched around her; just opposite
+was the dolmen.  It was built of three large flat stones set on edge,
+forming the walls, and over these an immense flat one--the table-stone--
+made the roof, which sloped slightly aside.  A dwarf house, of
+Cyclopaean masonry; a house of a single chamber, the chamber of the
+dead.  The place, she had heard, was the sepulchre of an ancient king--
+of a nameless hero.  This Cave, as the shepherds called it, was a tomb.
+They had a dim tradition of the spirits haunting such magic circles of
+the Past.  A sense of loneliness came over her--the silence of the vast
+expanse around weighed upon her; an unwonted nervousness took possession
+of her, as it naturally might in that dreary gloom.  She tried to smile
+at herself, and yet put out her hand, and touched the mare's neck--she
+was grazing near: it was companionship.
+
+"Margaret!"  Her name startled her in the oppressive stillness; she was
+glad to rise and go to him, away from that shadowy place.
+
+"The clouds are breaking fast," he said.  "It will not rain; I am going
+to light a fire."
+
+"A fire!  Why, it is too warm now."
+
+"Not for heat, but as a beacon.  Some shepherd may see it, and come to
+us."
+
+"Indeed he would not,"--a little petulantly, for she was overtired.  "He
+would be afraid, and say it was Jack o' the Lanthorn."
+
+"Well, I will try; possibly a farmer may see it."
+
+"But where is your fuel?  You cannot see to pick up sticks in the
+copse."
+
+"I stumbled on two hurdles just now; one has been thatched with straw."
+
+"I know; that is what the shepherds prop up with a stake, and sit behind
+as a shelter from the wind."
+
+"And the furze-bush here will burn."  She watched him tear some leaves
+out of his pocket-book, and place the fragments under the furze; then he
+added a little straw from the thatched hurdle, and a handful of dry
+grass.
+
+"The stars are coming out again," said Margaret, looking round; "and
+what is that glow of light yonder?"  There was a white reflection above
+the eastern horizon where she pointed.
+
+"It must be the moon rising," he said, and applied a match to his
+bonfire.  A blue tongue of flame curled upwards, an odour of smoke
+arose, and then a sharp crackling, and a sudden heat, that forced them
+to stand away.  The bush burned fiercely, hissing and crackling as the
+fibres of the green wood and the pointed needles shrivelled up.  By the
+light of the tawny flames he now saw the weary expression of her face;
+she must rest somewhere and somehow.
+
+"Quick, Geoffrey! it is going out; throw your hurdles on."
+
+"On second thoughts I will not burn the hurdles."  Nothing flares so
+swiftly or sinks so soon as furze; in a few minutes the beacon was out.
+
+"I must rest," she said, and went back to the trees and sat on a
+boulder.  Opposite, the pale glow in the east shot up into the sky; as
+it rose it became thinner and diffused.  Slowly the waning moon came up
+over the ridge of a distant hill, whose top was brought out by the light
+behind it, as a well-defined black line against the sky.  Vast shadows
+swept along and filled the narrow vales--dark as the abyss of space; the
+slopes that faced eastwards shone with a faint grey.  The distorted
+gibbous disk lifted itself above the edge--red as ruddle and enlarged by
+the refraction: a giant coppery moon, weird and magical.  The forked
+branches of a tree on the hill stretched upwards across it, like the
+black arms of some gibbering demon.
+
+"Look round once more," he said, as the disk cleared the ridge.
+"Perhaps you may recognise some landmark, and I will run and bring
+assistance."
+
+"And leave me here alone!" reproachfully.
+
+"No, I will never leave you."  There was an intense pleasure in feeling
+how thoroughly she relied upon him.  They went outside the copse and
+looked round.  The dim moonlight was even more indefinite than the
+former mist and starlight.  She saw nothing but hills, grey where the
+moonbeams touched them, black elsewhere; great cavernous coombes; behind
+them a shadowy plain.  Here and there a hawthorn bush, fantastic in the
+faint light.  It seemed as if a lengthened gaze might perhaps
+distinguish strange shapes flickering to and fro in the mystic waste.
+
+"I see nothing but hills," she said.  "I do not like to look; let us go
+back to the trees."
+
+She sat down again on the sunken boulder, where only a part of the space
+around and its spectral shadows was visible.
+
+"I feel so sleepy," she said.  Doubtless the warmth made her drowsy as
+well as weariness.  "I think I shall lie down."  She sat on the sward
+and leaned against the stone; Geoffrey felt the short grass, it was
+perfectly dry.
+
+"If only I had something to wrap round you!" he said.  "How foolish I
+have been!  Mr Fisher's rug that was strapped on my horse would have
+been the very thing!  I am so angry with myself--I ought to have thought
+of it."
+
+"But how could you anticipate?"
+
+"At least, wrap your handkerchief about your neck."
+
+"I do not want it; it is too warm.  But I will, as you wish me to."
+
+An idea suddenly occurred to him; he went on his knees and crawled right
+under the table-stone of the dolmen--into the tomb.  She watched him
+with a sleepy horror of the place.  In a minute he emerged triumphant.
+
+"I have found it--this is it.  It is a house built on purpose for you."
+
+"Oh, I hope not," shuddering; "though, of course, we must all die."
+
+"Why--what do you mean?"
+
+"That is a tomb."
+
+"A tomb!" laughing; "oh, yes, perhaps it was once, two thousand years
+ago, before Pisces became Aries."
+
+"I do not understand," petulantly.  "Do let me sleep."
+
+"I mean before the precession of the equinoxes had changed the position
+of the stars; it was so very long ago--"
+
+"Please don't talk to me."
+
+"But I want you to come in here."
+
+"In there!  Impossible!"
+
+"But do, Margaret; it is quite empty; only like a room.  The ground
+inside is as dry as a floor, and the roof will shelter you from the
+night air, and, perhaps, save you from illness."
+
+"I couldn't--no; please."
+
+"Well, just come and look."
+
+"I won't--there!" quite decidedly.
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+He took her arm; notwithstanding her declaration, she rose and followed
+him.  She did not resent his making her do it in that wild and desolate
+place; had he tried to compel her in civilisation, he would have failed.
+Once inside it, the Cave was not at all dreadful; she could sit
+upright, and, as he said, it was merely a chamber, open on one side.  He
+then went to fetch the hurdles to make her a rough couch--it was with
+some thought of this that he had not burned them--knowing anything
+between the sleeper and the bare ground will prevent stiffness or chill.
+He saw that the moon had illuminated a valley on the right hand, and
+walked to the edge, thinking that perhaps a cottage might be in the
+hollow.  There was nothing, but this caused him to be a little longer
+gone.  Now Margaret was just in that state between waking and sleeping
+when shadows take shape and the silence speaks, nor could she forget
+that the Cave had once been a tomb.  She looked out and involuntarily
+uttered a cry.  Among the boulders stood a shapeless whiteness--a form
+rather than a thing, in the midst of the circle.  She covered her face
+with her hands.  Geoffrey returning heard the cry, and came running.
+
+"What!  How fortunate!" he exclaimed.  She looked again--it was the
+grey, Geoffrey's horse; in her nervous dread she had not recognised it
+in the shadow.
+
+"This is fortunate," he said, ignoring her alarm.  "The poor fellow must
+have hobbled after us--perhaps not so very far, as we went round in a
+circle.  Why, this must have been what we heard--the heavy steps, don't
+you remember?  I can make a couch now,"--unstrapping the rug, and
+removing the saddle, and also from Kitty.  Then he took the thatched
+hurdle, and placed it on the floor of the Cave, straw uppermost.  It was
+perfectly clean; the straw bleached white by the wind of the hills.  The
+saddles made a rude support for her shoulders.  She stood up, and he
+wound the rug--which was a large one--about her till she was swathed in
+it, and a kind of hood came round her head.  She reclined upon the
+hurdle, leaning against the saddles; and lastly, at his wish, adjusted
+the handkerchief lightly over her face, so that she might breathe
+easily, and yet so as to keep the night air away.  Then he placed the
+second hurdle, which was not thatched, across the open side of the Cave,
+partly closing it like a door, but not too completely.
+
+"Why, I am quite comfortable," she said.  "Only it is too warm."
+
+"That is a good fault; good-night."
+
+"Good-night."  A long pause.
+
+"Geoffrey--where are you?"
+
+"Sitting by the door of your chamber."
+
+"You have been very kind."
+
+"I have done nothing."
+
+"You have no shelter; what shall you do?"
+
+"I do not mind in the least; you forget I have been used to the bush."
+A second long silence.
+
+"Geoffrey!" very gently.
+
+"I am here, dear."
+
+"Do not go far away."
+
+"Rest assured I will not."
+
+Silence again--this time not broken.
+
+By-and-by he approached and listened; the low regular breathing
+convinced him that she slept at last.  "She must be very, very weary,"
+he thought, "and I--" Scarce a word had been said that might not have
+been uttered before the world, and yet he felt a secret assurance that
+her heart was turning towards him.
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+DAWN.
+
+When Geoffrey felt certain that she was sleeping, his next care was to
+examine the exterior of the Cave, thinking that there might probably be
+openings between the stones that would admit a draught.  The hurdle at
+the doorway, full of minute interstices, and purposely placed loosely,
+allowed sufficient air to enter for breathing; what he wished to prevent
+was a current crossing the chamber, for though warm then, towards the
+morning the atmosphere is usually cooler.  He found that in the course
+of the centuries the ground had risen materially, so that the floor
+inside the cave was below the level of the sward without.  This
+partially closed the crevices between the rude slabs, and from the
+raised turf grasses had grown thickly, and filled the remaining space
+except in one spot.  There the boulder wall, settling under the weight
+of the capstone, leaned somewhat from the perpendicular and left a wide
+chink.  With his knife he cut a broad sod of turf, and placed it against
+the aperture, grass side inwards, filling it up completely.  Then,
+stepping lightly that he might not wake her, he sought the horses, and
+relieved them of their bridles, feeling certain that they would not
+wander far.  A few yards from the copse there was a slight incline of
+the ground; there he sat down on the sward near enough to hear Margaret
+in a moment should she call.
+
+Now that his labour was over and the excitement had subsided, even his
+powerful frame felt the effect of unusual exertion--besides riding, he
+had run and walked many miles that night.  Presently he involuntarily
+reclined almost at full length, leaning on one arm; his weight crushed a
+thick bunch of wild thyme that emitted a delicious scent.  Tall dry
+bennets and some low bushy heath grew at his side.  On the left hand--
+eastwards--stood a hawthorn bush; in front--southwards--was a deep
+coombe, and beyond that a steep Down, towards the top of which grew a
+few gaunt and scattered firs.  As the moon swept slowly higher the pale
+light fell upon the boulders and the dolmen as it had fallen for so many
+ages past.  The darkness in the deep valley became more intense as the
+shadow of the hill grew more defined; where the moonlight fell upon the
+slopes they shone with a greenish-grey reflection, which, when looked at
+intently, vanished.
+
+His dreamy eyes gazed far away over vale and hill, and watched a star
+low down that, little dimmed by the dull moon, still scintillated; for
+moonbeams check those bright flashes that sparkle over the sky.  The
+pointed top of a fir upon the ridge hid the star a moment, then passing
+onward with the firmament it again looked down upon him.  With the
+everlasting hills around, his drowsy mind ran back into the Past, when
+not only men but gods _and_ men played out their passions on those other
+distant hills that looked on windy Troy.  The star, still calmly
+pursuing its way, seemed a link between then and now, but the hearts
+that had throbbed with the warm hope of love, where were they?  Oenone
+wandering disconsolate because of Paris in the shady groves of Ida; the
+zoned Helen with the face--
+
+  That launch'd a thousand ships,
+  And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
+
+The nameless graceful maidens with the many-twinkling feet weaving with
+their steps, as the ears of corn in the breeze weave mystic measures
+under the summer sun--whose limbs still seem to move in joyful
+procession, winding round many an antique vase.  Where, too, were they?
+Where the hope and joy of the early days?  And Margaret, beautiful
+Margaret, slumbering--but living--in the massive tomb, where should she
+be, and _his_ love?  His weary head drooped on the pillow of thyme; with
+a deep-drawn sigh he slept.
+
+The star went on.  In the meadows of the vale far away doubtless there
+were sounds of the night.  On the hills it was absolute silence--
+profound rest.  They slept peacefully, and the moon rose to the
+meridian.  The pale white glow on the northern horizon slipped towards
+the east.  After awhile a change came over the night.  The hills and
+coombes became grey and more distinct, the sky lighter, the stars faint,
+the moon that had been ruddy became yellow, and then almost white.
+
+Yet a little while, and one by one the larks arose from the grass, and
+first twittering and vibrating their brown wings just above the hawthorn
+bushes, presently breasted the aerial ascent, and sang at "Heaven's
+Gate."
+
+Geoffrey awoke and leaned upon his arm; his first thought was of
+Margaret, and he looked towards the copse.  All was still; then in the
+dawn the strangeness of that hoary relic of the past sheltering so
+lovely a form came home to him.  Next he gazed eastwards.
+
+There a great low bank, a black wall of cloud, was rising rapidly,
+extending on either hand, growing momentarily broader, darker,
+threatening to cover the sky.  He watched it come up swiftly, and saw
+that as it neared it became lighter in colour, first grey, then white.
+It was the morning mist driven along before the breeze, whose breath had
+not reached him yet.  In a few minutes the wall of vapour passed over
+him as the waters rolled over Pharaoh.  A puff of wind blew his hair
+back from his forehead, then another and another; presently a steady
+breeze, cool and refreshing.  The mist drove rapidly along; after awhile
+gaps appeared overhead, and through these he saw broad spaces of blue
+sky, the colour growing and deepening.  The gaps widened, the mist
+became thinner; then this, the first wave of vapour, was gone, creeping
+up the hillside behind him like the rearguard of an army.
+
+Out from the last fringe of mist shone a great white globe.  Like molten
+silver, glowing with a lusciousness of light, soft and yet brilliant, so
+large and bright and seemingly so near--but just above the ridge
+yonder-shining with heavenly splendour in the very dayspring.  He knew
+Eosphoros, the Light-Bringer, the morning star of hope and joy and love,
+and his heart went out towards the beauty and the glory of it.  Under
+him the broad bosom of the earth seemed to breathe instinct with life,
+bearing him up, and from the azure ether came the wind, filling his
+chest with the vigour of the young day.
+
+The azure ether--yes, and more than that!  Who that has seen it can
+forget the wondrous beauty of the summer morning's sky?  It is blue--it
+is sapphire--it is like the eye of a lovely woman.  A rich purple shines
+through it; no painter ever approached the colour of it, no Titian or
+other, none from the beginning.  Not even the golden flesh of Rubens'
+women, through the veins in whose limbs a sunlight pulses in lieu of
+blood shining behind the tissues, can equal the hues that glow behind
+the blue.
+
+The East flamed out at last.  Pencilled streaks of cloud high in the
+dome shone red.  An orange light rose up and spread about the horizon,
+then turned crimson, and the upper edge of the sun's disk lifted itself
+over the hill.  A swift beam of light shot like an arrow towards him,
+and the hawthorn bush obeyed with instant shadow: it passed beyond him
+over the green plain, up the ridge and away.  The great orb, quivering
+with golden flames, looked forth upon the world.
+
+He arose and involuntarily walked a few steps towards it, his heart
+swelling, the inner voice lifted.  The larks sang with all their might,
+the swallows played high overhead.  When he turned, Margaret had risen
+and came to meet him, blushing, and trying in vain to push back her
+hair, that had become slightly loosened.  The breeze revelled in it.
+
+"Is it not beautiful?" she said, as they shook hands, looking round.  He
+gazed into her eyes till the fringes drooped and hid them: then he
+kissed her hand.  Her cheeks burned; she withdrew it quickly.  "We must
+go," she said, all confused.  He would gladly have prolonged that
+moment, but went loyally to do her bidding.  He had no difficulty with
+the horses, they had wandered but a short distance; the grey's lameness
+had nearly gone off, probably it would quite when he warmed to his work.
+They were soon mounted; but then came the old question, which way to
+ride?  Margaret could not recognise any of the hills.  Geoffrey decided
+to ride direct east, towards the sun, thinking that if they kept in one
+direction they must cross a road presently.  They started along the
+ridge with a deep valley on the right hand, and keeping a sharp look-out
+in the expectation of seeing a shepherd soon, for Margaret was naturally
+anxious to get into a civilised locality.
+
+"There is a cloud coming towards us," she said presently.
+
+Another great wave of vapour was sweeping up, and had already hidden the
+sun.  It crept up the slope of the hill on which they rode like a rising
+tide--the edge clearly marked--and enveloped them.  They went slowly,
+thinking of flint-pits, and not able to see many yards.  Presently the
+breeze opened a gap overhead, and they were between two huge walls of
+mist.  They drew rein, and in a few minutes the dense white vapour
+insensibly melted and the sun shone.  But then as it rolled away and the
+ridges of the hills appeared the cloud-like mist visibly undulated about
+their summits, now rising, now falling, like the vast low waves of the
+ocean after the wind has sunk.  Here and there the mist caught and held
+the sunlight, and seemed lit up from within; then it disappeared, and
+the bright spot transferred itself to a distant range.  A few more
+minutes and the breeze carried the vapour away, and they rode forward,
+and after some distance passed through a forest of furze.  A rabbit now
+and then scampered away, and the stone-chats flew from bush to bush and
+repeated their short note.  Suddenly, in following the narrow winding
+opening between the furze, the grey snorted and stopped short.  Geoffrey
+looked and saw a labouring man asleep upon the sward, his head pillowed
+on a small boulder stone, or sarsen.  He called to him, and the man
+moved and sat up.
+
+"Why!" said Margaret in amazement; "why, it is our shepherd, Jabez!"
+
+"Eez, miss, it be I," rubbing his eyes; "and main stiff I be."
+
+"How ever did you come here?"
+
+"Where are we?" said Geoffrey.  "What part of the Down is this?  Where
+are Moonlight Firs?"
+
+"Aw, doan'tee caddie me zo, measter."
+
+"But we want to get home," said Margaret.  "Now tell us quickly."
+
+"Be you lost too, miss?"  The shepherd to save his life could not have
+answered a question direct.
+
+"You don't mean that you have been lost, Jabez?"
+
+"I wur last night.  I twisted thuck leg."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+"Aw, you bean't very fur from th' Warren."
+
+"Only think," said Margaret, "all the while we were close where I
+started from.  If May had known we were on the hills!  We had better go
+to Mr Fisher's.  No one will be about, and I can go home later in the
+day."
+
+"Show me the way to the Warren," said Geoffrey.  "Why don't you get up?"
+
+"I tell ee my leg be twisted.  I fell in a vlint-pit."
+
+"Well, point out the road, and I will return and fetch you."
+
+"Aw, you must go away on your left, toward thuck Folly--a' be about a
+mile.  It bean't six chain from he to th' waggon ruts as goes to Warren.
+But if you goes up the hill by the nut copse that'll be sharter.
+Doan't forget I.  Zend Bill wi' the cart."
+
+By following these directions they found Warren House in about half an
+hour.  Margaret's chief idea in returning there was because at so lonely
+a place their appearance at that early hour would attract less
+attention, and because she was hungry and thirsty, and the distance was
+much less than the ride to Greene Ferne.  They could hear the clack of
+the mill as they approached; at the house, in front the shutters were
+not yet down, but Margaret, who knew the ways of the place, rode into
+the courtyard at the back, where was the dairy.
+
+"Good morning, Jenny," she said.  A stout florid woman, who was carrying
+a bucket of water, looked up, started, and dropped it.
+
+"Lor, miss, how you did froughten I!  I be all of a jimmy-swiver," and
+she visibly trembled, which was what she meant.  Then seeing Geoffrey,
+she dropped a curtsey and began to wipe her naked arms and hands with
+her apron.
+
+"I suppose Mr Fisher is in the barn?" said Margaret, not wishing the
+inquisitive old man to know the manner of their arrival.
+
+"No, a' bean't up yet, miss.  He be mostly about by four or ha'past; but
+he freggled [fidgeted] hisself auver thuck paason as come a bit ago, and
+a' be a'bed to marning."
+
+"Lucky," said Margaret, dismounting.  "I'll go and wake May."
+
+She went indoors, knowing the house well.  "I'll put your 'osses in,"
+said Jenny.  "Our volk be in th' pens, a' reckon."
+
+"I thought your master was a very aged man," said Geoffrey, as he went
+with her to the stable.
+
+"He be nigh handy on a hunderd."
+
+"Surely he does not rise at four o'clock?"
+
+"Aw, eez a' do though.  He be as hardy as a wood-pile toad!"
+
+"Can you tell me where to find a cart?  I must go myself and fetch the
+shepherd," and he told her briefly how matters stood, trusting in her
+honest open countenance to keep silence as far as possible.  Obviously
+it was undesirable that the events of the night should be generally
+known.
+
+"What, Jabez lost!" said she.  "'Tis amazin' sure--ly.  He said as he
+could find his way athwert them downs with his head in a sack bag.
+Wull, to be zure!"
+
+With her aid Geoffrey soon had a cart and cart-horse, and taking with
+him a bottle of brandy, which May sent down, her kindly heart thinking
+poor Jabez, with his sprained ankle, would require something, set forth
+to fetch the shepherd, who was indeed in a "parlous case."  He found him
+without difficulty, for Jabez saw him coming, and shouted directions in
+a voice famous for its power.  But getting him into the cart was another
+thing, and many applications to the bottle were necessary before he was
+safely up.  As they jogged over the hill, Geoffrey inquired how so
+experienced a man, who could cross the downs with his head in a bag,
+ever came to get lost.
+
+"Why," said the shepherd, solemnly shaking his head, "it wur the Ould Un
+hisself, it wur.  He led I by th' nause round and round--a' bides in
+thuck place wur them gurt stwoanes be.  Mebbe a' caddled [bothered] you
+and miss too?"
+
+"Why do you think it was the Dev--, what you call the Old One?"
+
+"Cos 'twur he," dogmatically.  "Cos Job, he run away, and nothing but
+the Ould Un would a' froughtened he."
+
+"Job?"
+
+"He's my dog.  I be as dry as a gicks,"--the withered stem of a plant.
+He took another swig at the bottle, and, much encouraged thereby, lifted
+up his ditty in praise of shepherding:
+
+  "The shepherd he stood on the side of the hill,
+  And he looked main cold and peaked;
+  Says, `If it wurn't for the sheep and the pore shepherd
+  The warld would be starved and naked!'"
+
+"You seem tolerably philosophic," said Geoffrey, "for a man with a
+sprained ankle; but you have not told me yet how you got lost."
+
+"Aw, bailee, thuck thur 'Gustus, sent me to Ilsley market wi' dree-score
+yeows and lambs, zum on en wur doubles as vine as ever you seed--and I
+wur a coming whoam at night, doan'tee zee?  I never had but one quart
+anyhow and mebbe a nip a' summat else.  It wur th' Ould Un and no
+mistake.  But then he goes off--drat th' varmint, I'll warm his jacket
+when a' shows his face agen.  I looks about for he, and misses the path,
+and then I wur took by the nause and drawed round and round!"  (With his
+finger he described circles in the air to illustrate his meaning.)
+"Bime-by--whop!  I falls into a vlint-pit.  The nettles did bite my face
+terrable!  I bided there a main bit and then crawls up to the vuzz
+[furze].  My droat wur zo thick I couldn't holler; and Lor! how the
+stars did go spinning round!  I seed a fire arter a bit by them stwoanes
+at th' Cave, and thenks I thuck be He this time, you--"
+
+"So you took us for the Ould Un?"
+
+"Wull, I axes your pardin.  A'wuver I couldn't crawl no furder, zo I
+lays down in the vuzz and thenks a' Jacob and puts my head on a sarsen
+stwoan--"
+
+"And slept till we found you?"
+
+"Eez; this be featish tackle," meaning the liquor was good.
+
+"It strikes me," said Geoffrey, "the demon that led you astray dwelt in
+a stone jar, with a wicker-work casing."  After which he suggested to
+the shepherd the desirability of his remaining silent about the affairs
+of the night, so far as regarded Margaret and himself, and enforced his
+argument with the present of half a sovereign.  The shepherd's eye
+glistened at the coin.
+
+"Bless'ee," said he, "I worked for hur feyther.  I sha'n't know nothing,
+you med be sure."  Shortly after, they arrived at Warren House.  There
+Geoffrey found that May had got breakfast ready in the parlour, and was
+made welcome.  Jenny brought in a jug of cream for their tea.
+
+"You can't swing it on your finger," said Margaret, laughing.
+
+"Our housekeeper," explained May to Geoffrey, "I mean Jane, not Jenny,
+is rather fond of gin, dreadful creature.  To get it she has to cross
+the room in front of grandpa's chair; so to deceive him and make believe
+there's nothing in it, she swings the jug slowly on her finger, when
+it's half full all the while.  One day, however, he insisted on smelling
+the jug."
+
+They discussed and laughed over Margaret and Geoffrey's adventure on the
+hills, and it was agreed that every effort should be made to conceal it
+from all but Mrs Estcourt.  Margaret had lost one of her earrings, but
+May said the labourers should be told to look for it, and one or other
+would very likely find it, if it had been dropped in or near the Cave.
+After breakfast, between six and seven o'clock, when folks in town were
+just settling into slumber, May sat down to the ancient piano and began
+to play.  It was one of those antique instruments, found in old houses,
+which shut up and look like a sideboard, of five octaves only, and small
+keys, yellow from age, upon which they say our grandmothers played with
+the backs of their hands level with the keyboard, and without dropping a
+guinea if one was placed on their white knuckles.  Through the open
+window the warm sunlight entered, tinting Margaret's brown hair with
+gold.  There came the odour of many flowers, the hum of bees, and the
+distant sound of rushing water.  It was a joyous hour of youth.  May and
+Margaret sang alternately the beautiful old ballad of which they say Sir
+Walter Raleigh wrote the antistrophe--the reply to the Passionate
+Shepherd's desire, "Come live with me, and be my love!"
+
+May (the Shepherd):--
+
+  There will I make thee beds of roses
+  With a thousand fragrant posies,
+  A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
+  Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
+  A belt of straw and ivy buds,
+  With coral clasps and amber studs:
+  And if these pleasures may thee move,
+  Then live with me, and be my love!
+
+Margaret (the Lady):--
+
+  If that the World and Love were young,
+  And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
+  These pretty pleasures might me move
+  To live with thee, and be thy love!
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+A-NUTTING.
+
+"Thistledown for thoughts," said May Fisher, laughing, as she tried to
+seize the glossy balls floating by on the idle air of the lane.
+
+"Thoughts are of little value, then," said Felix St Bees.
+
+"Except to the goldfinches," said Margaret; "see how busy they are."
+
+It was a lovely afternoon: white fleecy clouds lingered in the upper
+atmosphere, so gauze-like in texture as scarcely to diminish the sun's
+rays when they passed over.  The golden mist of ripe September filled
+the hollows and hung over the distant ridges, softening with haze the
+outlines of the hills.  The fierce stress of midsummer heat was gone,
+leaving instead a luxurious warmth that lured them into the fields.
+Margaret had succeeded in persuading old Andrew Fisher to let May return
+to Greene Ferne.  Rude as he was, Margaret's beauty stirred the expiring
+spirit of gallantry, and he yielded.  Although he would not let May go
+back at once in her company, he fixed a day for her return.  Margaret
+explained to him that St Bees did not need his money, having plenty;
+and the old man--prompted too by avarice--sent a gruff kind of apology,
+and asked Felix to call again.  Felix, however, had had his dignity
+upset by the blackthorn cudgel hurled at his head, and naturally waited
+awhile before repeating his visit.  Geoffrey still stayed at Thorpe
+Hall, for the shooting now, and Valentine at Hollyock Cottage.  They had
+all started that afternoon to go a-nutting in Thorpe Wood.
+
+The wood was approached by a winding thick-hedged lane.  As they slowly
+advanced a bevy of goldfinches went before them, rising from the
+thistles, for they love the seeds in the down, with a "fink" of
+remonstrance, settling again to start up once more, and finally, out of
+patience at the interruption, taking flight to the tall ash-trees, to
+wait till the intruders had passed on.
+
+"We must have some sticks with crooks to pull the boughs down," said
+May, "or we shall not reach half the nuts."
+
+So the gentlemen took out their pocket-knives, and searched for suitable
+sticks.  Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine
+another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough
+he came to, and trimmed it.
+
+"Yours will not do," said Margaret to him.  "The willow is too weak--it
+will split."
+
+"Will mine answer?" asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.
+
+"Yes, that is tougher.  Why don't you get an ash, Geoffrey?"
+
+"I shall trust in my first choice," said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed
+even by so slight a matter; for when men's minds are strung with love
+and jealousy the least thing nettles them.
+
+"I think it will do," said May, anxious to smooth it over.
+
+As they went on down the lane the blackbirds every now and then sprang
+from the bushes with a loud cry; the song-thrushes, less wild, sat on
+the spray till they came close.  Stray blue butterflies wandered
+wonderingly in and out, with a dainty tripping flight--wonderingly,
+because they had but lately entered to the summer world, and found so
+much to see they could not stay long in one place.  Bryony leaves,
+shaped like the shields of ancient Norman knights, trailed a pale buff
+scarf across the bushes.  Bryony berries, some red and some a metallic
+shining green, clustered in grape-like bunches.  Blackberries ripening;
+haws reddening on the thorn; yellow fronds of brake fern on the tall
+stems rising beside the brambles.  No sound save the dry grasshoppers
+singing in the grass, and leaping before their footsteps; and the
+robin's plaintive notes from the ash.  So they went on and into the
+silence of the wood.  The soft warmth brooded over it--the winds were
+still.  High up in the beeches spots of red gold were widening slowly,
+and the acorns showed thickly on the oaks.  Then past narrow "drives,"
+or tracks going through the woods, bounded on each side with endless
+walls of ashpoles with branches of pole green; carpeted with dark-green
+grass and darker moss luxuriating in the dank shade, and roofed with
+spreading oak-spray.  These vistas seemed to lead into unknown depths of
+forest.  They paused and looked down one, feeling an indefinite desire
+of exploration; and as they looked in the silence a leaf fell, brown and
+tanned, with a trembling rustle, and they saw its brown oval dot the
+rank green grass, upon whose blades it was upborne.  On again, and out
+into a broad glade, where the rabbits had been at play, and raced to
+their hiding-places.  Here were clumps of beeches, brown with
+innumerable nuts; straight-grown Spanish chestnuts, with spiny green
+balls of fruit; knotted oaks; and tall limes, already yellow and filled
+by the sunshine with a hazy shimmer of colour.  Over the glade a dome of
+deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and
+moved slow.
+
+After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them;
+tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell
+in a shower when the stem was shaken.  Nuts are the cunningest of fruit
+in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly
+enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these
+are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally
+pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen.  The nuts grow under the
+bough in such a position that, in pulling it down to reach a visible
+bunch, the very motion of the bough as it bends hides the rest beneath
+it.  These will stay till they drop from the hoods, till, turning to a
+dark and polished brown, they fall ratling from branch to branch to the
+earth.  There again the dead brown leaves hide them by similarity of
+colour.  So that, to thoroughly strip a hazel bush requires a knowledge
+of the likely places and the keenest of eyes.
+
+As for May, restless and ever in movement, glinting hither and thither
+like a sunbeam when the shadows of the branches dance in the breeze, she
+could never stay long enough to really search the boughs.  She went from
+thicket to thicket, constantly finding one that bore more than that she
+had just left.  This butterfly flight soon carried her away and hid her
+among the bushes, though her merry laugh came back in answer to
+Margaret's call.  Felix of course was with her.
+
+Like money-getting, nut-gathering grows upon the searcher.  When pockets
+are full and baskets running over, and a heap on the handkerchief spread
+upon the ground, though the palate is weary with eating, and the arms
+with working held high above the head, yet still the avarice increases.
+So Margaret gathered and gathered, and laughed and chatted, and stood on
+tiptoe, and enjoyed the gipsying.  Her hat had fallen back almost upon
+her shoulder, the impudent snatches of the branches loosened her hair,
+and the fierce caress of the briars tore her skirt.  Her cheek was
+flushed with the bloom of pure young blood put swiftly in motion by the
+labour.  The grey eyes sparkled, and as she raised her hand the sleeve
+dropped and gave a glimpse of the white polished wrist glowing among the
+leaves.  The excitement, the _abandon_ of the moment, gave another charm
+to her beauty.  It is where the river ripples that the sunbeams glisten,
+not on the smooth still flow.  She felt along the boughs for the
+cluster, for what the eyes may miss the hand will often discover; she
+let the boughs spring up a little way without quite releasing them, to
+look a second time underneath before quitting hold.  The heap of nuts
+grew larger every moment.
+
+Valentine and Geoffrey were there, helping to pull the boughs within
+reach for her.  Without a thought of evil, the very brightness, the
+carelessness of her enjoyment, raised to a bitter height the smouldering
+jealousy between them.  The smile upon her face when turned towards
+Geoffrey had the inspiration of love behind it, which he in his rising
+anger could not see.  Towards Valentine it was a smile only, though
+seemingly as bright; yet he, eager for a sign, interpreted it as
+something more.  She knew that they had been the dearest friends, and in
+her innocence never dreamed that a smile or a glance could play such
+havoc with that friendship.  Her heart she knew was Geoffrey's--it was
+the very knowledge of his love that made her so happy that day.  But
+under the nut-tree, and the laugh, and the sunshine, fierce passions
+were stirring in their hearts.  Both were watching eagerly for a chance
+of speaking to her privately; Valentine, to say words that had long been
+as it were upon his lips, to ask her to accept him; Geoffrey, full of
+reproaches, and yet with a guilty sense of lacking trust.  When the
+great bush was stripped to the uttermost as it seemed, Margaret stood
+back a little distance to view it the better, and see that not one nut
+had escaped.
+
+"Ah," she cried, pointing to the topmost bough, "I can see a splendid
+cluster.  Look, Valentine, there must be five or six nuts in one bunch."
+There was a fine and tempting cluster where she pointed, the sunlight
+shining on it, and one side of the nuts rosy, as if ripened more towards
+the beams.  Geoffrey ran to the bush and seized the strong hazel high up
+with his willow crook.  It was an exceptionally large nut-tree stick,
+stiff and tall, and scarcely yielded to his first attempt.
+
+"Pull gently," said Margaret, all intent, "or you will shake them out,
+and perhaps lose them."
+
+"Can you reach them now?" he asked; for as the bough came down he could
+not see well, being under it.
+
+"Yes; I've got them.  O!"  For, as the tips of her fingers touched the
+nuts, there was the sound of splitting wood, and the cluster flew up to
+its original height.  Geoffrey's willow crook had broken, as she had
+said it would.
+
+"Here are some," said Valentine, just behind; secretly glad at
+Geoffrey's failure.  He had gone to an adjacent bush and crooked a laden
+bough down with his tough ash stick.  Margaret turned to go there.
+Instantly Geoffrey, angry and jealous, sprang at the hazel pole that had
+baffled him, seized it as far up as possible, and hung with all his
+weight.  It bent; he put his foot against the stole, and with all his
+great strength wrenched the bough from its juncture.  With a loud crack
+it parted and fell at her feet.
+
+"Now take them," he said savagely.  But the force of the fall had shaken
+the nuts out and scattered them afar, lost among the grass and leaves.
+
+"What a pity!  The bough is spoilt too," said Margaret.  "Why don't you
+cut a crook like Valentine's?"  She went towards Valentine's bush,
+somewhat surprised at the vehemence of Geoffrey's manner.
+
+Geoffrey took his knife and ran into the bushes to cut another crook.
+Hardly had he disappeared in the thickets when he called to her.
+
+"Margaret, Margaret!  I have found your glove--you dropped it."
+
+She went towards the voice; the moment she came near he grasped both her
+hands tightly.  There was no glove, it was a _ruse_ to speak to her.
+
+"You seem to prefer _his_ society to mine," he said, in a low, hard
+tone.
+
+"What _do_ you mean?"  Her glance and surprised expression reproached
+him for his harshness.  He hated himself for his next words, and yet he
+uttered them; jealousy is cruel, and drove him on even against his
+better mind.
+
+"I mean that you play double--first with me and then with _him_."
+
+Now this was not only positively untrue, but in the worst possible
+taste; had he been cool he would never have said it; as it was he
+instantly repented.  She stood before him silent, all the blood gone
+from her cheek in the extremity of her indignation, unable to speak.
+Then she drew her hands away, and her breath came in short quick sobs.
+
+"No, no, I did not mean it."  He tried to take her hand again, but she
+fled swiftly among the brake fern and the thickets seeking May.  He
+stood bewildered at his own folly; then his anger was redoubled against
+Valentine instead of against himself.  A minute or two afterwards he
+heard a slight cry, as if caused by pain, and immediately went towards
+it, but in a dazed kind of way.  Valentine was swifter.
+
+As Margaret ran between the bramble bushes and the nut-tree stoles,
+winding round the tangled masses of fern, and increasing her pace as the
+full significance of Geoffrey's insinuation became apparent to her, she
+was heedless of her footsteps, and so caught her foot in a trailing bine
+of honeysuckle, and fell on one knee.  In falling she instinctively
+grasped at the nearest bough, and thereby did the mischief; for a briar
+was twisted round it, and a great hooked thorn ran deep into her thumb.
+The sharp sudden pain caused her cry.  Valentine was at her side in a
+moment.  He saw the thorn, which had broken away from the briar and was
+fixed in the wound.
+
+"I am so sorry," he said.  "Let me take it out."
+
+A tiny red globule of blood oozed from the white and polished skin,
+contrasting so sweetly in colour that he actually paused half a second
+to admire before he drew it.
+
+"Quick, please," she said.
+
+He drew it tenderly, and another larger crimson drop welled up, and
+stood on the delicate white thumb.  "It is out."
+
+"You are sure the point is not left in?"  He bent over to examine more
+carefully.  The sunbeams lit up her beautiful hand; temptation overcame
+him and he kissed it, and the crimson drop stained his lip.
+
+"Sir!"  She angrily snatched it away.  At the same moment she saw
+Geoffrey looking through the parted bushes behind Valentine, who did not
+know he was so near.
+
+"A moment!" cried Valentine, in the flood of his passion.  "Listen.  I
+love--"
+
+But she rushed from him.  Valentine followed her.  Geoffrey let the
+bushes come together, and Valentine did not see him.  Margaret went
+towards May's merry laugh, which she could hear not far off.
+
+"May!  May!"
+
+"Here I am--by the oak."
+
+Then Felix, knowing his _tete-a-tete_ with May was almost at an end,
+snatched a kiss.
+
+"I will go up to the mill again," said he.  "I will succeed this time."
+
+"Beware of the blackthorn," laughed May, and was very innocently engaged
+looking at a sprig of oak with three young acorns on it when Margaret
+came.
+
+"I am glad I have found you."
+
+"You have torn your sleeve!"
+
+"In the briars--see my thumb."
+
+"Aphrodite has pricked her hand instead of her foot this time," said
+Felix.  "We shall see a new flower in the spring.  Let me bind it up?"
+and he wrapped May's handkerchief round it.  Then Geoffrey and Valentine
+came, apart and yet together.
+
+"I think it is time to return home," said May, guessing at once from the
+expression of their faces and Margaret's manner that something was
+wrong.
+
+"Yes, I think so too," said Margaret.  "We have plenty of nuts."
+
+The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the
+loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape.  They left the wood and
+returned to Greene Ferne.  As they approached the house a labouring man
+advanced and spoke to Margaret.
+
+"Be this yourn, miss?" he said, and offered her the lost earring.  "I
+found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here," (looking at
+Geoffrey), "thuck night--"
+
+"Wait a moment," said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure
+had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs Estcourt.  "I will come
+to you in a moment."
+
+Valentine heard the man's words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey.
+Instantly his jealousy was aroused--here was something secret.  What had
+they to do with the Cave at night?  Nor was Margaret's halting
+explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him.
+Altogether the situation was constrained.  Both Valentine and Geoffrey
+stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found
+an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret.  When they left Greene
+Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.
+
+Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and
+overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and
+mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of
+gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand.  As he came
+up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated
+his pace to hers.
+
+"You seem to have a heavy load," he said.  In the dusk the old hag
+either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.
+
+"I ain't got half a bundle," she grunted.  "Thaay won't let a pore old
+body glean when a-can't rip."
+
+"Well, it's beautiful weather for the harvest."
+
+"Aw, eez--the het [heat] makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the
+gearden be a-spoiling for rain."
+
+"The farmers pay good wages now, don't they?"
+
+"Um pays what um be obliged to."
+
+"You have a good landlord here--Squire Thorpe."
+
+"_He_!  Drotted ould skinvlint!  You go and look at thaay cottages:
+thaay be his'n.  The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won't mend it.
+I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains."
+
+"At all events, the farmers like him."
+
+"Do um?  Never heard say zo.  His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock
+of sheep."
+
+"The vicar--Mr Basil--is kind to the poor, is he not?" asked Valentine,
+forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman's
+bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything.  He was most surprised
+at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly
+disposition.  She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.
+
+"Our paason! ould varmint--a gives all the coals and blankets at
+Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be
+chapel-volk.  What have he done with the widders' money, I wants to
+knaw?"
+
+"What money was that?"
+
+"Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you
+med see it stuck up in the chancel.  I never seed none of it, nor
+anybody else as ever I heard tell on."
+
+"But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?"
+
+"A vine lot: it bean't for such as we."
+
+"You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now,
+that little grocer's shop where they sell--"
+
+"You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and
+whipcord.  Her buys hares and birds from the poachers--her will get
+notice to quit zum o' these yer days."
+
+"But the blacksmith works hard.  I always hear his hammer when I go by."
+
+"What--_he_!  The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting
+Mathew the cobbler.  Mathew lives with Thompson's wife--he as was
+transported for firing Farmer Ruck's rick-barken.  That be a vine
+thing--her be as bad as he."
+
+"The new school will set you to rights."
+
+"Aw, will a'?  The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent
+away; but them Timothy wenches bean't no better than um should be."
+
+"Who's Timothy?"
+
+"Doan't you knaw ould Timothy?  He be a mower--a' will drink dree
+gallons a day.  That young Sam'l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a' be
+a new chap.  I doan't knaw much about he, but I've hearn as a' had six
+weeks for stealing lambs."
+
+"H'm!" said Valentine, smiling.  "They all seem a bad lot."
+
+"Zo um be."
+
+"But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don't know anything
+against her?"
+
+"Aw, doan't I?  What be her daughter up to?  What wur her a-doing on the
+Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire's as goes
+arter her?  Mebbe you knaws un."
+
+"When was it?" asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance
+and bitterness returning.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"Miss Margaret--a vine miss she be; zo grand.  Lord, I minds when
+farmers' daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it.
+That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher's--warn you knaws her?--her
+tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I."
+
+"Told what?" sharply.
+
+"What I ses, to be zure.  Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck
+night.  'Tain't no use caddling I--I can't tell ee no more.  What,
+bean't you going to carry that basket no furder?"
+
+For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it
+back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.
+
+"Mebbe you'll give I a bit of snuff?" she said.  He gave her a shilling
+and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all
+these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be
+fixed on Geoffrey.
+
+"This is intolerable," he said to himself, "that he should make Margaret
+a common talk among these people.  What on earth did the old woman
+allude to, and how came that earring lost?"
+
+It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it
+was natural enough that it should be.  The old woman, as Valentine
+walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket,
+readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, "The gurt
+chattering fool to come a' hindering I!"
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+GLEANING.
+
+Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair
+facing the western window in Warren House.  The sun was sinking, and
+seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man's
+countenance was turned.  Once more the sickle had done its work, and the
+golden grain was garnered.  For the shadow of the days had gone forward
+upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust,
+timed the equinox and the march of the firmament.  The merry barley was
+laid low; and the acorns--first green, then faintly yellow--were
+ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.
+
+On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and
+stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a
+long farewell.  For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy
+plough.  The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there
+was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun.  As a ripe
+pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was
+bending to its fall.  Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down
+towards Thorpe Wood.  The long files of the black army streaked the sky
+with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air
+with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle
+of the noisy jackdaws.  The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool
+bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous
+chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and
+without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its
+foam and bubble and spray as of human life.
+
+The sunbeam on the chamber-wall--stained azure and purple by the painted
+escutcheon of "Fischere" on the pane--travelled slowly as the sun sank
+lower.  There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair--a picture
+old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish.  It was the
+portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and
+with bare head, fishing in the brook.  The portrait was that of Andrew
+himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother.  Was there a
+tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her--heartbroken by his evil
+so many, many weary years ago?  Was he wiser, happier, now in the
+fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread
+and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy
+scooped out a deeper hollow?
+
+"Caer-wit! caer-weet!"  It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the
+mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble
+lower down.  Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs.
+His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark
+a covey down as they skim across the uplands.
+
+The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the
+wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the
+field.  Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their
+stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine.  Such paths used by
+the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be
+found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern
+privacy, and were once the general custom.  It was the season of the
+harvest, the time of joy and gladness.  Do you suppose these women moved
+in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the
+women came home from the field with corn and grape:
+
+  In Tempe and the dales of Arcady?
+
+Do you suppose their brows were wreathed with the honeysuckle's second
+autumn bloom, with streaked convolvulus and bronzed ears of wheat?
+
+Their backs were bowed beneath great bundles of gleanings, or faggots of
+dead sticks carefully sought for fuel, and they carried weary infants,
+restless and fretful.  Their forms had lost all semblance to the
+graceful curve of woman; their faces were hard, wrinkled, and angular,
+drawn with pain and labour.  Save by their garments none could
+distinguish them from men.  Yet they were not penned in narrow walls,
+but all things green and lovely were spread around them.  The fresh
+breezes filled their nostrils in the spring with the delicate odour of
+the flowering bean-field and the clover scent; the very ground was
+gilded with sunshine beneath their feet.  But the magic of it touched
+them not, for their hearts were pinched with poverty.  These are they to
+whom the old, old promise bears its full significance: "Come unto Me,
+all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
+
+They trooped past the window, and saw the old man sitting in his chair;
+and one said to another, "Thur be thuck ould varmint.  He never done
+nought all his time, and have got more vittels than a' can yeat.  Thaay
+says a' drinks a' main drop of gin moast days.  He wur a bad un, he wur,
+time ago.  What be the matter with thuck you?  How he do howl--it sounds
+main unkid!"
+
+"Come on, you," said another; "I be terrable tired, bean't you?  Wonder
+how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?"
+
+So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly
+curtsey to "Measter" in the beehive chair.  Then at last the great
+blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed
+over the earth.  A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the
+west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye;
+like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a
+deep-tinted crimson.  Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and
+the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the
+flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge.  Into the chamber
+came the reflection--as of the last conflagration that we dare not think
+of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment--and the place was filled
+with a luminous glamour.  Listen! faintly up from the silence of the
+ages comes the chaunt of the monks:
+
+  Dies irae, dies illa,
+  Solvet saeclum in favilla.
+
+The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand.  Away down in the vale, and
+yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but
+the old man's face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it.
+But Felix St Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached
+the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and
+drew rein and gazed about him.  A dome of fire above reflected by the
+dull earth--a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass
+blades.  Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward
+with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under.  On the
+sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf
+gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze
+pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the
+breath of flame.  He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is
+prayer, and watched till it passed away.  Then he pushed on among the
+hills.
+
+Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn
+thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen
+or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road.  The
+highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the
+hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble.
+On the sward a tinker's donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the
+excitement.
+
+"We've got un!"
+
+"Heave un out, you!"
+
+"Lay on, Jim!"
+
+"Let I try!"
+
+"Peach un up!"
+
+"What is it you are trying to do?" asked Felix, guiding his horse up to
+the group.
+
+"Aw, I seed his toes a' sticking out," cried a plough-boy, eager lest
+his share of the discovery should be forgotten.
+
+"It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away," said a man with a
+leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith.  Nothing ever happens without a
+blacksmith being in it.
+
+"Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan't ee zee?" said the landlord of the
+inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a
+shortener of the breath.
+
+"Well, but what is it, after all--a treasure?"
+
+"Us doan't 'zactly knaw what it be," said the man nearest the bank,
+pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect.  "But us means to
+zee.  Jim, shove thuck pole in."
+
+Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed,
+into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the
+earth above which had been previously dug away.
+
+"Zumbody be buried thur, paason," said the landlord.  "Mebbe you knaws
+un?  Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on."
+
+"Hang on, you chaps!" cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his
+body on the pole.  The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the
+same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from
+above.
+
+"Peach un up!"  [i.e. lever it]
+
+"He be goin'."  Felix saw the boulder move.
+
+"One, two, dree!"
+
+"War out!"
+
+They spread right and left.  Felix, who did not for the instant
+comprehend that "war out" meant "clear away," had much ado to save his
+horse; for the boulder came with a rush, bringing with it half a ton of
+rubble, thud on the ground, which trembled.
+
+"Aw, here a' be!"
+
+"This be uz yod!"  [head.] "Warn this be uz chine!" holding up a part of
+the vertebrae.
+
+"He wur a whopper, you!"
+
+"The gyeaunt Goliar', I'll warn," said the aged man on the bank.
+
+"Don't disturb the skeleton!" cried Felix, anxious to make scientific
+notes of the interment; whether the grave was "orientated," or the knees
+drawn up to the chin; but in the scramble for the bones his voice was
+unheeded, and the skeleton was disjointed in an instant.  The bones were
+as light as pith, ready to crumble to pieces and little better than
+dust, yet still retaining, as it were, a sketch of human shape.
+
+"Drow um in this here," said the landlord, as the buzz subsided, and
+holding out a stable-bucket which he had fetched.  So skull and femur,
+radius and ulna--all the relics of poor humanity--were "chucked"
+indiscriminately into the stable-bucket.
+
+"A' warn a' wur buried in th' time o' Judges," said Jim.  "Um set up
+stwuns for memorials, doan't you mind?  Thuck sarsen be all five hunderd
+weight."
+
+"Mebbe a' fowght Julius Caesar," said the aged man on the bank above.
+"I've heard tell as Julius wur a famous hand a' back-swording.  You med
+see as uz skull wur cracked with a pistol-bullet--one of thaay ould
+vlint-locks--and here be th' trigger-guard."
+
+From the disturbed earth above he picked up a small crooked piece of
+brass, which might or might not have been connected with the interment.
+It passed from hand to hand, till the landlord, rubbing it on his
+sleeve, found some letters.
+
+"Paason ull tell uz what it means," said he, giving it to Felix, who
+spelt out slowly, as he removed the clinging particles of earth.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"G.a.u.d.e.a.m.u.s."
+
+"What be thuck?"
+
+"`Let us rejoice.'"
+
+"Sartinly."
+
+"My friends," said Felix solemnly, "this is a fragment from an ancient
+Roman trumpet--a trumpet sounding to us from the tomb.  Let us rejoice
+in the certainty of the life to come."
+
+"I be main dry," said the blacksmith.
+
+"Mebbe you'll stand us a quart, paason?" said Jim, touching his
+forelock.
+
+"Will you sell me this little piece of brass?" said Felix.
+
+"Aw, you med take un; he bean't no vallee to we."
+
+Felix gave them half-a-crown for the relic, and rode on slowly, while
+the group adjourned to the inn to drink it, leaving the donkey, their
+tools, and the bucket by the roadside among the thistles.
+
+"I knaws it bean't nothing but the trigger-guard of one of them ould
+hoss-pistols," the patriarch persisted, "them vlint-locks with
+brass-barrels--I minds um."
+
+Felix, as he rode away saddened, thought to himself: "That we should
+come to this--made in the Divine image, and thrown at last into a
+stable-bucket!  The limbs that bounded over the sward, the nostrils that
+scented the clover, and the eyes that watched and pondered, perhaps as
+mine did but now, over the sunset!  Ah, the tinker's ass, browsing on
+the thistles, is thrusting his nose into the bucket, I see, to sniff
+contemptuously at it!  `Let us rejoice'--what a satire--"
+
+"Hi, there!  Hoi, you, measter!"
+
+He looked back, saw the landlord panting after him, and drew rein and
+waited till he came up.  What he wanted was to know whether Felix could
+tell him any further particulars respecting the sudden death of
+Valentine's dark horse that had taken place very early that morning,
+during a private trial upon the downs.  One of the men at the inn had
+recognised Felix as a friend of Valentine, and the landlord said
+everybody about there was so mixed up and interested in the horse that
+he had made bold to ask.  Felix was quite taken by surprise.  The news
+had not reached Greene Ferne when he called; probably Valentine, after
+the accident, had been too occupied to come down from the
+training-stables some miles up among the hills.
+
+"What was the cause?" he asked, after explaining that he knew nothing of
+it.
+
+"A' believe a' broke a blood-vessel.  A' wur auver trained, bless ee,
+and auver rode.  Zum thenks it wur done a purpose by thuck black chap,
+the trainer."
+
+"Why should you suspect him?"
+
+"Aw, a' be a bad un; a' can't look 'ee straight in the face; a' sort of
+slyers [looks askance] at ee.  Thur be a main lot of money gone auver
+thuck job."
+
+"Well, this is news," said Felix.  "Good evening."
+
+The landlord touched his hat, and went back, much delighted to have been
+the first to tell the "paason" the story.  Felix was much concerned at
+the event, because he knew that Valentine's disappointment, apart from
+pecuniary loss, would be extreme; besides which almost all their circle
+had more or less backed the horse--Geoffrey, Squire Thorpe, and all.  He
+had done his best to persuade them not to bet; but now they had lost he
+was deeply disturbed.  He felt half inclined to turn back, thinking the
+event would very likely put the irascible old man Fisher into a furious
+state, as he was believed to have "invested" largely.  These delays,
+too, had brought on the twilight, and already the new moon was gleaming
+in the west; but, unwilling to return, he finally resolved to go through
+with his journey.
+
+When he rode into the outskirts of the little scattered hamlet at the
+Warren, it was dark, and lights were shining in the cottage-windows.  He
+looked for a boy to hold his horse, but, seeing none, dismounted at the
+bridge over the mill-pool, and threw the reins across the palings.  As
+he crossed the bridge, which vibrated beneath him, he saw the stars and
+crescent-moon reflected in the pool, and heard the rush of the falling
+water.  A dog howled mournfully as he approached the porch, and knocked
+with the butt of his riding-whip on the door, which stood ajar.  There
+was no answer.  He knocked again, and the dog chained in the courtyard
+set up his woeful howl.
+
+"Be quiet, Jip," he said.  He had heard the name of the dog from May,
+and love remembers trifles.  Hearing his voice, the dog howled again,
+and another at a distance caught up and prolonged the cry.
+
+"This is a dismal place," he thought.  "No wonder May prefers to be with
+Margaret.  How gloomy the shadowy hill looks, and the black mass of the
+mill yonder, and the tall trees over the white ricks!"  He knocked a
+third time, and his blow echoed in the hall.  "They must be out," he
+thought, giving the heavy door, studded with broad-headed nails, a push.
+It creaked like the gate of those dark regions which Dante explored,
+and swung slowly back.  He listened on the threshold; there was no sound
+save the ponderous halting tick of the stair-clock.  He called "Jane!"
+recollecting the housekeeper's name; his voice wandered in hollow
+spaces, and was lost.  It occurred to him that perhaps she and the
+servants had taken advantage of the old man's helplessness and May's
+absence to go out for a gossip, and he became indignant.  He stepped
+into the hall, and felt his way along a stone-paved passage, which he
+knew led to the great parlour; then reflected that he was intruding, and
+called again.
+
+"Mr Fisher!"  The words came back to him, distorted by a broken echo
+from the hall.  The dog without howled piteously.  Felix, in the dark
+passage, felt a strange creeping sensation come over him.  He shook it
+off, and groped his way to the door of the parlour.  The great apartment
+was full of shadows, gloomy, cavernous; but a dim light, from the faint
+glow still lingering in the west and the moon, came through the window
+enabling him to see the beehive chair, with the back towards him.
+
+"Excuse me, sir; but I could not make any one hear," he said, advancing.
+He looked into the hollow recess of the chair, and saw the old man
+sitting there with the glint of the crescent-moon upon his eyeball.
+
+"I am afraid I have been rude," he began; but suddenly stopped,
+stretched forth his arm, and touched the old man's hands, which were
+folded upon his knee.  Cold as a stone--he was dead!
+
+Felix recoiled, awe-struck, shuddering.  It was, indeed, a terrible
+moment in that empty gloomy house; the dog howling; the moonlight
+glittering on the glassy eye.  He was a brave man; he had faced disease
+and danger in the exercise of his office, yet never before had the
+presence of death so awed him.  The atmosphere of the room suddenly
+seemed stifling--his first instinct was to get out.  He did get out, and
+the cool night air in the porch revived him.  Then he unchained the dog,
+who whined and fawned upon him.  His natural impulse was to run for
+assistance; but the thought came to him that perhaps Fisher was not
+really dead--quick attention might save him, and he possessed
+considerable medical and surgical skill.  He went back to the parlour--
+the dog sniffed at the threshold, but would not enter.  He struck a
+match, and lit a large wax candle on the mantelpiece.  With this he
+approached the beehive chair, felt the wrist, looked in the face, and
+knew that Andrew Fisher had gone to his account.  On the carpet by his
+feet was a crumpled piece of pinkish paper.  Felix picked it up, and
+found that the telegram referred to betting transactions.  Then he
+understood that the shock of the loss he had sustained by the death of
+Valentine's horse had extinguished the flickering light of life in the
+old man.
+
+Felix took off his hat reverently, went to the great window--
+unconsciously drawn towards the light--knelt and prayed earnestly.  Then
+he covered the face with a bandana handkerchief which was lying on the
+knee of the deceased, and asked himself why the countenances of the very
+aged are so repellent in death, as if they had outlived the hope of
+immortality.  To send for a doctor was evidently useless, nor was there
+one within several miles, but it was necessary that some one should be
+called.  He went out and walked to the nearest cottage; a shepherd, with
+a pipe in his mouth, answered the door.
+
+It was some time before his slow intellect could grasp the idea.
+
+"Dead! be _he_ dead?  Missis [to his wife within], missis!  The Ould Un
+have got measter at last."
+
+"Hush!" said Felix angrily.  "Have you no respect?"
+
+By the light of the candle his wife brought to the door, the man saw it
+was a clergyman, and asked pardon.
+
+"But nobody won't miss _he_," he added, nevertheless; and thought Felix,
+as they walked back to the house, feeling the little piece of brass in
+his pocket, "`Let us rejoice'--they are actually glad that he is gone.
+But how comes it that no one knew of this?"
+
+Fisher had, indeed, been dead many hours.  He had been ailing, as aged
+persons often are, in the fall of the year; but May had not suspected
+any danger, nor would there have been, in all probability, under
+ordinary circumstances.  Jane, the snuff-taking old hag, whom May so
+detested, with low cunning kept the event secret from the household,
+excepting a crony who acted as nurse, and was glad enough to assist in
+plunder.  Jenny, the dairy-maid, was despatched to visit her friends at
+Millbourne, and a kitchen-maid had a similar permission.  They were
+easily prevented from entering the great parlour by Jane's report that
+"Measter be in a passion, and nobody best go a-nigh un!"  This was
+readily believed, as they knew his illness had made him exceptionally
+snappish.  Something very much like this has been practised at the death
+of greater men than Andrew Fisher--monarchs, if history tell truth, have
+been robbed before the breath had hardly left their nostrils.  So the
+two old crones ransacked the house undisturbed.  They took the heavy
+seal-ring from his finger--it was of solid gold, weighing three times as
+much as modern work.  From his fob--for to the last he wore breeches and
+gaiters--they removed his chain and watch, which last, being of ancient
+make, would have been worth a considerable sum.
+
+"Thur be a chest under uz bed," said Jane; "a' be vull of parchmint
+stuff--I'll warn thur be zum guineas in un.  This be the key on him."
+The chest was of black oak, rudely carved, and strongly protected by
+bands of iron.  It was completely filled with yellow deeds, leases, etc,
+going back as far as Elizabeth, but mainly of the eighteenth century.
+These they scattered over the floor, and, as Jane had anticipated, at
+the bottom, in one corner, was a large bag of guineas.  Then they added
+the great silver ladle, four heavy silver candlesticks, and a number of
+teaspoons to their guilty bundle, and chopped the gold handle off a cane
+with the billhook.  With this tool they hacked open an inlaid cabinet,
+of which they could not find the key; but there was nothing within,
+except old letters faded from age, and a miniature on enamel--a portrait
+of May's grandmother.
+
+"Ay, poor theng," said Jane, "thuck ould varmint ground the life out of
+her.  A'wuver the picter be zet in gould; we med as well have un."
+
+"A' wish us could take zum on these yer veather beds," said the other.
+"Couldn't you and I car um zumhow?"
+
+"Us could shove one in a box," said Jane, "and tell the miller to zend
+un in his cart.  He wouldn't knaw, doan't ee zee?"  They actually
+carried this idea into execution, and sent the miller's cart off with
+the feather bed.  Probably, in all their days, the two old hags had
+never so thoroughly enjoyed themselves as when thus turning everything
+upside-down, and rioting at their will.  It was a curious fact that not
+for one moment did they reflect that detection must of necessity quickly
+follow.  They had lived all their lives in the narrow boundary of the
+lonely hill-parish, and the force of habit made all beyond seem so
+distant that, if they could but once escape out of the hamlet, they did
+not doubt they would be safe.  At last, seeing nothing else they could
+lay hands on, they came down into the great parlour just before sunset,
+and heard the tramp of the wearyful women approaching.
+
+"We'd better go now," said the nurse.  "What had us better do with
+_he_?" jerking her thumb towards the senseless clay in the beehive
+chair.
+
+"Aw, thur bean't no call to move un," said Jane; "let un bide.  Nobody
+won't knaw as a' be dead vor a day or two.  Come on, you,"--making for
+the back-door.
+
+The wearyful women as they passed the window had curtseyed to the dead.
+The luminous sunset, filling the chamber with its magical glamour, had
+lit up the cold, drawn features with a rosy glow.  But the dimmed
+eyeball had not seen the flames of that conflagration sweeping up from
+the west:--
+
+Dies irae, dies illa.
+
+The wrath, long withheld, must come at last.
+
+"I fear there has been robbery here," said Felix, as, with the shepherd,
+he re-entered the gloomy house.
+
+"It do seem zo; the things be drowed about mainly.  A'wuver it sarves un
+right."
+
+"Hush!" said Felix, and thought to himself, "How terrible it is to be
+hated even when dead!  We will go over the house," he added aloud, "and
+see if anything has been taken."
+
+In the bedchamber they found ample evidence of looting.  Felix, even in
+his indignation, could not resist his antiquarian tastes.  He took up an
+ancient deed, and while he glanced over it, the shepherd pretended to
+tie his shoe-lace, and pocketed a spade-guinea which the crones had
+dropped on the floor.
+
+"Who is there that could take charge of the place?" asked Felix
+presently.
+
+"Thur be the bailie."
+
+"Go and bring him."
+
+The shepherd went; and Felix, to pass the time, took a book from an old
+black chest of drawers, with brass rings and lions' heads for handles.
+It was a small quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology,
+medicine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunction of
+the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or sowing seed.  When,
+presently, the bailiff came--a respectable man enough for his station--
+Felix, in his presence, locked the upper rooms and took the keys with
+him.  Then, leaving the house in the bailiff's charge, he rode through
+the starlit night, by the lonely highway, homeward.
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+A FRAY.
+
+Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m! as the fly-wheel whizzed round with a
+sudden ease in working.
+
+"I detest these ploughing engines," said Squire Thorpe, looking over the
+gate and leaning his arms on it, as country people always do.
+
+"But if the tenants find deep ploughing and manuring better, I suppose
+that's the point," said Valentine.
+
+"For the tenant, yes," said the Squire, as he shouldered his gun and
+turned away from the gate.  "For _me_, it is another matter.  It is a
+question with me if this deep ploughing will not exhaust the earth."
+
+"But the artificial manure," said Valentine, who was inclined to argue
+with any one.
+
+"Rubbish!  Why, it's only used like dust--not an eighth of an inch
+thick; and they take all that out again quick enough.  Then these deep
+drains; they carry away as much of the richness of the soil as water."
+
+"You don't think much of unexhausted improvements," said Geoffrey.
+
+"The greatest nonsense ever talked," said the Squire, working himself
+into a temper.  "It's simply a device to suck every atom out of the
+soil, and leave me as dry as a dead hemlock.  What profit do you suppose
+I get out of the land?  I'm pestered to put up cattle-stalls and sheds,
+to sink wells and rebuild farmhouses, to put in drains--confound the
+drains!  Then I must make reductions because the labourers want higher
+wages, and take off ten per cent, because the weather's been bad!  As if
+the weather had not always been wrong these three hundred years!  I'm
+perfectly sick of science and superphosphates, shorthorns, and steam
+tackle.  Then they bring public opinion, forsooth, on me, and say I must
+disgorge!  [Intense disgust.]  Disgorge!  Let them take the land, and
+welcome, and give me an equivalent in Consols, I should be twenty times
+better off.  No; I'll be shot if they shall!  [With energetic
+inconsistency.]  I would sooner be flayed alive than part with a square
+inch!  I love the land next to my mother!  There!  But I'll be let
+alone.  I'll plant the whole place with oaks.  My woods are the only
+things that pay me--except the rabbits, and that rascally Guss Basset
+poaches and nets them by the score.  Look out!"
+
+A covey of partridges rose, and Valentine, who was a little in advance,
+fired both barrels without effect.
+
+"Mark!" said the Squire.  "Gone to the turnips of course, the only place
+left for the poor things; this short stubble makes them as wild as
+hawks.  Val, your nerves are shaky this afternoon, and, by Jove, that
+horse dying was enough!"
+
+"My nerves are not at all shaken," said Valentine, as he reloaded.
+
+He affected a stoical indifference, though really hit hard.  His temper
+had been boiling like molten lead under the surface, and it wanted but
+little to make him explode.  His losses and vexation, his jealousy of
+Geoffrey, the unfortunate suspicions that had been aroused in his mind
+about the night on the Downs--all had combined to irritate him to the
+last degree.
+
+"Well, we've all lost money," said the Squire; "and what a terrible
+thing about poor old Fisher!  May will stay at Greene Ferne, I suppose;
+she can never return alone to that gloomy house.  Ah, that's more to my
+taste,"--pointing to a middle-aged labourer who was sowing corn
+broadcast.  "Now watch his steps; regular as clockwork.  See, his hand
+springs from his hip, and describes an exact segment of a circle--no, a
+parabola, I suppose--every time, so as to make the seed spread itself
+equally.  That's higher than science--that's art, art handed down these
+thousand years."
+
+A man now overtook them with a message from the house: the Squire was
+wanted about a summons.
+
+"If you cross the turnips," he said, as he turned to leave them, "you
+may find the covey again; and then try the meadows at the edge of the
+wood; and if you see that rascally Basset at my rabbits, just--" he
+kicked a clod to pieces illustratively.
+
+The Squire returned homewards; Geoffrey and Valentine entered the
+turnips, making for the narrow belt of meadow by the wood.  It was not a
+regular shooting expedition: they had simply strolled out for an hour,
+and were not accompanied by a keeper.  The moment the Squire left, the
+conversation dropped.  Valentine was bitter against his old friend:
+Geoffrey had not forgotten the _contretemps_ at the nutting.  It had
+been long before Margaret accepted his protestations of regret for his
+hasty words.  Now no man, who is a man, likes the part of penitence.  He
+considered that Valentine had forced him into that unpleasant position,
+and his wrath smouldered against him.
+
+After the turnips, they got through a gap into the meadow land, which,
+being of poor quality, as is often the case near a wood, was dotted with
+dead thistles, rushes in the hollows, and bunches of tussocky grass.
+Out from one of these sprang a hare, as nearly as possible midway
+between them.  They both fired--so exactly simultaneously that it
+sounded as one report; and for the moment neither knew that the other
+had pulled the trigger.  But when they saw what had happened, each
+turned away from the dead hare--neither would touch it.  Each, biassed
+by previous irritation, accused the other in his mind of taking the shot
+from him.  This little accident added to the sullen bitterness.
+
+They now came to an immense double-mound hedge, into which the spaniels
+rushed.  Valentine took the near side, Geoffrey the off, with the hedge
+between them.  It was so thick neither could see the other; so trifling
+a circumstance tended to calm the annoyance--out of sight, out of mind.
+As he followed the edge of the ditch, waiting now and then for the dogs
+to work the hedge thoroughly, Geoffrey became conscious of the beauty of
+the warm autumn day.
+
+Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m!  The sound of the distant ploughing
+engines came humming in the still air.  He had noticed previously that
+his coat-sleeve was flecked with gossamer threads, and now saw that the
+bushes were white with them.  Looking upwards, the atmosphere was full
+of glistening lines--like the most delicate silk--drooping downwards and
+shining in the sunlight.  As far up as the eye could see, they came
+showering slowly, noiselessly, down.  The surface of the grass was
+covered with these webs like a broad veil of fragile lace; and his feet,
+tearing a rent through it were whitened by the accumulated threads.  The
+rooks rose from the oaks with a lazy cawing, loth to leave the ripening
+acorns, and settled again when he had passed.
+
+Hum-m-m! hum-m-m!
+
+Underfoot a soft moss, luxuriating in the shade, almost took the place
+of grass.  The hedge itself was like a wood, so wide and thick--full of
+ashpoles and hawthorn, crab-tree underwood, willow, elder, and
+blackthorn, and here and there spreading oak trees.  It terminated at
+the wood; and as they approached it the dogs became more busy; for the
+rabbits were numerous, and the banks were bored with their holes.
+Geoffrey kept his gun on the hollow of his left arm--ready for a
+rabbit--with the muzzle towards the hedge.
+
+"Loo!  Loo!" cried Valentine, urging the dogs.
+
+Puff-puff! hum-m-m!
+
+Geoffrey, looking intently at the mound, and expecting a rabbit to start
+every moment, did not notice that a mole had recently thrown up a heap
+of earth in his path.  His foot striking against it caused him to
+stumble, and, to recover himself, he snatched at a projecting branch of
+nut-wood.  A twig, or perhaps his sleeve, touched the trigger of his
+gun--the muzzle still towards the hedge--and the sudden explosion that
+followed jerked the gun from his arm to the ground.  Like a bullet the
+cartridge sang through between the ashpoles, and cut a small pendent
+bough of willow in twain, not two feet in front of Valentine's face.
+
+"By Jove!" he shouted, "that was meant for me.  There!"
+
+Strung up to an unbearable tension by brooding over his losses and
+disappointment, jealous about Margaret, and now suddenly startled,
+Valentine lost all control of himself, and, swinging his gun round
+towards Geoffrey, without putting it to his shoulder, fired.
+
+Geoffrey was in a stooping position, just lifting his gun from the
+ground, when the shot, fired low, came with a rattle among the crab-tree
+undergrowth.  The tough fibres of the wood held and checked it, so that
+only a few pellets passed by; but one or two of these, though their
+force was almost spent in penetrating the branches, struck him sharply
+by the knee with a sudden stinging pain.
+
+"You shot at me!" shouted Geoffrey, now equally excited, and, hardly
+aware what he was doing, he sprang across the ditch and into the double
+mound, to get a clearer aim.
+
+Valentine ran quickly down the meadow on his side; then, seeing no other
+cover, also leapt into the hedge, and they faced each other some thirty
+yards apart.  As usual in double mounds, the growth of underwood was
+less dense in the middle, so that, though some distance apart, each was
+dimly visible through the branches.  There came a loud report as they
+fired the remaining barrels almost simultaneously, and a crashing and
+cracking of splintered wood; but no harm yet, thanks to the crab and
+stubborn blackthorn.  The sulphurous smoke, clinging to the close
+undergrowth and tall grasses, filled their nostrils with the scent and
+madness of battle.  In his ordinary mood either of these two would have
+scouted the possibility of such a thing happening; but circumstances
+suddenly threw them as it were a thousand years back in civilisation on
+the original savage instincts of man.  Had they carried even the muzzle
+loaders, which take time to ram the charge home, one or other might have
+paused.  Better still if their arms had been the ancient matchlock, with
+the priming to look to and the match to blow.  But these breechloaders,
+which send forth continuous flame, swift as the lightning, flash on
+flash, allow not a moment for thought.  The "death and murder of a
+world," as Faust said, be on them.
+
+As they jerked out the empty cartridge cases, and thrust in fresh
+charges, each instinctively moved to the best shelter he could see--
+Valentine behind the gabions of a great gnarled ash-stole; Geoffrey to
+the cover of a crooked maple, whose leaves were turning yellow.  Red
+tongues of fire darted forth, scorching the leaves and blackening the
+branches.  Guided by sound and guess rather than sight, they fired
+vaguely into the thickets.  From the oaks of great Thorpe Wood the rooks
+rose at the din, loudly cawing, high into the air; then in circling
+sweep they soared and wheeled, black and ominous, a dance of death in
+the azure beauty of the cloudless sky.  The dogs yelped their very
+loudest, keeping at a distance from the hedgerow; they knew that
+something was wrong.  Fast as the motions of the hand could answer to
+the eager hate in the heart, volley followed volley, till the heated
+metal of the barrels could scarcely be touched.
+
+The dun smoke crept along the mound, and slipped with sudden draught
+into the rabbit-buries, and hung low over the ash-tops.  With a hiss and
+roar and rattle the shot tore its way, biting hungrily at the branches
+as it passed.  The ash-boughs, tough and sinewy, though half-severed,
+hung together still; the willow split, and let the lead slip through its
+feeble wood; the hard crab-tree and blackthorn, with fibres torn and
+jagged, held and stopped it; the briar, with its circular pith, snapped
+and drooped.  Through the broad burdock leaves and hollow hemlock stems
+and "gicks" the hasty pellets drilled round holes, or buried themselves
+in the bark of the larger tree-trunks, some glancing off at a sharp
+angle like Tyrrell's arrow.  The maple, all scored and dotted, and
+partly stripped of leaves by the leaden shower, gave less cover than the
+ash-stole; and Geoffrey, with shot-holes in his hat, and the pellets
+hissing past his ears, yielded ground and retreated, firing as he went.
+Valentine immediately advanced, and thus, like Indians in the backwoods,
+they glided from thicket to thicket, from tree to tree, stalking, but
+shooting wildly, baffled by the branches.
+
+In a few minutes Geoffrey came to a great oak, rugged and moss-grown at
+the roots, which stood near the edge of the ditch that, at the end of
+the double mound, divided the hedge from the wood.  Behind this he took
+his stand; and Valentine, advancing too rapidly, was stung by a pellet
+that glanced from a branch and struck his arm.  He hastily rushed behind
+an ash-tree--it was not broad enough to shield him completely; but by
+its side grew a thicket of bramble and brake fern that helped to hide
+him from sight.  He blazed rapidly at the edge of the oak; in return the
+shot came rushing through the fern, and scoring the bark of the ash.
+Suddenly Geoffrey's fire ceased: the next moment Valentine guessed the
+truth--that his opponent's last cartridge was gone--and surely mad with
+rage stepped from his cover eager to seize the advantage.  At the same
+moment Geoffrey, saying to himself that he would not die like a dog
+cowering behind a tree, walked out from the oak and faced his doom.
+
+In that second--in the tenth of a second--he saw the sunbeams glance on
+the levelled barrel, and behind the twin circular orifices of the muzzle
+the smoke-blackened, frowning brow of the man who once had loved him.
+
+"Fair play in the army!" shouted a hoarse voice, and a long stick of
+briar suddenly projected from the fern at Valentine's side fell with a
+crash upon his barrel.  The blow diverted the aim, but the charge
+exploded.  Geoffrey uttered a sharp cry, turned round and put out his
+hand as if to lean against the oak, and then dropped.
+
+"We used to have fair play in the army," said Augustus Basset, stepping
+up from the ditch out of the fern, with a briar in one hand, and a
+vicious ferret in the other--struggling hard, but dexterously grasped
+just behind the forelegs, the first finger in front of the legs, so that
+it could not bite.  "You make a ring, look here!" in his incoherent way.
+
+But Valentine, all aghast with sudden revulsion of feeling, had already
+rushed to his fallen friend and knelt beside him, feeling a pressure
+upon his heart and a dizziness of sight.  For the blood of life was
+spouting from the right shoulder, and already the yellow fern and the
+grey grass were spotted and stained, and the lowly creeping ivy streaked
+with crimson.
+
+"Speak, Geof, old fellow!" cried Valentine, becoming of a more deadly
+pallor than the wounded man.
+
+"Plug the hole," said Augustus, who, though he had never seen service,
+like most old soldiers had some smattering of surgery.  "You've lost
+your head.  Here, let me.  Hold pug;" and he pushed the ferret into
+Valentine's hands.
+
+Pulling out his handkerchief, none of the cleanest, Augustus pressed it
+on the wound, and succeeded in reducing the flow of blood.  Geoffrey
+moved, and Valentine, flinging the ferret aside, held him up.
+
+"Speak to me!" he cried.
+
+"Say not a word how it happened," Geoffrey replied, thinking of
+Margaret, and became unconscious again.
+
+There was a rustling of branches and a cracking of dead sticks
+underfoot, and two men in their shirt-sleeves rushed out from the wood.
+
+"By Gaarge, you, Measter Newton, be shot!"
+
+"He won't die," said Augustus, looking up, and apparently quite
+unconcerned.  "I put my finger in--it hasn't touched the artery; look!"
+He held out his hands, which were soaking red.
+
+The two strong men turned white with a sudden sickness.
+
+"We thought us hearn a scrame," one said.
+
+"Make a litter," said Augustus.  "There, you great odd-me-dods
+[scarecrows], you don't know what it is!  A hand-barrow, then, you
+gawnies!  What are you staring there for?  Go and get your hurdles!"
+
+"Zo us wull; come on, Bill!" and away they ran.
+
+"A man's made just like a pig inside," said Augustus to Valentine, and
+he proceeded to compare the anatomy to heedless ears.  Quite sobered by
+the shock, Basset was of more use than any of them.  Long hardened, and
+indifferent to all but the immediate gratification of his senses with
+smoke and beer, Augustus had lost all the finer perceptions, and had
+become not exactly callous, but unimpressionable.  That very condition
+rendered his aid valuable at such a time.  Even now, under the crust of
+stolidity, there were not wanting some better feelings in this wreck of
+an educated man.  He was faithful to the hand that fed him, i.e. to the
+Greene Ferne people; Geoffrey had frequently given him tobacco and such
+trifles, and now he was really anxious to do his best.  As it was, he
+had probably saved Geoffrey's life; for when the last shot was fired,
+they were so near that the cartridge had only just begun to scatter; had
+it struck the head or chest with the shot altogether, like a bullet,
+instant death must have followed.  But the blow on the barrel with the
+stick so far diverted the swift aim of the practised sportsman, that
+only a part of the charge took effect in the shoulder.
+
+The two men ran as fast as they might across a corner of the wood,
+crashing through the hazel, and stumbling in their haste as the woodbine
+caught their heavy shoes.  They made straight for a spot about a hundred
+and fifty yards distant, where on the edge of the meadow land stood a
+rude shed, framed of logs and slabs, thatched with flags from the brook,
+and walled on three sides with hurdles interwoven with straw.  By the
+hut was a pile of ashpoles, dry and hard, cut a winter since in the
+depths of Thorpe Wood, and drawn out there for better convenience.
+These men had been at work for some months splitting the poles, shaving
+and preparing them to be used as wooden hoops for barrels.  Geoffrey, on
+his way from Squire Thorpe's down to Greene Ferne, had frequently passed
+the hut, and, interested in their work, formed a slight acquaintance
+with the men.  They told him that these ashen hoops, cut from English
+woods, went in shiploads to Jamaica and other sugar lands, returning
+round the sugar casks.  He in turn had given them cigars, or a couple of
+rabbits that he had shot; and watching the dexterous way they used their
+tools, and how cheerfully they worked through rain and shine and
+thunderstorm, grew to almost envy their content.  They had heard the
+firing as they worked by the hut, and stayed to listen to it.  When it
+suddenly ceased, simultaneously with a sharp cry as of pain, they
+guessed there had been an accident.  Now these rough sons of toil,
+mindful of his little kindnesses, staying not a moment to inquire how
+the catastrophe occurred, ran with all their might, tore down the
+thatched hurdles which formed their walls, and with these, a couple of
+poles, and their jackets snatched up in a hurry, hastened back to the
+scene.
+
+On this improvised litter Geoffrey, still insensible, was placed, his
+head propped up somewhat with their jackets; and then, as they lifted
+him, the question arose, where should they take him.  As he was the
+Squire's visitor, it seemed proper to carry him there; but Augustus, who
+had his own private reasons for desiring to avoid the Squire, vehemently
+insisted that it was all up-hill and through the wood, and much farther
+than Greene Ferne.  Valentine, anxious to get somewhere, and quite
+beside himself with impatience, begged them to start; so the bearers set
+out across the corner of the wood for the farm.  Basset walked in front,
+opening a road through the bushes; but the tall dead thistles, swinging
+back as they hurriedly pushed along, pricked the pale cheek and listless
+hands of their burden.  They emerged from the wood shortly, and crossed
+the meadow towards the ploughed field.
+
+Augustus, with his hand now on Valentine's shoulder, babbled in his ear,
+and showed him the briar-stick.
+
+"I was poking a rabbit-bury," said he, "when you came along shooting.
+There ain't no call to say anything to the Squire.  See, here's bunnie's
+fur!"  He pointed to the end of the stick, where the sharp curved
+prickles were left on, having been cut from the other end for ease of
+handling.  To these prickles a little soft fur adhered, together with
+particles of sand.  "I found him--he's got his head in the bottom of the
+hole and can't move, and my other pug is at him.  He's young, and wants
+lining.  When you came along I got down in the ditch under the fern.
+But, I say, fair play in the army!  If this had been a ground-ash
+stick,"--swishing the briar, which bent easily--"I should have knocked
+the gun out of your hands; but this briar plied, don't you see?  I must
+go back for the other ferret presently."
+
+He ran forward to open the gate of the ploughed field for the bearers,
+who were now a little way in front.
+
+Puff-puff! puff-puff! hum-m-m!  The fly-wheel whirled about, beating the
+air to musical resonance; the steel sinew of Behemoth stretched across
+the stubble, dragging the shares remorselessly through tender roots of
+pimpernel and creeping convolvulus.  Hum-m-m!
+
+It was rough travelling over the deep fresh-turned furrows, that exhaled
+a scent of earth, and their burden was somewhat jolted.
+
+"Hulloa, you!  What's up?  I say there--you!"
+
+The men with the ploughing engines had espied the litter, and,
+abandoning operations, came running across the field.  Thus, surrounded
+by an excited group, the wounded man was borne over the lawn at Greene
+Ferne.
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+A FEAST--CONCLUSION.
+
+It was fortunate that Basset's dislike of meeting Squire Thorpe caused
+Geoffrey to be conveyed to Greene Ferne, for Felix was there, and he had
+sufficient knowledge of surgery to staunch the wound.  The shock to the
+household on the arrival of the litter was of course very great.  May
+fainted; Margaret very nearly did the same, but, recovering herself by a
+strong effort, forced herself to help Felix.  The support afforded by
+her love enabled her to face the sight; but when there was nothing more
+that she could do, she burst into a flood of tears, yet still refused to
+leave the room.  Felix asked Valentine, who still moved as one dazed, to
+send Basset, as the best rider, for a doctor from the town.  As he got
+up into the saddle, he asked Valentine if he had any loose silver or a
+cigar.  Valentine mechanically gave him all he had and his cigar-case;
+and the old trooper, never even in moments of the highest excitement
+forgetting to take good care of himself, went clattering down the road.
+The doctor came, examined Felix's work, improved upon it, and pronounced
+Geoffrey's wound painful rather than dangerous.  Augustus, after taking
+sundry nips of strong liquor with the silver Valentine had given him, in
+Kingsbury, presently returned to the hamlet, and stopped at the Spotted
+Cow, where, as he had anticipated, a number of the gossips of the place
+had assembled.  Here he became the hero of the hour, puffing his cigars,
+and spending his money right royally.  But having had lengthened
+experience of his imaginative powers, they totally refused to believe
+him now he spoke the truth.  They grinned at the idea of Geoffrey and
+Valentine firing intentionally at each other, and still more ridiculed
+the embellishment which he added--how he stepped between the levelled
+guns at the risk of his life.  They knew him too well.
+
+"It wur an accident, of course," they said.  "I tell you they fought a
+regular battle," said Augustus, in a towering rage.  "You be a parcel of
+fools!"
+
+"If they did vite," said the landlord slowly, "you med be zure Basset
+put his yod [head] inside a rabbit-hole vor fear of the shot--and how
+could he knaw?"
+
+"Ha, ha!" such was the popular verdict.
+
+Geoffrey, so soon as he could speak, declared it an accident, and as
+such it passed outside Greene Ferne.  The only witness indeed was
+Basset, whose sodden word was not worth taking, even had any stir been
+made.  So soon as the excitement of the day was over, too, Basset--old
+soldier as he was--seeing which side his bread was buttered, turned
+round, and openly proclaimed that he was drunk when he made his
+statement about the fight.  In _this_ everybody believed him.  But
+Valentine, whose remorse was beyond expression, notwithstanding
+Geoffrey's wish, gave Felix and Squire Thorpe the true version of the
+case, laying all the blame upon himself.  His jealousy and hatred
+disappeared, the old friendship returned, and he did all in his power to
+show it.
+
+Though Margaret did not know all the truth, she was not without a pang
+of conscience, for she recollected the nutting, and reproached herself
+for not discouraging Valentine.  It was long before Geoffrey recovered;
+as the doctor had said, the wound, though not dangerous, was painful,
+and took more time to heal than seemed proportioned to its character.
+Margaret nursed him with all the devotion of love; May aided her; and
+indeed his convalescence was almost an idyl.  Friends gathered round to
+cheer and make the time pass happily--Felix, the Squire, Valentine.  The
+two farmers, Ruck and Hedges, dropped in occasionally to inquire.  The
+spring almost came again, before he was strong, and it was then
+necessary to take a change.  The pleasant circle at Greene Ferne was
+temporarily broken up, but for a short time only.  In the summer they
+met again at the sea, and a double marriage was arranged for the autumn,
+when May's year of mourning had elapsed.  After old Fisher's affairs
+were investigated, it was found that his loss over the racing was but a
+few hundreds--quite a small sum in comparison with his fortune.  But his
+soul had become so steeped in avarice that he could not endure it; it
+had struck him as heavy a blow as if it had been the whole accumulation
+of his life.  There were ample means left--for a farmer, positive
+wealth--and May was comparatively rich.  The old hags who robbed the
+house escaped punishment, though made to disgorge their plunder.  May
+could not be prevailed upon to prosecute--the whole matter was too
+painful to be raked up.  Basset benefited perhaps as much as any one;
+Margaret gave him the credit of saving Geoffrey's life, and when she
+began to show an interest in him the old trooper brightened up.  He had
+hitherto felt himself an outcast.  Now he was made much of, the better
+qualities came out; he furbished himself up, and held his head higher.
+He could not indeed entirely break from drink, but he did, with an
+effort, curtail his glasses.  He attended to his work, and became a
+valuable assistant.  So much does the mind affect the body, that the
+influence of kindness can even improve the condition of a drunkard.
+Valentine, thankful to him for escape from a lifelong regret, petted
+him.  Geoffrey, grateful for the blow which had diverted the cartridge,
+petted him.  Squire Thorpe relented, and even gave him permission to
+shoot in Thorpe Wood.  Of this permission Augustus did not make much
+use.  The incitement of poaching was lacking.
+
+The double marriage--Margaret and Geoffrey, May and Felix--took place
+early in September at Millbourne Church.  As the carriages rolled away,
+after breakfast, from the porch at Greene Ferne, in the beautiful
+sunshine, and with the shouts of the villagers and the rattling of rice,
+Felix thought to himself, "This day at least we may surely say
+`Gaudeamus' in the fullness of our hearts."  Valentine could not bring
+himself to be present at the wedding--he would not have been human if he
+had; but he sent the brides a handsome present each.  They are both to
+reside at Kingsbury, within easy reach of Greene Ferne.
+
+By Margaret's special wish, in the afternoon there was a dinner, or, as
+the guests persisted in calling it, a supper, to the labourers and their
+wives in the barn.  In superintending this, Mrs Estcourt found some
+little relief from the sadness which always weighs upon those left
+behind after a joyous marriage.  It was a large affair, for besides the
+men employed on Greene Ferne, others working on adjoining farms were
+bidden to the feast, which was also to be countenanced by many of higher
+rank.
+
+There was less difficulty in clearing the barn for the purpose, because
+stores of corn are not now kept.  The winnowing machine was stowed away
+in the corner, together with the polished bushel measure and the broad
+wooden shovels.  A floor so level was easily swept, though the roof was
+far beyond the reach of the longest broom.  It was supported by beams of
+chestnut--a lofty piece of ancient workmanship, not unlike some noble
+halls that yet exist.  The cobwebs up there had not been disturbed for
+generations; the bats among the tiles slept on heedless of the stir.  A
+noble apartment it made, wide and long and high; a place where men could
+breathe and live a larger, if a more rugged, life than in the contracted
+space of rooms.
+
+Against the door-posts inside, and at intervals around the walls, rose
+columns of corn; whole sheaves of wheat, stacked in piles, for a less
+quantity would scarcely have been seen in so great a space.  Nor was the
+white and drooping barley forgotten; and these, the wealth of the
+cornfields, were strewn in profusion with the flowers that were yet in
+bloom.  Scarlet poppies, blue harebells, the yellow corn marigolds, the
+mauve mallows, the "butter and eggs," and woodbine--all were there,
+gathered by willing hands.  Ferns, some already yellow and some green,
+tall reeds with beautiful waving heads, and rushes, were placed at the
+side of the wheat, relieving the bright flowers and the dry-looking corn
+with their green; branches of oak, upon whose twigs the young acorns
+were showing; branches of hazel with the nuts, and of hawthorn with the
+haws, were hung between the sheaves.
+
+The tables, with the exception of one across at the top, were of plank
+on trestles, and the seats of equally primitive style--stools from the
+farm, and so on; and when they ran short, a broad plank stretched from
+one pile of empty cheese-vats to another.  Upon the tables, flowers in
+pots and cut flowers were arranged.
+
+Augustus Basset was of considerable assistance in these preparations--he
+always was when there was a prospect of unlimited feeding and liquor.
+Nor did he forget to glance in at the kitchen, and see that the copper
+was full of potatoes--for no pots could contain the quantity required--
+and that enough cabbage had been cut to fill a few bushel baskets.
+
+As the time fixed approached the older men began to stroll up, and after
+them the women--always apart from their husbands; men came with men, and
+women with women, not together, though they might dwell in the same
+cottage.  Among them were old Gaffer Pistol-legs, Jabez the shepherd,
+and his nephew, and Jenny the dairy-maid from the Warren, for whom a
+trap had been specially sent.  The men on the farm who, in attendance on
+the cattle, had been obliged to work till the last moment, now came to
+the pump in the yard and splashed themselves with much noise, amid the
+rough jokes of the idlers around.
+
+By-and-by, Squire Thorpe and Mrs Estcourt, Farmer Ruck and Farmer
+Hedges, and several more farmers who had been invited came across from
+the house, and immediately old and young began to take their places.
+The Squire said the shortest of graces, the covers were lifted, and the
+smoke and steam from yards of solid beef and mutton rose into the lofty
+roof.  At the cross-table at the top a plentiful supply of game
+appeared, from Thorpe Wood.  Now the solid beef began to gape as slice
+after slice was cut and piled upon the plates that came faster and
+faster, till the carvers, standing up to their work, were forced to take
+off their jackets to have their arms at greater liberty.  The clatter of
+knives and forks reverberated in the hollow barn--the men ate steadily
+on with a calm persistent thoroughness, like the mill-wheel at the
+Warren, their chins wagged without haste and without rest.  The process
+was only varied by a momentary pause while the two-pronged forks were
+stuck into the potatoes in the dish, a much more effectual plan than
+bothering with a spoon, or while a goodly load of salt was shovelled
+from the salt-cellar with the tip of the knife.  Meantime Augustus,
+happy as a king, with the can of ale in his hands, went round and round
+and up and down the long tables, filling the mugs and glasses, never
+weary of well-doing.  No one can understand the latent possibilities of
+physical development he possesses till he has seen the agricultural
+labourer eat.  It is indeed a goodly spectacle, and for my part I own I
+love to see it, and wish them all, great and small, plenty wherewith to
+heartily satisfy those honest appetites.  But it is easy to see how we
+English conquered the world, since
+
+  The seat of empire is the belly.
+
+So steadily went the eating, that before the meat was quite done already
+the sun began to slope downwards, and shone full in at the open doorway.
+For the barn having no windows to speak of, the vast broad doors, wider
+than the gates of Gaza, were thrown open both for light and air.  The
+sunbeams fell full on the face of Gaffer Pistol-legs, who chanced to sit
+opposite, and lit up his ancient features, which might have been carved
+by a monk for a gargoyle, so wrinkled were they.  After awhile the rays
+seemed to awaken the patriarch from his munching, and, blinking his
+eyes, he looked up and placed both his fists upon the table, still
+holding his knife and fork, the points upward.  His neighbours, seeing
+that the old man was about to speak, stayed with half-open mouths to
+listen.
+
+"This be the vinest veast, you," said the Ancient, "this be the vinest
+veast, you, as ever I zeed since ould Squire Thorpe--his'n's feyther
+[nodding his head towards the top of the table]--got up the junketing
+when the news come of the battle of Waterloo, dree-score year ago.  The
+vinest veast althegither since ould Bony were whopped.  Yellucks!"--as
+much as to say, Look here, that is my dictum.
+
+This poor old man, humble as he was, had many friends, both of his own
+class and among those above him, to give him a kind word or a lift.  A
+contrast, this, with the ancient and brutal miser Fisher, who had faced
+that other magnificent sunset on the hills the year before.
+
+After the pudding Squire Thorpe gave the health of the brides and their
+bridegrooms; and rising _en masse_, they made the old barn ring again
+with cheering and hammering of the tables.  Down fell two of the
+plank-seats, and added a booming roar to the noise.
+
+Mrs Estcourt slipped out into the air for a minute, and came through
+the rick-yard.  The rosy light of the setting sun, now behind the trees
+of Thorpe Wood, lit up the house and the barn and the fields.  The call
+of the partridge, "Caer-wit, caer-wit!" sounded across the stubble.  Far
+away upon the hill shone a brilliant red light--a very beacon--flashing
+and gleaming.  It was the last level rays of the sun reflected from the
+west window of the church--a light of good omen for those who had
+therein been made one that day.  Yet joying in their joy and hoping
+their hopes, the tears came fast from her swelling heart.  But there
+arose the tuning of a fiddle--"tum-tum, tup-tup!"--and her sigh, as she
+turned away and forced down her feelings, was drowned in a roar and
+stamping from the barn.  It was her own health that they were drinking,
+and immediately afterwards a crowd began to pour forth from the wide
+portal.  The older men settled to their pipes--an ample supply of long
+clay pipes, stacked anglewise, was provided for them.  But the lissom
+young men and the giggling girls trooped across the rick-yard to the
+level meadow, which the sheep had cropped close, and which had been also
+carefully mown for the purpose.  Had it rained, there would still have
+been dancing-room in the barn; but it was warm and dry, so they footed
+it on the sward.
+
+Mrs Estcourt, a little shrinking and nervous, had to open it with the
+Squire; and, instead of finishing, they commenced with "Sir Roger de
+Coverley," that fine old country dance.  After a short time she left it,
+but the rest grew wilder and wilder.  The dancing was like a maelstrom,
+sucking in all that came within its circling sound.  Those who had at
+first held aloof, saying that they were too old or stiff, or didn't know
+how, by degrees were drawn in, and frisked as merrily as the lads.  So
+the wearyful women, whose hearts had already been made glad, hummed the
+tune and flung through it with a will.  The children set up a dance of
+their own, joining hands in a ring.  "Let's jine in," said Farmer Ruck
+to Farmer Hedges; and away they went with the stream--a sight not to be
+seen but once in fifty years.  The Ancient, Daddy Pistol-legs, sitting
+in the barn and listening to the music, lifted his oaken staff and beat
+time upon an empty barrel.  So lustily did the village band blow and
+fiddle that the carthorses in the meadows, who always cock up their ears
+at the sound of a drum or a trumpet, galloped to and fro with
+excitement.
+
+The Squire's gamekeeper by-and-by came along, with his gun under his
+arm, to see the fun, when Augustus Basset, with a fine sense of
+magnanimity, went up to him with his can and poured him out a foaming
+mug.  But as he went to the house to replenish the can he could not
+forbear muttering to himself, "I can't see what _he_ wants to show _his_
+face here for."
+
+The bats had now left the tiles of the barn, and were wheeling to and
+fro.  But the band blew and fiddled, well refreshed by Augustus's can,
+and the dancers whirled about yet more fast and furious.  Sly couples,
+however, occasionally slipped aside to do a little courting.  Tummas and
+Rause, after slowly sauntering up the hedgerow, came to a gateway, and,
+looking through, beheld the broad round face of the full moon placidly
+shining.
+
+"Aw, thur be the moon, you; a' be as big as a waggon-wheel," said
+Tummas, putting his arm as far round her plump waist as it would go.
+
+"Let I bide," said Rause.
+
+"I wooll kiss ee," said Tummas sturdily.
+
+"Thee shatn't."
+
+There was some struggling, but Tummas succeeded with less difficulty
+than he expected.  The damsel was relenting under the influence of long
+and faithful attentions.  Tummas, like a wise man, hit while the iron
+was hot, and pressed for the publication of the banns.
+
+"Aw," said Rause, at last, with a finished air of languid weariness, as
+if quite worn out with importunity, that could not have been much
+improved on in a drawing-room, "aw, s'pose us med as well, you.  If thee
+woot do't, _I_ can't help it, can 'ee?"
+
+So the beautiful moonlight streamed down calmly upon the white ricks,
+the white loaded waggon, and the white stubble on the slightly rising
+ground.  Still the blare of the brass echoed back from the house, the
+drum boomed, and the fiddle's treble sounded over the mead where white
+skirts flickered round and round.  But the mother's heart, as she stood
+for a minute alone in her chamber gazing out at the night, was far, far
+away with her daughter, and almost as much with that other girl who had
+been to her as a second child.
+
+In the barn the sweet fresh scent of flowers and wheat had long since
+been overcome by the fumes of tobacco.  Big as the barn was, it was full
+of smoke and the odour of pipes and ale.  Hedges and Ruck, not able to
+do much dancing, had come back, and sat in chairs in the doorway, very
+happily hobnobbing with Augustus to fill their glasses.  At last,
+however, whether it was the unwonted whirling of the dance, or whether
+it was the xxxx ale, these two old cronies fell out, and abused each
+other as only old cronies can, to the intense amusement of the
+bystanders.  These crowded up to listen to their mutual revelations.
+
+"Thee shaved the brook," said Ruck, shaking his fist.  "Thee scooped out
+the ground on the Squire's side, wur the bend wur, and put the mud on
+thy side.  I'll warn thee took nigh three lug of land."
+
+"I only straightened un," explained Hedges, "when I cleaned un out.  A'
+wur terrable crooked."
+
+"Aw!  [with scorn].  Thee put all the straightness thee own side
+a-wuver!"
+
+"Thee bist allus pinching the king's highway," shouted Hedges, stung by
+this last taunt, and only withheld from battle by two strong labourers.
+"Thee cuts thy hedges by the road inside, and lets um grow out on the
+green, a-most into the road.  A sort of a rolling-fence, doan't ee zee!"
+
+"Beer in, bark out," said Pistol-legs, sententiously.
+
+The Squire, hearing the noise, came across from the house; and at sight
+of him the two would-be combatants quieted down; when Augustus thrust a
+great double-handled mug between them, from which they had to drink in
+token of restored amity.
+
+"They won't know nothing about it to-morrow morning," said Augustus, as
+a man of experience, slightly unsteady on his own legs.  "They'll forget
+all about it."
+
+"I thenks it be a-most time to go whoam," said Pistol-legs, rising with
+some difficulty.  "Here, Dan'l!" to one of his numerous descendants.
+"Let I hould on by thee."
+
+It was abundantly evident that Pistol-legs was right; it was time to go
+home.  Shortly afterwards the Squire returned again, and announced that
+the feast was over; when the assembly separated peacefully, after the
+wont of country folk, though for half an hour or more there came distant
+"Hurrays" and cheering as the groups went down the road.
+
+About two o'clock in the morning, Jabez the shepherd, with his dog Job
+at his feet, was found astride of a stile in the meadows.  He had stuck
+close to the barrel all day, and was roaring, at the top of a voice
+accustomed to shout across half a mile of down, the veracious ballad of
+"Gaarge Ridler's Oven," of noted memory:
+
+  "When I goes dead, as it med hap,
+  Why, bury me under the good ale-tap!
+  Wi' voulded arms thur let me lie,
+  Cheek by jowl my dog and I!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Greene Ferne Farm, by Richard Jefferies
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