Читать книгу Sons of the Morning - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 6

CHAPTER V.

PAGAN ALTARS

The men proceeded together, and Christopher's companion made himself known by a chance question. He inquired the way to Bear Down, whereupon Yeoland, aware that a kinsman of the Endicotts was expected, guessed that this must be he.

"You're Myles Stapledon then?"

"I am. I walked from Okehampton to get a glimpse of the Moor. Came by way of the Belstones and Cosdon—a glorious scene—more spacious in some respects than my native wilds down West."

"You like scenery? Then you'll be joyful here. If Honor had known you were walking, I'll dare swear she would have tramped out to meet you; still, thank the Lord she didn't."

"You know her well to speak of her by her Christian name," said Stapledon slowly.

Christopher was but two years younger than his companion, but one had guessed that a decade separated them.

"Know her! Know Honor! I should rather think I did know her. She's my sun and moon and stars. I suppose she hoped to tell you the great news herself, and now I've babbled it. Engaged—she and I—and I'm the happiest man in all the South of England."

"I congratulate you. My cousin promised to be a pretty woman—just a dinky maid in short frocks when last I saw her. And your name——?"

"My name is Yeoland."

"The Squire of Godleigh, of course?"

"That proud personage; and there lies Endicott's—under the wind-blown sycamores where the whitewash peeps out. Your luggage is there before you, no doubt. This is my way: to the left. You go to the right, pass that farm there on your left, follow the road and so, after about five minutes, find yourself in the presence of the Queen of the Moor. Good-bye. We shall meet again."

"Good-bye, and thank you."

Stapledon moved onwards; then he heard a man running and Christopher overtook him.

"One moment. I thought I'd ask you not to mention that scrimmage on the hillside. Honor would quite understand my performance, but she'd be pained to think I had struck or been struck by that lout, and perhaps—-well. She'll hear of it, for Cramphorn and his daughter are Bear Down people, but——"

"Not from me, rest assured."

"A thousand thanks. You might mention that you met me returning from Throwley and that the pup is a gem. I'll bring it along some time or other to-morrow."

Again they separated, and such is the character often-times exhibited in a man's method of walking, that appreciation of each had been possible from study of his gait. Stapledon appeared to move slowly, but his stride was tremendous and in reality he walked at four miles an hour; the other, albeit his step looked brisk, never maintained any regularity in it. He stopped to pat a bruised knee, wandered from one side of the road to the other, and presently climbed the hedge to get a sight of Bear Down, with hope that Honor might be seen in her garden.

But at that moment the mistress of Endicott's was welcoming her cousin. They greeted one another heartily and spoke awhile together. Then, when Myles had ascended to the room prepared for him, Mr. Endicott listened to his niece's description of the new arrival.

"Better far than his photograph," she said. "More expression, but too big. He's a tremendous man; yet very kind, I should think, and not proud. Almost humble and most austere in dress. No rings or scarf pin—just grey everything. He looks older than I thought, and his voice is so curiously deep that it makes little things in the room rattle. We were in the parlour for two minutes, and every time he spoke he vibrated one particular bass note of the piano until I grew quite nervous. He has very kind eyes—slate-coloured. I should say he was extremely easy to please."

"A fine open-air voice, certainly, and a good grip to his hand," said the blind man.

"Yet no tact, I fear," criticised Honor. "Fancy beginning about poor old Bear Down wanting attention, and hoping that he might put some money into it before he had been in the house five minutes!"

"Nervousness. Perhaps you surprised him."

But, later in the day, Myles endeavoured to repair a clumsiness he had been conscious of at the time, and, after collecting his thoughts—honestly somewhat unsettled by the sight of Honor, who had leapt from lanky girl to beautiful woman since last he saw her—his first words were a hearty congratulation upon the engagement.

"Endicott's stock is very nearly as old, but there's a social difference," he said bluntly. "'Tis a very good match for you, I hope. You'll live at Godleigh, of course?"

"It's all a long, long way off, cousin; and I'm sure I cannot guess how you come to know anything at all about it," said Honor.

Then the traveller told her, beginning his narrative at the point where he had asked Christopher the road to Bear Down. He concluded with a friendly word.

"Handsome he is, for certain, with the wind and the sun on his cheek; and a man of his own ideas, I judge; an original man. I wish you joy, Honor, if I may call you Honor."

"What nonsense! Of course. And I'm glad you like my Christo, because then you'll like me too, I hope. We have very much in common really. We see things alike, live alike, laugh alike. He has a wonderful sense of humour; it teaches him to look at the world from the outside."

"A mighty unwholesome, unnatural attitude for any man," said Mark Endicott.

"Yet hardly from the outside either, if he's so human as to want a wife?" asked Honor's cousin.

"He wants a wife," she answered calmly, "to take the seat next him at the theatre, to walk beside him through the picture-gallery, to compare notes with, to laugh with at the fun of the fair, as he calls it."

Mr. Endicott's needles tapped impatiently.

"Vain talk, vain talk," he said.

"It may be vain, uncle, but it's none the less true," she answered. "If I do not know Christopher, who does? The companionship of a congenial spirit is the idea in his mind—perhaps in mine too. He's a laughing philosopher, and so platonic, so abstracted, that if he had found a man friend, instead of a woman, he would have been just as content to swear eternal friendship and invite the man to sit and watch the great play with him and laugh away their lives together."

"I hope you don't know Mr. Yeoland as well as you imagine, Honor," said Mark Endicott.

"You misjudge him really, I expect," ventured Myles, his thoughts upon a recent incident. "Think what it would be to one of active and jovial mind to sit and look on at life and take no part."

"'Look on!'" burst out the blind man. "Only God Almighty looks on; and not even He, come to think of it, for He's pulling the strings."

"Not so," said Myles; "not so, Uncle Endicott. He put us on the stage, I grant you; and will take us off again when our part is done. But we're moved from inside, not driven from out. We play our lives ourselves, and the wrong step at the entrance—the faulty speech—the good deed—the bad—they all come from inside—all build up the part. Free-will is the only sort of freedom a created thing with conscious intelligence can have. There's no choice about the theatre or the play; but neither man nor God dictates to me how I enact my character."

Mark Endicott reflected. He was a stout Christian, and, like an old war-horse, he smelt battle in this utterance, and rejoiced. It was left for Honor to fill the silence.

"It's all a puppet-show, say what you will, cousin," she summed up; "and anybody can see the strings that move nine dolls out of ten. A puppet-show, and a few of us pay too little for our seats at it; but most of us pay too much. And you need not argue with me, because I know I'm right, and here is Mrs. Loveys to say that supper's ready."

A week later it was practically determined that Myles should concern himself with Bear Down; but the man still remained as unknown to Honor as in the moment of their first meeting. His money interested her not at all; his character presented a problem which attracted her considerably during those scanty hours she found heart to spend away from her lover. It happened that Christopher having departed on a sudden inspiration to Newton Races, Honor Endicott and her cousin set out together for an excursion of pleasure upon the high Moor.

The day was one in August, and hot sunshine brooded with glowing and misty light on hills and valleys, on rivers and woods, on farm lands and wide-spread shorn grasses, where the last silver-green ribbons of dried hay, stretching forth in parallel and winding waves, like tide-marks upon great sands, awaited the wain. Stapledon walked beside Honor's pony, and together they passed upwards to the heather, beside an old wall whose motley fabric glimmered sun-kissed through a blue shimmer of flowers, and faded into a perspective all silvery with lichens, broken with brown, thirsty mosses, many grasses, and the little pale pagodas of navelwort. Beech trees crowned the granite, and the whisper of their leaves was echoed by a brook that murmured unseen in a hollow upon the other side of the road. Here Dartmoor stretched forth a finger, scattered stone, and sowed bracken and furze, heather and rush and the little flowers that love stream-sides.

The travellers climbed awhile, then Myles stopped at a gate in the old wall and Honor drew up her pony. For a moment there was no sound but the gentle crick-crick-crick from bursting seed-pods of the greater gorse, where they scattered their treasure at the touch of the sun. Then the rider spoke.

"How fond you are of leaning upon gates, Myles!"

He smiled.

"I know I am. I've learned more from looking over gates than from most books. You take Nature by surprise that way and win many a pretty secret from her."

The girl stared as at a revelation. Thus far she had scarcely penetrated under her cousin's exterior. He was very fond of dumb animals and very solicitous for them; but more of him she had not gleaned until the present.

"Do you really care for wild things—birds, beasts, weeds? I never guessed that. How interesting! So does Christo. And he loves the dawn as much as you do."

"We have often met at cock-light. It is a bond we have—the love of the morning hour. But don't you like Nature too?"

"Not madly, I'm afraid. I admire her general effects. But I'm a little frightened of her at heart and I cringe to her in her gracious moods. Christo's always poking about into her affairs and wanting to know the meaning of curious things; but he's much too lazy to learn."

"There's nothing so good as to follow Nature and find out a little about her methods in hedges and ditches, where she'll let you."

"You surprise me. I should have thought men and women were much more interesting than rabbits and wild flowers."

"You cannot get so near to them," he answered; "at least, I cannot. I haven't that touch that opens hearts. I wish I had. People draw the blinds down, I always think, before me. Either so, or I'm more than common dense. Yet everybody has the greater part of himself or herself hidden, I suppose; everybody has one little chamber he wouldn't open to God if he could help it."

"Are you a Christian, Myles? But don't answer if you would rather not."

"Why, it makes a man's heart warm by night or by day to think of the Founder of that faith."

Again Honor was surprised.

"I like to hear you say so," she answered. "D'you know I believe that we think nearly alike—with a difference. Christ is much dearer to me than the great awful God of the Universe. He was so good to women and little children; but the Almighty I can only see in Nature—relentless, unforgiving, always ready to punish a slip, always demon-quick to see a mistake and visit the sins of the fathers on the children. Nature's the stern image of a stern God to me—a thing no more to be blamed than the lightning, but as much to be feared. Christ knew how to forgive and weep for others, how to heal body and soul. The tenderness of Him! And He fought Nature and conquered her; brought life where she had willed death; health where she had sent sickness; stilled her passion on blue Galilee; turned her water into wine."

"You can credit all that?"

"As easily as I can credit a power kinder than Nature, and stronger. Yes, I believe. It is a great comfort to believe; and Christopher does too."

"A beautiful religion," said Myles; "especially for women. They do well to love One who raised them out of the dust and set them up. Besides, there is their general mistiness on the subject of justice. Christianity repels me here, draws me there. It is child's meat, with its sugar-plums and whips for the good and naughty; it is higher than the stars in its humanity."

"You don't believe in hell, of course?"

"No—or in heaven either. That is a lack in me—a sorrowful limitation."

"Yet, if heaven exists, God being just, the man whose life qualifies him for it has got to go there. That's a comforting thought for those who love you, Myles."

The word struck a deep note. He started and looked at her.

"How kind to think of that! How good and generous of you to say it!"

The voice of him sent an emotion through Honor, and, according to her custom when moved beyond common, she fell back upon laughter.

"Why, we're getting quite confidential, you and I! But here's the Moor at last."

They stood upon Scor Hill and surveyed their subsequent way, where it passed on before. Beneath swelled and subtended a mighty valley in the lap of stone-crowned hills—a rare expanse of multitudinous browns. Through every tone of auburn and russet, sepia and cinnamon, tan and dark chocolate of the peat cuttings, these colour harmonies spread and undulated in many planes. From the warmth and richness of velvet under sunshine they passed into the chill of far-flung cloud-shadows, that painted the Moor with slowly-moving sobriety and robbed her bosom of its jewels, her streamlets of their silver. Teign wound below, entered the valley far away under little cliffs of yellow gravel, then, by sinuous courses, through a mosaic of dusky peat, ripe rushes, and green banks overlaid with heather, passed where steep medley and tanglement of motionless boulders awakened its volume to a wilder music. Here, above this chaos of huge and moss-grown rocks, scarlet harvests of rowan flung a flame along the gorges; grey granite swam into the grey-green of the sallows; luxuriant concourse of flowers and ferns rippled to the brown lips of the river; and terraces of tumbling water crowned all that unutterable opulence of summer-clad dingle with spouts, with threads, with broad, thundering cataracts of foaming light. Here Iris twinkled in a mist that steamed above the apron of mossy-margined falls; here tree shadows restrained the sunlight, yet suffered chance arrows of pure amber to pierce some tremulous pool.

Each kiss of the Mother wakened long miles of earth into some rare hue, where the Moor colours spread enormous in their breadth, clarity, and volume. They rolled and rippled together; they twined and intertwined and parted again; they limned new harmonies from the union of rush and heath and naked stone; they chimed into fresh combinations of earth and air and sunshine; they won something from the sky outspread above them, and wove the summer blue into their secret fabrics, even as the sea does. Between dispersed tracts of the brake fern and heather, and amid walls of piled stone, that stretched threadlike over the Moor, there lay dark or naked spaces brushed with green—theatres of past spring fires; rough cart roads sprawled to the right and left; sheep tracks and the courses of distant rivulets seamed the hills; while peat ridges streaked the valleys, together with evidences of those vanished generations who streamed for metal upon this spacious spot in the spacious times. Beyond, towards the heart of the Moor, there arose Sittaford's crown; to the west ranged Watern's castles; and northerly an enormous shoulder of Cosdon climbed heaven until the opaline hazes of that noontide hour softened its heroic outlines and something dimmed the mighty shadows cast upon its slopes. Light winds fanned the mane of Honor's pony and brought with them the woolly jangle of a sheep-bell, the bellow of distant kine, the little, long-drawn, lonely tinkle of a golden bird upon a golden furze.

"The Moor," said Honor; and as she spoke a shade lifted off the face of the man beside her, a trouble faded from his eyes.

"Yes, the Moor—the great, candid, undissembling home of sweet air, sweet water, sweet space."

"And death and desolation in winter, and hidden skeletons under the quaking bogs."

"It is an animate God to me notwithstanding."

She shivered slightly and set her pony in motion.

"What a God! Where will it lead you?"

"I cannot tell; yet I trust. Nature is more than the mere art of God, as men have called it. That is why I must live with it, why I cannot mew myself in bricks and mortar. Here's God's best in this sort—the dearest sort I know—the Moor—spread out for me to see and hear and touch and tread all the days of my life. This is more than His expression—it is Him. Nothing can be greater—not high mountains, or eternal snows, or calling oceans. Nothing can be greater to me, because I too am of all this—spun of it, born of it, bred on it, a brother of the granite and the mist and the lonely flower. Do you understand?"

"I understand that this desert is no desert to you, Myles. Yet what a faith! What a certainty!"

"Better than nothing at all."

"Anything is better than that. Our best certainties are only straws thrown to the drowning—if we think as you do."

"Bars of lead rather. They help to sink us the quicker. We know much—but not the truth of anything that matters."

"You will some day, Myles."

"Yes, too late, if your faith and its whips and sugarplums are true, Honor."

"The life of the Moor is so short," she said, suddenly changing the subject. "Now it is just trembling out into the yearly splendour of the ling; then, that done, it will go to sleep again for month upon month—lying dry, sere, dead, save for the mournful singing of rains and winds. The austerity and sternness of it!"

"Tonic to toughen mental fibres."

"I'm not so philosophical. I feel the cold in winter, the heat in summer. Come, let us cross Teign and wind away round Batworthy to Kes Tor. There are alignments and hut circles and ruins of human homes there—granite all, but they spell men and women. I can tolerate them. They cheer me. Only sheep haunt them now—those ruins—but people dwelt there once; Damnonian babies were born there, and wild mothers sang cradle songs and logged little children in wolf-skin cradles and dreamed golden dreams for them."

"Nature was kind to those early folk."

"Kind! Not kinder than I to my cattle."

"They were happier than you and I, nevertheless. Happier, because nearer the other end of her chain. They had less intelligence, less capacity for suffering."

"That's a theory of Christopher's. He often wishes that he had been born thousands of years ago."

"Not since you promised to marry him," said Myles, with unusual quickness of mind.

"Perhaps not; but he's a savage really. He declares that too much work is done in the world—too much cutting and tunnelling and probing and tearing Nature's heart out. He vows that the great Mother must hate man and resent his hideous activity and lament his creation."

"One can imagine such a thing."

"And Christo says there is a deal of nonsense talked about the dignity of work. He got that out of a book, I believe, and took the trouble to remember it because the theory suited his own lazy creed so perfectly."

For once Myles Stapledon laughed.

"I do admire him: a natural man, loving the wine of life. We have more in common than you might think, for all that I'm no sportsman. I respect any man who will rise with the birds for sheer love of a fair dawn."

"Your rule of conduct is so much more strenuous, so much sterner and greyer," she said, "The cold rain and the shriek of east winds in ill-hung doors are nothing to you. They really hurt him."

"Temperament. Yet I think our paths lead the same way."

Honor laughed in her turn.

"If they do," she declared, "there are a great many more turnpike gates on your road than upon Christopher's."

CHAPTER VI.

ANTHEMIS COTULA

As Myles Stapledon proceeded at the stirrup of his cousin their conversation became more trifling, for the girl talked and the man was well content to listen. She entertained him with a humorous commentary on the life of the Moor-edge and the people who went to compose it. She pointed to stately roofs bowered in forests and expatiated on the mushroom folk who dwelt beneath them.

"My Christo is not good enough for these! I'm a mere farmeress, and wouldn't count, though I do trace my ancestors back to Tudor times. Yet you might have supposed a Yeoland could dare to breathe the same air as Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Don't you think so? What are these great men?"

"Successful," he said, not perceiving that she spoke ironically.

"Ah! the god Success!"

"Don't blame them. Money's the only power in the world now. Birth can't give splendid entertainments and pose as patron of the local institutions and be useful generally and scatter gold—if it has no gold to scatter. The old order changes, because those that represent it are mostly bankrupt. But money has always been the first power. Now it has changed hands—that's all the difference. A few generations of idleness and behold! the red blood has got all the money; the blue blood has none."

"Poor blue blood!"

"They are nothing to you—these people. They pay proper suit and service to the god that made them; they know the power of money, the futility of birth. What is the present use of old families if they represent nothing but bygone memories and musty parchments? Rank is a marketable commodity to be bought and sold—a thing as interesting and desirable to many as old china or any other fad of the wealthy. That they can understand, but poor commoners!—why, it isn't business. Don't you see?"

"Christo's ancestors were a power in the land before this sort of people were invented."

"They were invented. If you look back far enough, you'll see that plenty of your ancient houses sprang from just this sort of people. Only their way to power and prosperity was more romantic then. Now they merely risk their health and eyesight grubbing for half a lifetime at desks in offices or in a bad climate; then they risked their lives under some Devon Drake or Raleigh upon unknown seas, or the field of battle. Our present methods of fortune-making are just as romantic really, only it will take another age, that looks at this from a bird's-eye point of view, to see it. Every dog has his day, and romance always means yesterday. It is summed up in that. I'll wager the neglect of the wealthy doesn't worry Yeoland."

"No, he laughs."

"They are too sordid to understand a man living his life and content to do so. It isn't business."

Honor laughed.

"No—they have the advantage of him there. Yet I do wish he wasn't so lazy."

But Stapledon felt that he could not speak upon that question, so the subject dropped.

They had now left the Moor and were descending to the valley and the river below. A magpie, like a great black and white butterfly, passed with slow flutter before them; there was a drone and gleam of shining insects in the air; and upon the sunny hedge-banks many oaks dripped with the fat sweetness of the aphides until the steep way beneath was darkened in patches as though by rain.

"D'you hear them?" asked Honor. "The twin Teigns! They meet at the bridge beneath us. They know they are going to meet, and they begin to purr and sing to one another. They will rush into each other's arms in a minute. I love to see them do it."

Forward went her surefooted pony, and Myles, striding now on one side, now upon the other, with his eyes in the rich fabric of the hedges, fell a little way behind. When he caught his cousin up again she saw that he had been picking wild flowers. A smile trembled on her lips, for the little blossoms looked out of place—almost ridiculous—in this stolid man's great hand. Honor thought there was a pathetic appeal in the eyes of the summer speedwells and dog-roses, a righteous indignation in the bristling locks of the ragged-robins that he held; but, assuming that the bouquet was designed for her, she concealed her amusement. Then her mind ranged to another aspect of this action, and she found the man's simplicity appeal to her. He did not offer Honor the flowers, but added others to them; named each hedge blossom; showed with frank interest how the seeds of the wood-sorrels sprang away and scattered at a touch; appeared entirely interested by the unconsidered business and beauty of a Devon lane. These concerns, so trivial to Honor's eye, clearly wakened in Stapledon an interest and enthusiasm as keen as any pertaining to humanity.

They proceeded through the valley woods, past the great beech of the proposal, whose secret inscription was discreetly turned away from the high road, and then travelled towards Chagford, hard by the ancient mill of Holy Street—once a happy haunt of artists, to-day denied to all men. Here Honor pointed out the broken head of an old religious relic that formed part of a hedge upon their right hand.

"Market Cross," she said. "It used to be in Chagford until a worthy clergyman rescued it and set it here."

The fragment was of similar character to the granite round about it and shared with the component wall a decoration of mosses, fern, nettle, ivy, and brambles. Upon the stone itself was a rough incised cross, and the whole appeared to occupy this humble place with peaceful propriety. Myles viewed the fragment closely, then, moved by an idea, thrust his bouquet between its arms and passed on.

"I thought they were for me," said Honor.

"No," he answered. "I picked them without a particular object."

They went forward again, traversed Chagford Bridge, and so, by dell and hamlet, hill and valley, returned towards Little Silver and began to breast the great acclivity to Bear Down.

At the foot of this steep climb one Doctor Courteney Clack met them. He was a plump, genial soul of five-and-forty, and love of sport with lack of ambition combined to anchor him in this remote region. He had little to do and so much the more leisure for rod and horse. But to-day he was walking, and his round, clean-shorn face showed him to be remarkably warm.

"Not at the races, Doctor? How extraordinary!"

"Sheer evil fortune, Miss Endicott. A most inconsiderate young person."

"Mrs. Ford?"

"Exactly so. Nature has no sympathy with sportsmen. Christo is to tell me everything. He also has charge of a five-pound note. So I enjoy the sport in spirit."

Hurried footsteps interrupted the conversation, and a boy was seen running at top speed down the hill.

"It's Tommy Bates from home!" cried Honor. "What on earth does he want to go at that pace for?"

"Me probably," said Doctor Clack. "Nobody ever runs in Little Silver, unless it's to my house."

The medical man was right, and Tommy announced that a labourer had fallen suddenly sick in the hayfield and appeared about to perish.

"Sunstroke for certain," declared the medical man. "If it's not asking too much, Miss Endicott, I would suggest that I borrowed your pony. It will take me up the hill a great deal faster than I can walk, and time may be precious."

Honor immediately dismounted, and Doctor Clack, with great entertainment to himself, sat side-saddle, and uttering a wild whoop sent the astounded pony at the hill in a manner both unfamiliar and undignified. He was soon out of sight; and Tommy, after winning back his breath, explained the nature of the disaster and gave the name of the sufferer.

An hour earlier in the day, those workers of Bear Down already seen, were assembled about their dinner beside the majestic bulk of the last rick. All was now gathered in and the evening would see conclusion of a most satisfactory hay-harvesting. With their bread and onions, cheese and cold puddings the labourers speculated upon the worth of the crop.

"I'm thinking 'twill go in part to fat the pocket of a lazy man," said Henry Collins, who knew of the recent scene between Christopher Yeoland and Mr. Cramphorn, and had his reasons for ingratiating the latter.

"Lazy an' worse. Look at my eye!" growled Jonah. "If it weren't for missis, I'd have laid him in clink afore now—vicious rip as he is! He'll never trouble Satan to find him a job. Born to the gallows like as not."

He dropped his voice and turned to Churdles Ash.

"I seen Cherry Grepe," he said. "She's took my money to be even with un. I didn't ax no questions, but 'twill go hard with un afore very long."

Mr. Ash pursed his lips, which were indeed always pursed from the fact of there being no teeth to mention behind them. He did not answer Jonah's dark news, but spoke upon the main question.

"Come to think of it, a honest scarecrow do more work in the world than him," he declared.

"No more gude than a bowldacious auld dog-fox," said Henry Collins.

"Worse," replied Jonah. "Such things as foxes an' other varmints be the creation of the Lard to keep the likes of Christopher Yeoland out o' mischief. But him—the man hisself—what can you say of wan as have got a sawl to save, an' behaves like a awver-fed beast?"

"A butivul soarin' sawl," assented Samuel Pinsent. "But wheer do it soar to? To kissin' honest gals on the highways by all accounts."

Mr. Cramphorn's dark visage wrinkled and twisted and contracted.

"Blast the viper! But I gived un a hard stroke here an' theer, I warn 'e. Might have killed un in my gert wrath, but for t'other. Walloped un to the truth of music I did—philandering beast! 'Tis pearls afore swine, missis to mate with him."

"Fegs! You'm right theer. I've said afore an' I'll say again that she should have bided longer an' tried for her cousin. He'm worth ten of t'other chitterin' magpie; an' ban't feared o' work neither," declared Mr. Ash.

"Wait!" murmured Jonah darkly and with mystery in his voice. Then he whispered behind his hand to the ancient. "Cherry Grepe had a gawlden half-sovereign! I knaw what's in that woman, if she's pleased to let it out. Bide an' see. An' her didn't burn the chap in a wax image stuffed with pins for nought! 'That'll do the trick presently,'[#] her said. So wait an' watch, Churdles, same as I be doin'."

[#] Presently = immediately.

Mr. Ash looked uneasy, but answered nothing. Then came a sudden interruption.

Sally was serving at the cider barrel and had just poured out a horn of sweet refreshment for a thirsty man. It was Mr. Libby, who, in working clothes to-day, had condescended to manual labour once more. Time being an object with the hay, Mr. Cramphorn offered the youth a week's employment, so, much to the secret satisfaction of one who loved him, Mr. Libby became enrolled. Now the supreme moment was at hand, and while Sally laughed, her heart throbbed in a mighty flutter and beat painfully against a little bottle in her bosom. It contained the philtre, now to be exhibited on the cold heart of Gregory. Danger indeed lurked in this act, but Sally felt steeled to it and well prepared to hazard any reasonable risk. Only the previous evening she had seen Mr. Libby and her sister very close together in the gloaming. Moreover, her father had babbled far and near of the incident on the moorland road, and certain men and women, to her furious indignation, had not hesitated to hint that only an unmaidenly and coming-on spirit could culminate in such tribulation.

Now she passed for one instant behind the rick, drew forth the phial, took out its cork with her teeth and poured the potion into Mr. Libby's horn of cider. Gregory, his holiday airs and graces set aside, thanked the girl, gave a grateful grunt of anticipation, and drained the beaker at a draught.

"That's better!" he said. Then he smacked his lips and spat. "Theer's a funny tang to it tu. 'Twas from the cask—eh?"

"Ess, of course; wheer should it be from?" said Sally. Then she fluttered away, scarcely seeing where she walked.

The boy, Tommy Bates, was sitting beside Libby, and a moment later he spoke.

"Lard, Greg! what's tuke 'e? You'm starin' like a sheep."

"Doan't knaw, ezacally. I'm—I'm——"

"You'm gone dough-colour, an' theer's perspiration come out 'pon 'e so big as peas!" cried candid Tommy.

"I'm bad—mortal bad—'struth, I be dyin' I b'lieve! 'Tis here it's took me."

He clapped his hands to his stomach, rolled over on the ground and groaned, while his companion hastened to cry the catastrophe.

"Greg Libby's struck down! He'm thrawin' his life up, an' wrigglin' an' twistin' like a gashly worm!"

"Ah, I seed un wi'out his hat," said Mr. Ash calmly.

"A bit naish an' soft, I reckon; comes o' not standin' to work," spoke Henry Collins contemptuously.

"Or might be tu much cider," suggested Pinsent.

Without undue haste they strolled over to the sufferer. His head was in Sally's lap, and she screamed that he was passing away before their eyes.

"Put the poll of un off your apern, will 'e!" snapped Mr. Cramphorn. "Give awver hollerin', an' get on your legs, an' run home to Mrs. Loveys for the brandy. The man's took a fit seemin'ly. An' you, Bates, slip it down the hill for Doctor Clack. Loose his shirt to the throat, Collins, and drag un in the shade."

Jonah's orders were complied with, and soon, brandy bottle in hand, Mrs. Loveys hastened to the hay field with Sally sobbing behind her. But meantime Nature had assisted Mr. Libby to evade the potion, and a little brandy soon revived his shattered system. He was sitting up with his back against the hayrick describing his sensations to an interested audience when Doctor Clack arrived. The physician, who loved well the sound of his own voice, lectured on the recumbent Libby as soon as he had learnt particulars.

"First let me assure you all that he's in no danger—none at all," he began. "Nature is more skilful, more quick-witted, more resourceful than the most learned amongst us. Even I, beside Nature, am as nothing. I should have ordered an emetic. Behold! Nature anticipates me and takes all the necessary steps. Really one might have suspected a case of Colica Damnoniensis—which doesn't mean a damned stomach-ache, as you might imagine, having no Latin, but merely 'Devonshire Colic'—an old-time complaint—old as cider in fact—but long since vanished. It was caused by the presence of deleterious substances, or, as you would describe it more simply, dirt, in the apple-juice; and those eminent men, Doctor John Huxham and Sir George Baker, arrived at the conclusion some hundred years ago that the ailment arose from presence of lead in the cider vats. Nowadays such things cannot happen; therefore, to return to our friend here, we must seek elsewhere for an explanation of his collapse. Whatever he was unfortunate or unwise enough to partake of has happily been rejected by that learned organ, the human stomach—so often wiser than the human head—and my presence ceases to be longer necessary. A little more brandy and water and our friend will be quite equal to walking home."

Myles and Honor had now reached the scene, and the mistress of Endicott's insisted that a cart should convey Gregory to his mother. The unconscious victim of love therefore departed making the most of his sufferings.

Sally also withdrew from the toil of the day, retired to her little bedroom in Mr. Cramphorn's cottage near Bear Down, and wept without intermission for a space of time not exceeding two hours. She then cheered up and speculated hopefully upon the future.

To explain these matters it need only be said that, like many a better botanist before her, the girl had mistaken one herb of the field for another, and, instead of gathering innocent wild chamomile, collected good store of mayweed—a plant so exactly like the first to outward seeming that only most skilled eyes detect the differences between them. Thus, instead of receiving the beneficent and innocuous Matricaria chamomilla, Mr. Libby's stomach had been stormed by baleful Anthemis cotula, with the results recorded.

CHAPTER VII.

A BADGER'S EARTH