Precious Bane

It was at a love-spinning that I saw Kester first. And if, in these new-fangled days, when strange inventions crowd upon us, when I hear tell there is even a machine coming into use in some parts of the country for reaping and mowing, if those that mayhappen will read this don't know what a love-spinning was, they shall hear in good time. But though it was Jancis Beguildy's love-spinning, she being three-and-twenty at that time and I being two years less, yet that is not the beginning of the story I have set out to tell.

Kester says that all tales, true tales or romancings, go farther back than the days of the child; aye, farther even than the little babe in its cot of rushes. Maybe you never slept in a cot of rushes; but all of us did at Sarn. There is such a plenty of rushes at Sarn, and old Beguildy's missus was a great one for plaiting them on rounded barrel-hoops. Then they'd be set on rockers, and a nice clean cradle they made, soft and green, so that the babe could feel as big-sorted as a little caterpillar (painted butterflies-as-is-to-be, Kester calls them) sleeping in its cocoon. Kester's very set about such things. Never will he say caterpillars. He'll say, 'There's a lot of butter-flies-as-is-to-be on our cabbages, Prue.' He won't say 'It's winter.' He'll say, 'Summer's sleeping.' And there's no bud little enough nor sad-coloured enough for Kester not to callen it the beginnings of the blow.

But the time is not yet come for speaking of Kester. It is the story of us all at Sarn, of Mother and Gideon and me, and Jancis (that was so beautiful), and Wizard Beguildy, and the two or three other folk that lived in those parts, that I did set out to tell. There were but a few, and maybe always will be, for there's a discouragement about the place. It may be the water lapping, year in and year out - everywhere you look and listen, water; or the big trees waiting and considering on your right hand and on your left; or the unbreathing quiet of the place, as if it was created but an hour gone, and not created for us. Or it may be that the soil is very poor and marshy, with little nature or goodness in the grass, which is ever so where reeds and rushes grow in plenty, and the flower of the paigle. Happen you call it cowslip, but we always named it the paigle, or keys of heaven. It was a wonderful thing to see our meadows at Sarn when the cowslip was in blow. Gold-over they were, so that you would think not even an angel's feet were good enough to walk there. You could make a tossy-ball before a thrush had gone over his song twice, for you'd only got to sit down and gather with both hands. Every way you looked there was naught but gold, saving towards Sarn, where the woods began, and the great stretch of grey water, gleaming and wincing in the sun. Neither woods nor water looked darksome in that fine spring weather, with the leaves coming new, and buds the colour of corn in the birch-tops. Only in our oak wood there was always a look of the back-end of the year, their young leaves being so brown. So there was always a breath of October in our May. But it was a pleasant thing to sit in the meadows and look away to the far hills. The larches spired up in their quick green, and the cowslip gold seemed to get into your heart, and even Sarn Mere was nothing but a blue mist in a yellow mist of birch-tops. And there was such a dream on the place that if a wild bee came by, let alone a bumble, it startled you like a shout. If a bee comes in at the window now to my jar of gillyflowers, I can see it all in clear colours, with Plash lying under the sunset, beyond the woods, looking like a jagged piece of bottle glass. Plash Mere was bigger than Sarn, and there wasn't a tree by it, so where there were no hills beyond it you could see the clouds rooted in it on the far side, and I used to think they looked like the white water-lilies that lay round the margins of Sarn half the summer through. There was nothing about plash that was different from any other lake or pool. There was no troubling of the waters, as at Sarn, nor any village sounding its bells beneath the furthest deeps. It was true, what folks said of Sarn, that there was summat to be felt there.

It was at Plash that the Beguildys lived, and it was at their dwelling, that was part stone house and part cave, that I got my book learning. It may seem a strange thing to you that a woman of my humble station should be able to write and spell, and put all these things into a book. And indeed when I was a young wench there were not many great ladies, even, that could do much more scribing than to write a love-letter, and some could but just write such things as 'This be quince and apple' on their jellies, and others had ado to put their names in the marriage register. Many have come to me, time and again, to write their love-letters for them, and a bitter old task it is, to write other women's love-letters out of your own burning heart.

If it hadna been for Mister Beguildy I never could have written down all these things. He learned me to read and write, and reckon up figures. And though he was a preached-against man, and said he could do a deal that I don't believe he ever could do, and though he dabbled in things that are not good for us to interfere with, yet I shall never forget to thank God for him. It seems to me now a very uncommon working of His power, to put it into Beguildy's heart to learn me. For a wizard could not rightly be called a servant of His, but one of Lucifer's men. Not that Beguildy was wicked, but only empty of good, as if all the righteousness was burnt out by the flame of his fiery mind, wich must know and intermeddle with mysteries. As for love, he did not know the word. He could read the stars, and tell the future, and he claimed to have laid spirits. Once I asked him where the future was, that he could see it so plain. And he said, 'It lies with the past, child, at the back of Time.' You couldn't ever get the better of Mister Beguildy. But when I told Kester what he said, Kester would not have it so. He said the past and the future were two shuttles in the hands of the Lord, weaving Eternity. Kester was a weaver himself, which may have made him think of it thus. But I think we cannot know what the past and the future are. We are so small and helpless on the earth that is like a green rush cradle where mankind lies, looking up at the stars, but not knowing what they be.

As soon as I could write, I made a little book with a calico cover, and every Sunday I wrote in it any merry time or good fortune we had had in the week, and so kept them. And if times had been troublous and bitter for me, I wrote that down too, and was eased. So when our parson, knowing of the lies that were told of me, bade me write all I could remember in n book, and set down the whole truth and nothing else, I was able to freshen my memory with the things I had put down Sunday by Sunday.

Well, it is all gone over now, the trouble and the struggling. It be quiet weather now, like a still evening with the snow all down, and a green sky, and lambs calling. I sit here by the fire with my Bible to hand, a very old woman and a tired woman, with a task to do before she says good night to this world. When I look out of my window and see the plain and the big sky with clouds standing up on the mountains, I call to mind the thick, blotting woods of Sarn, and the crying of the mere when the ice was on it, and the way the water would come into the cupboard under the stairs when it rose at the time of the snow melting. There was but little sky to see there, saving that which was reflected in the mere; but the sky that is in the mere is not the proper heavens. You see it in a glass darkly, and the long shadows of rushes go thin and sharp across the sliding stars, and even the sun and moon might be put out down there, for, times, the moon would get lost in lily leaves, and, times, a heron might stand before the sun.

My brother Gideon was born in the year when the war with the French began. That was why Father would have him called Gideon, it being a warlike name. Jancis used to say it was a very good name for him, because it was one you couldn't shorten. You can make most names into little love-names, like you can cut down a cloak or a gown for children's wearing. But Gideon you could do naught with. And the name was like the man. I was more set on my brother than most are, but I couldna help seeing that about him. If nobody calls you out of your name, your name's like to be soon out of mind. And most people never even called him by his Christen name at all. They called him Sarn. In Father's life it was old Sarn and young Sarn. But after Father died, Gideon seemed to take the place to himself. I remember how he went out that summer night, and seemed to eat and drink the place, devouring it with his eyes. Yet it was not for love of it, but for what he could get out of it. He was very like Father then, and more like every year, both to look at and in his mind. Saving that he was less tempersome and more set in his ways, he was Father's very marrow. Father's temper got up despert quick, and when it was up he was a ravening lion. Maybe that was what gave Mother that married-all-o'er look. But Gideon I only saw angered, to call angered, three times. Mostly, a look was enough. He'd give you a look like murder, and you'd let him take the way he wanted. I've seen a dog cringing and whimpering because he'd given it one of those looks. Sarns mostly have grey eyes -- cold grey like the mere in winter -- and the Sarn men are mainly dark and sullen. 'Sullen as a Sarn,' they say about these parts. And they say there's been something queer in the family ever since Timothy Sarn was struck by forkit lightning in the times of the religious wars. There were Sarns about here then, and always have been, ever since there was anybody. Well, Timothy went against his folk and the counsels of a man of God, and took up with the wrong side, whichever that was, but it's no matter now. So he was struck by lightning and lay for dead. Being after awhile recovered, he was counselled by the man of God to espouse the safe side and avoid the lightning. But Sarns were ever obstinate men. He kept his side, and as he was coming home under the oak wood he was struck again. And seemingly the lightning got into his blood. He could tell when tempest brewed, long afore it came, and it is said that when a storm broke, the wildfire played about him so none could come near him. Sarns have the lightning in their blood since his day. I wonder sometimes whether it be a true tale, or whether it's too old to be true. It used to seem to me sometimes as if Sarn was too old to be true. The woods and the farm and the church at the other end of the mere were all so old, as if they were in somebody's dream. There was frittening about the place, too, and what with folk being afraid to come there after dusk, and the quiet noise of the fish jumping far out in the water, and Gideon's boat knocking on the steps with little knocks like somebody tapping at the door, and the causeway that ran down into the mere as far as you could see, from just outside our garden gate, being lost in the water, it was a very lonesome old place. Many a time, on Sunday evenings, there came over the water a thin sound of bells. We thought they were the bells of the village down under, but I believe now they were naught but echo bells from our own church. They say that in some places a sound will knock against a wall of trees and come back like a ball.

It was on one of those Sunday evenings, when the thin chimes were sounding along with our own four bells, that we played truant from church for the second time. It being such a beautiful evening, and Father and Mother being busy with the bees swarming, we made it up between us to take dog's leave, and to wait by the lych-gate for Jancis and get her to come with us. For old Beguildy never werrited much about her church-going, not being the best of friends with the parson himself. He sent her off when the dial made it five o'clock every fourth Sunday -- for we had service only once a month, the parson having a church at Brampton, where he lived, and another as well, which made it the more wicked of us to play truant -- but whether she got there early or late, or got there at all, he'd never ask, let alone catechize her about the sermon. Our Father would catechize us last thing in the evening when our night-rails were on. Father would sit down in the settle with the birch-rod to his hand, and the settle, that had looked such a great piece of furniture all the week, suddenly looked little, like a settle made for a mommet. Whatever Father sat in, he made it look little. We stood barefoot in front of him on the cold quarries, in our unbleached homespun gowns that mother had spun and the journeyman weaver had woven up in the attic at the loom among the apples. Then he'd question us, and when we answered wrong he made a mark on the settle, and every mark was a stroke with the birch at the end of the catechizing. Though Father couldn't read, he never forgot anything. It seemed as if he turned things over in his head all the while he was working. I think he was a very clever man with not enow of things to employ his mind. If he'd had one of the new-fangled weaving machines I hear tell of to look after, it would have kept him content, but there was no talk of such things then. We were all the machines he had, and we wished very heartily every fourth Sunday, and Christmas and Easter, that we were the children of Beguildy, though he was thought so ill of by our parson, and often preached against, even by name.

I mind once, when Father leathered us very bad, after the long preaching on Easter Sunday, Gideon being seven and me five, how Gideon stood up in the middle of the kitchen and said, 'I do will and wish to be Maister Beguildy's son, and the devil shall have my soul. Amen.'

Father got his temper up that night, no danger! He shouted at Mother terrible, saying she'd done very poorly with her children, for the girl had the devil's mark on her, and now it seemed as if the boy came from the same smithy. This I know, because Mother told it to me. All I mind is that she went to look very small, and being only little to begin with, she seemed like one of the fairy folk. And she said - 'Could I help it if the hare crossed my path? Could I help it?' It seemed so strange to hear her saying that over and over. I can see the room now if I shut my eyes, and most especially if there's a bunch of cowslips by me. For Easter fell late, or in a spell of warm weather that year, and the cowslips were very forrard in sheltered places, so we'd pulled some. The room was all dim like a cave, and the red fire burning still and watchful seemed like the eye of the Lord. There was a little red eye in every bit of ware on the dresser too, where it caught the gleam. Often and often in after years I looked at those red lights, which were echoes of the fire, just as the ghostly bells were reflections of the chime, and I've thought they were like a deal of the outer show of this world. Rows and rows of red, gledy fires, but all shadows of fires. Many a chime of merry bells ringing, and yet only the shadows of bells; only a sigh of sound coming back from a wall of leaves or from the glassy water. Father's eyes caught the gleam too, and Gideon's: but Mother's didna, for she was standing with her back to the fire by the table where the cowslips were, gathering the mugs and plates together from supper. And if it seem strange that so young a child should remember the past so clearly, you must call to mind that Time engraves his pictures on our memory like a boy cutting letters with his knife, and the fewer the letters the deeper he cuts. So few things ever happened to us at Sarn that we could never forget them. Mother's voice clings to my heart like trails of bedstraw that catch you in the lanes. She'd got a very plaintive voice, and soft. Everything she said seemed to mean a deal more than the words, and times it was like a person fumbling in the dark, or going a long way down black passages with a hand held out on this side, and a hand held out on that side, and no light. That was how she said, 'Could I help it if the hare crossed my path -- could I help it?'

Everything she said, though it might not have anything merry in it, she smiled a bit, in the way you smile to take the edge off somebody's anger, or if you hurt yourself and won't show it. A very grievous smile it was, and always there. So when Father gave Gideon another hiding for wishing he was Beguildy's boy, Mother stood by the table saying, 'Oh, dunna, Sarn! Hold thy hand, Sarn!' and smiling all the while, seeming to catch at Father's hands with her soft voice. Poor Mother! Oh, my poor Mother! Shall we meet you in the other world, dear soul, and atone to you for our heedlessness?

I'd never forgotten that Easter, but Gideon had, seemingly, for when I remembered him of it, saying we surely durstn't take dog's leave, he said, 'It's naught. We'll make Sexton's Tivvy listen to the sermon for us, so as we can answer well. And I dunna care much if I am leathered, so long as I can find some good conkers and beat Jancis, for last time she beat me.'

Conkers, maybe you know, are snail shells, and children put the empty ones on strings, and play like you play with chestnut cobs. Our woods were a grand place for snails, and Gideon had conker matches with lads from as far away as five miles the other side of Plash. He was famous all about, because he played so fiercely, and not like a game at all.

All the bells were sounding when we started that Sunday in June -- the four metal bells in the church and the four ghost bells from nowhere. Mother was helping Father with the bees, getting a new skep ready, down where the big chestnut tree was, to put the play of bees in. They'd swarmed in a dead gooseberry bush, and Mother said, with her peculiar smile, 'It be a sign of death.'

But Gideon shouted out --

'A play of bees in May is worth a noble that same day.
A play in June's pretty soon.'

And he said --

'So long as we've got the bees, Mother, we're the better of it, die who may.'

Eh, dear! I'm afraid Gideon had a very having spirit, even then. But Father thought he was a sensible lad, and he laughed and said --

'Well, we've got such a mort of bees now, I'm in behopes it wunna be me as has the telling of 'em if anybody does die.'

'Where be your springs of rosemary and your Prayer Books and your clean handkerchers?' says Mother.

Gideon had been in behopes to leave them behind, but now he ran to fetch them, and Mother began setting my kerchief to rights over my shoulders. She put in her big brooch with the black stone, that she had when George the Second died, and while she was putting it in she kept saying to herself -'Not as it matters what the poor child wears. Deary, deary me! But could I help it if the hare crossed my path? Could I help it?'

Whenever she said that, her voice went very mournful and I thought again of somebody in a dark passage, groping.

'Now then, Mother! Hold the skep whilst I keep the bough up,'said Father; 'they've knit so low down.'

I'd lief have stayed, for I dearly loved to see the great tossy-ball of bees' bodies, as rich as a brown Christmas cake, and to hear the heavy sound of them.

We went through the wicket and along the tow path, because it was the nighest way to the church, and we wanted to catch Tivvy afore she went in. The coots were out on the mere, and the water was the colour of light, with spears in it.

'Now,' said Gideon, 'we'll run for our lives!'

'What's after us?'

'The people out of the water.'

So we ran for our lives, and got to the church just as the two last bells began their snabbing 'Ting tong! Ting tong!' that always minded me of the birch-rod.

We sat on the flat grave where we mostly sat to play Conquer, and the church being on a little hill, we could watch the tuthree folks coming along the fields. There was Tivvy with her father, coming from the East Coppy, and Jancis in the flat water-meadows where the big thorn hedges were all in blow. Jancis was a little thing, not tall like me, but you always saw her before you saw other people, for it seemed that the light gathered round her. She'd got golden hair, and all the shadows on her face seemed to be stained with the pale colour of it. I was used to think she was like a white water-lily full of yellow pollen or honey. She'd got a very white skin, creamy white, without any colour unless she was excited or shy, and her face was dimpled and soft, and just the right plumpness. She'd got a red, smiling mouth, and when she smiled the dimples ran each into other. Times I could almost have strangled her for that smile.

She came up to us, very demure, in her flowered bodice and blue skirt and a bunch of blossom in her kerchief.

Although she was only two years older than I was, being of an age with Gideon, she seemed a deal older, for she'd begun to smile at the lads already, and folks said, 'Beguildy's Jancis will soon be courting.' But I know old Beguildy never meant her to get married. He meant to keep her as a bait to draw the young fellows in, for mostly the people that came to him were either young maids with no money or old men who wanted somebody cursed cheap. So at this time, when he saw what a white, blossomy piece Jancis was growing, he encouraged her to dizen herself and sit in the window of the Cave House in case anybody went by up the lane. It was only once in a month of Sundays that anybody did, for Plash was nearly as lonesome as Sarn. He made a lanthorn of coloured glass, too, the colour of red roses, and while Jancis sat in the stone frame of the window he hung it up above her with a great candle in it from foreign parts, not a rushlight such as we used. He had it in mind that if some great gentleman came by to a fair or a cockfight beyond the mountains he might fall in love with her, and then Beguildy planned to bring him in and give him strong ale and talk about charms and spells, and offer at long last to work the charm of raising Venus. It was all written in one of his books: how you went into a dark room and gave the wise man five pound, and he said a charm, and after awhile there was a pink light and a scent of roses, and Venus rose naked in the middle of the room. Only it wouldna have been Venus, but Jancis. The great gentleman, howsoever, was a long while coming, and the only man that saw her in the window was Gideon one winter evening when he was coming back that way from market, because the other road was flooded. He was fair comic-struck about her, and talked of her till I was aweary, he being nineteen at the time, which is a foolish age in lads. Before that, he never took any account of her, but just to tell her this and that as he did with me. But afterwards he was naught but a gauby about her. I could never have believed that such a determined lad, so set in his ways and so clever, could have been thus soft about a girl. But on this evening he was only seventeen, and he just said, 'Take dog's leave out, Jancis, and come with us after conkers.'

'O' said Jancis, 'I wanted to play "Green Gravel, Green Gravel."'

She'd got a way of saying 'O' afore everything, and it made her mouth look like a rose. But whether she did it for that, or whether she did it because she was slow-witted and timid, I never could tell.

'There's naught to win in 'Green Gravel,' said Gideon, 'we'll play Conquer.'

'O I wanted Green Gravel! You'll beat me if we play Conquer.'

'Ah. That's why we'll play.'

Tivvy came through the lych-gate then, and we told her what she'd got to do. She was a poor, foolish creature, and she could hardly mind her own name, times, for all its outlandishness, let alone a sermon. But Gideon said, so long as she got an inkling of it he could make up the rest. And he said if she didna remember enough of it he'd twist her arm proper. So she began to cry.

Then we saw Sexton coming across the ploughed field, very solemn, with his long staff, black and white in bands, and we could hear Parson's piebald pony clop-clopping up the lane, so we made off, and left Tivvy with her round chin trembling, and her mouth all crooked with crying, because she knew she'd never remember a word of the sermon. Tivvy at a sermon always used to make me think of our dog being washed. He'd lie down and let the water souse over him, and she did the same with a sermon. So I knew trouble was brewing.

It was a beautiful evening, with swallows high in the air, and a powerful smell of may-blossom. When the bells stopped, ours and the others, we went and looked down into the water, to see if we could get a sight of the village there, as we did most Sundays. But there was only our own church upside down, and two or three stones and crosses the same, and Parson's pony grazing on its head.

Times, on summer evenings, when the sun was low, the shadow of the spire came right across the water to our dwelling, and I was used to think it was like the finger of the Lord pointing at us. We went down into the marshy places and found plenty of conkers, and Gideon beat Jancis every time, which was a good thing, for at the end he said he'd play Green Gravel, and they were both pleased. Only we were terrible late, and nearly missed Tivvy.

'Now, tell!' says Gideon. So she began to cry, and said she knew naught about it. Then he twisted her arm, and she screamed out, 'Burning and fuel of fire!'

She must have said that because it was one of the texts the Sexton was very fond of saying over, keeping time with tapping his staff the while.

'What else?'

'Naught.'

'I'll twist your arm till it comes off if you dunna think of any more.'

Tivvy looked artful, like Pussy in the dairy, and said --

'Parson told about Adam and Eve and Noah and Shemamanjaphet and Jesus in the manger and thirty pieces of silver.'

Gideon's face went dark.

'There's no sense in it,' he said.

'But she's told you, anyway. You must let her go now.'

So we went home, with the shadow of the spire stretching all across the water.

Father said --

'What was the text?'

'Burning and fuel of fire.'

'What was the sarmon about?'

Poor Gideon made out a tale of all the things Tivvy had said. You never heard such a tale! Father sat quite quiet, and Mother was smiling very painful, standing by the fire, cooking a rasher.

Suddenly Father shouted out -

'Liar! Liar! Parson called but now, to say was there sickness, there being nobody at church. You've not only taken dog's leave and lied, but you've made game of me.'

His face went from red to purple, and all veined, like raw meat. It was awful to see. Then he reached for the horsewhip and said -

'I'll give you the best hiding ever you had, my boy!'

He came across the kitchen towards Gideon.

But suddenly Gideon ran at him and bunted into him and taking him by surprise he knocked him clean over.

Now whether it was that Father had eaten a very hearty supper, after a big day's work with the bees, or whether it was him being in such a rage, and then the surprise of the fall, we never knew. However it was, he was taken with a fit. He never stirred, but lay on his back on the red quarries, breathing so loud and strong that it filled the house, like somebody snoring in the night. Mother undid his Sunday neckcloth, and lifted him up, and put cold water on his face, but it was no manner of use.

The awful snoring went on, and seemed to eat up all other sounds. They went out like rushlights in the wind. There was no more ticking from the clock, nor purring from the cat, nor sizzling from the rasher, nor buzzing from the bee in the window. It seemed to eat up the light, too, and the smell of the white bush-roses outside, and the feeling in my body, and the thoughts I had afore. We'd all come to be just part of a dark snoring.

'Sarn, Sarn!' cried Mother. 'Oh, Sarn, poor soul, come to thyself!'

She tried to put some Hollands between his lips, but they were set. Then the snore changed to a rattle, very awful to hear, and in a little while it stopped, and there was a dreadful silence, as if all the earth had gone dumb. All the while, Gideon stood like stone, remembering the horsewhip Father meant to beat him with, so he said after. And though he'd never seen anyone die afore, when Father went quiet, and the place dumb, he said in an everyday voice, only with a bit of a tremble -

'He's dead, Mother. I'll go and tell the bees, or we met lose 'em.'

We cried a long while, Mother and me, and when we couldna cry any more, the little sounds came creeping back -- the clock ticking, bits of wood falling out of the fire, and the cat breathing in its sleep.

When Gideon came in again, the three of us managed to get Father on to a mattress, and lap him in a clean sheet. He looked a fine, good-featured man, now that the purple colour was gone from his face.

Gideon locked up, and went round to look the beasts and see all well.

'Best go to bed now, Mother,' he said. 'All's safe, and the beasts in their housen. I told every skep of bees, and I can see they're content, and willing for me to be maister.'

In those days there was little time for the mourners to think of their sorrow till after the funeral. There was a deal to do. There was the mourning to make, and before that, if a family hadn't had the weaver lately, there was the cloth to weave and dye. We hadn't had the weaver for a good while, so we were very short of stuff.

Mother told Gideon he must go and fetch the old weaver, who lived at Lullingford, by the mountains, and went out weaving by the day or the week. Gideon saddled Bendigo, Father's horse, and picked up the riding whip with a queer kind of smile. As soon as he was gone, Mother and I began to bake. For it wasn't only the weaver that must be fed, but the women we were going to bid to the funeral sewing-bee. They would come for love, as was the custom, but we must feed them.

It seemed lonesome that night without Gideon. He had to bait and sleep in Lullingford, but he came back in good time next day, and I heard the sound of the hoofs on the yard cobbles through my spinning. We were hard at it, getting yarn ready for the old man. He came riding after Gideon on a great white horse, very bony, which put me in mind of the rider on the white horse in the Bible. He was the oldest man you could see in a month of Sundays. He hopped about like a magpie, prying here and there over the loom, looking at his shuttle for all the world like a pie that's pleased with some bright thing it's found. I had to take his meals up to the attic, for he wouldna waste time leaving off for them. It was a good thing the apples were all done, so he could hop about the loft without let or hindrance. 'Now you must take the bidding letters for the sewing, Prue,' Mother told me.

'Can I take one to Jancis, Mother?'

'No. We munna spend money paying for a bidding letter to Jancis. But she can come, and welcome.'

'I'll go and tell her. She sews very nice.'

'But not so well as you, my dear. Whatsoever's wrong, thee sews a beautiful straight seam, Prue.'

I ran off, mighty pleased with praise, which came seldom my way. I met Gideon by the lake.

'Taking the biddings?' he said.

'Ah.'

'Jancis coming?'

'Ah.'

'Well, when you be there, ask Beguildy to lend us the white oxen for the funeral, oot?'

'To lug Father to the church?'

'Ah. And when we've buried Father, you and me must talk a bit. There's a deal to think of for the future. All these bidding letters, now, you met as well have written 'em and saved a crown.'

I wondered what he meant, seeing he knew I couldna write a word, but I knew he'd say in his own time, and not afore, that being his way. Nobody would have thought he was but seventeen; he seemed five-and-twenty by the way he spoke, so choppy and quick, but ever so quiet.

When I got to Plash, Jancis was sitting in the garden, spinning. She said we could borrow the beasts, that were hers by right, being a present from her Granny, though she never had the strength to control them in a waggon nor to drive plough with 'em like I had in the years after. But she got a bit of pin money by hiring them out for wakes, when Beguildy didna pocket it. They dressed up beautiful with flowers and ribbons after they'd been scrubbed.

I went in to speak to Beguildy.

'Father's dead, Mister Beguildy,' I said.

'So, so! What's that to me, dear soul?'

He was a very strange man, always, was Beguildy.

'Tell me what I knew not, child,' he said.

'Did you know, then?'

'Ah, I knew thy feyther was gone. Didna he go by me on a blast of air last Sunday evening, crying out, thin and spiteful, "You owe me a crown, Beguildy!" Tell me summat fresh, girl -- new, strange things. Now if you could say that the leaves be all fallen this day of June, and my damsons ripe for market; or that the mere hath dried; or that man lusteth no more to hurt his love; or that Jancis looketh no more at her own face in Plash Pool, there would be telling, yes! But for your dad, it is naught. I cared not for the man.'

And taking up his little hammer, he beat on a row of flints that he had, till the room was all in a charm. Every flint had its own voice, and he knew them as a shepherd the sheep, and it was his custom when the talk was not to his mind to beat out a chime upon them.

'I came to see if we could borrow the beasts for our waggon. Jancis said yes.'

'You mun pay.'

'How much, mister?'

'The same as for wakes, a penny a head. So you be taking the biddings? Now who did your mam pay to write 'em?'

'Parson wrote 'em for us, and Mother put a crown in the poor-box.'

'Dear soul! The bitter waste! I'd have wrote 'em very clear and fine for half the money. I can write the tall script and the dwarf, round or square, red or black. Parson can only do the sarmon script, and a very poor script it be.'

'I wish I could write, Mister Beguildy.'

'Oh, you!'

He laughed in a very peculiar way he had, soft and light, at the top of his head.

'It's not for children,'he said.

But I thought about it a deal. I thought it would be a fine thing to sit by the fire, in the settle corner, and write bidding letters and love-letters and market bills, or even a verse for a tombstone, and to do the round or the square, tall or little, red or black, and sermon script too if I'd a mind. I thought when anybody like Jancis angered me by being so pretty, I'd do her letters very crabbed, and with no red at all. But I knew that was wicked of me, for poor Jancis couldna help being pretty.

Then Beguildy went off to cure an old man's corns, and Jancis and I played lovers, but Jancis said I did it very bad, and she thought Gideon would do it a deal better.

It was a still, dewy summer night when we buried Father. In our time there was still a custom round about Sarn to bury people at night. In our family it had been done for hundreds of years. I was busy all day decking the waggon with yew and the white flowering laurel, that has such a heavy, sweet smell. I pulled all the white roses and a tuthree pinks that were in blow, and made up with daisies out of the hay grass. While I pulled them, I thought how angered Father would have been to see me there, trampling it, and I could scarcely help looking round now and again to see if he was coming.

After we'd milked, Gideon went for the beasts, and I put black streamers round their necks, and tied yew boughs to their horns. It had to be done carefully, for they were the Longhorn breed, and if you angered them, they'd hike you to death in a minute.

The miller was one bearer, and Mister Callard, of Callard's Dingle, who farmed all the land between Sarn and Plash, was another. Then there were our two uncles from beyond the mountains.

Gideon, being chief mourner, had a tall hat with black streamers and black gloves and a twisted black stick with streamers on it. They took a long while getting the coffin out, for the doors were very narrow and it was a big, heavy coffin. It had always been the same at all the Sarn funerals, yet nobody ever seemed to think of making the doors bigger.

Sexton went first with his hat off and a great torch in his hand. Then came the cart, with Miller's lad and another to lead the beasts. The waggon was mounded up with leaves and branches, and they all said it was a credit to me. But I could only mind how poor Father was used to tell me to take away all those nasty weeds out of the house. And now we were taking him away, jolting over the stones, from the place where he was maister. I was all of a puzzle with it. It did seem so unkind, and disrespectful as well, leaving the poor soul all by his lonesome at the other end of the mere. I was glad it was sweet June weather, and not dark.

We were bound to go the long way round, the other being only a foot road. When we were come out of the fold-yard, past the mixen, and were in the road, we took our places -- Gideon behind the coffin by himself, then Mother and me in our black poke bonnets and shawls, with Prayer Books and branches of rosemary in our hands. Uncles and Miller and Mister Callard came next, all with torches and boughs of rosemary.

It was a good road, and smoother than most -- the road to Lullingford. Parson used to say it was made by folk who lived in the days when the Redeemer lived. Romans, the name was. They could make roads right well, whatever their name was. It went along above the water, close by the lake; and as we walked solemnly onwards, I looked into the water and saw us there. It was a dim picture, for the only light there was came from the waning, clouded moon, and from the torches. But you could see, in the dark water, something stirring, and gleams and flashes, and when the moon came clear we had our shapes, like the shadows of fish gliding in the deep. There was a great heap of black, that was the waggon, and the oxen were like clouds moving far down, and the torches were flung into the water as if we wanted to dout them.

All the time, as we went, we could hear the bells ringing the corpse home. They sounded very strange over the water in the waste of night, and the echoes sounded yet stranger. Once a white owl came by, like a blown feather for lightness and softness. Mother said it was Father's spirit looking for its body. There was no sound but the bells and the creaking of the wheels, till Parson's pony, grazing in the glebe, saw the dim shapes of the oxen a long way off, and whinnied, not knowing, I suppose, but what they were ponies too, and being glad to think, in the lonesomeness of the night, of others like herself near by.

At last the creaking stopped at the lych-gate. They took out the coffin, resting it on trestles, and in the midst of the heavy breathing of the bearers came the promising words --

'I am the resurrection and the life.'

They were like quiet rain after drought. Only I began to wonder, how should we come again in the resurrection? Should we come clear, or dim, like in the water? Would Father come in a fit of anger, as he'd died, or as a little boy running to Grandma with a bunch of primmyroses? Would Mother smile the same smile, or would she have found a light in the dark passage? Should I still be fast in a bidy I'd no mind for, or would they give us leave to weave ourselves bodies to our own liking out of the spinnings of our souls?

The coffin was moved to another trestle, by the graveside, and a white cloth put over it. Our best tablecloth, it was. On the cloth stood the big pewter tankard full of elderberry wine. It was the only thing Mother could provide, and it was by good fortune that she had plenty of it, enough for the funeral feast and all, since there had been such a power of elderberries the year afore. It looked strange in the doubtful moonlight, standing there on the coffin, when we were used to see it on the table, with the colour of the Christmas Brand reflected in it.

Parson came forrard and took it up, saying --

'I drink to the peace of him that's gone.'

Then everybody came in turn, and drank good health to Father's spirit.

At the coffin foot was our little pewter measure full of wine, and a crust of bread with it, but nobody touched them.

Then Sexton stepped forrard and said -

'Be there a Sin Eater?'

And Mother cried out --

'Alas, no! Woe's me! There is no Sin Eater for poor Sarn. Gideon gainsayed it.'

Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread and wine handed to him across the coffin, and eat and drink, saying --

I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man, that ye walk not over the fields nor down the by-ways. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.

And with a calm and grievous look he would go to his own place. Mostly, my Grandad used to say, Sin Eaters were such as had been Wise Men or layers of spirits, and had fallen on evil days. Or they were poor folk that had come, through some dark deed, out of the kindly life of men, and with whom none would trade, whose only food might oftentimes be the bread and wine that had crossed the coffin. In our time there were none left around Sarn. They had nearly died out, and they had to be sent for to the mountains. It was a long way to send, and they asked a big price, instead of doing it for nothing as in the old days. So Gideon said --

'We'll save the money. What good would the man do?'

But Mother cried and moaned all night after. And when the Sexton said 'Be there a Sin Eater?'she cried again very pitifully, because Father had died in his wrath, with all his sins upon him, and besides, he had died in his boots, which is a very unket thing and bodes no good. So she thought he had great need of a Sin Eater, and she would not be comforted.

Then a strange, heart-shaking thing came to pass. Gideon stepped up to the coffin and said --

'There is a Sin Eater.'

'Who then? I see none,' said Sexton.

'I ool be the Sin Eater.'

He took up the little pewter measure full of darkness, and he looked at Mother.

'Oot turn over the farm and all to me if I be the Sin Eater, Mother?' he said.

'No, no! Sin Eaters be accurst!'

'What harm, to drink a sup of your own wine and chumble a crust of your own bread? But if you dunna care, let be. He can go with the sin on him.'

'No, no! Leave un go free, Gideon! Let un rest, poor soul! You be in life and young, but he'm cold and helpless, in the power of Satan. He went with all his sins upon him, in his boots, poor soul! If there's none else to help, let his own lad take pity.'

'And you'll give me the farm, Mother?'

'Yes, yes, my dear! What be the farm to me? You can take all, and welcome.'

Then Gideon drank the wine all of a gulp, and swallowed the crust. There was no sound in all the place but the sound of his teeth biting it up.

Then he put his hand on the coffin, standing up tall in the high black hat, with a gleaming pale face, and he said --

'I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man. Come not down the lanes nor in our meadows. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.'

There was a sigh from everybody then, like the wind in dry bents. Even the oxen by the gate, it seemed to me, sighed as they chewed the cud.

But when Gideon said, 'Come not down the lanes nor in our meadows,' I thought he said it like somebody warning off a trespasser.

Now it was time to throw the rosemary into the grave. Then they lowered the coffin in, and all threw their burning torches down upon it, and douted them.

It was over at long last, and we went home by the shortest way, only Gideon going by the road with the waggon. We were a tidy few, for all that had been at the church came back for the funeral feast. There was the smith, and the ox-driver from Plash Farm, and the shepherd from the Mountain, and the miller's man and a good few women, as well as those I spoke of afore.

Mother had asked Tivvy to mind the fire and see to the kettles for making spiced ale and posset, for the air struck chill along the water at that time of night.

When we raught home there was Missis Beguildy as well, and Jancis. They had a nice gledy fire, and the horn of ale set upon it all ready. She was a kind soul, Missis Beguildy, but sorely misliked through being the wife of a wizard, a preached-against man. She was never invited to weddings nor baptisms. But at a burying, when the harm's on the house already, what ill can anybody do? Missis Beguildy dearly loved an outing. She'd have liked to live in Lullingford and keep a shop, and go to church twice of a Sunday, and sing in the choir. She'd no faith at all in her good-man's spells, though she never said so, except to me and a tuthree she knew well. Once, a long while after this, when there'd been trouble at the Stone House, which you'll hear of in good time, when she'd quarrelled with Beguildy, I went in by chance and found her with Lady Camperdine's bottle (in which he said he'd got the old lady's ghost), shaking it as if it was an ill-mixed sauce, so that I thought the cork would come out, and shouting, 'I'll learn ye! I'll learn ye? Lady Camperdine indeed! Plash water! That's what's in this here bottle. Plash water and naught else.'

It was seldom anybody saw Missis Beguildy. She was always out with the fowl or the ducks, or digging the garden, or fishing. She was a good fisherwoman. If it hadna been for her, they'd have clemmed, for Beguildy never reckoned to do anything but wizardry. She'd baked us a batch of funeral cakes in case we hadna enough, and she was so kind and comely, being fair, like Jancis, and plump, and the posset she made was so good, that everybody forgot she was the wizard's wife, even Parson

'I'm to take back the cattle, my dear,' she said to Mother; 'hay harvest, we use 'em a deal.'

'Bin you started?'

'Ah. Bin you?'

'I start to-morrow,' said Gideon.

Everybody looked at him, tall in the doorway, with a kind of power in him. And it seemed to me that everybody drew away a bit, as if from summat untoert.

Parson got up to go.

'It's to-morrow now, young Sarn,' he said. 'See you do well in it, and in all the to-morrows.'

'To-morrowl O to-morrow!' said Jancis. 'It be a word of promise.'

She yawned, and all in a minute her mouth was a rose, and I knew I couldna abide her.

'One song!' Sexton spoke very solemn. 'One holy song afore we part.'

So we stood up about the table, where the twelve candles were guttering low, and we sang --

With a turf all at your head, dear man,
And another at your feet,
Your good deeds and your bad ones all
Before the Lord shall meet.

There being a sight more men than women, the song sounded deep, like bees in a lime-tree. Jancis and Tivvy sang very clear and high, and cold too, as if they didna mind at all that the poor corpse lay out yonder with only turfs for company.

Then there was a trampling and a traversing, and they all went out, Mother standing by the door the while, doling out the funeral cakes. These were made of good sponge, with plenty of eggs, coffin-shaped and lapped up in black-edged paper.

By this the birds were singing very loud and clear, with a ringing, echoing noise. Our chimneys lay in the mere, which meant that it was sunrise. There was a cuckoo in the oak wood, and the first corncrake spoke up from the hay grass, very masterful.

Gideon said--

'It be too late for sleep now. To-morrow be come. Let's go down into the orchard. I want to tell you what I've planned out.'

Little did I think, as I followed him down into the orchard, where was neither blossom nor fruit, what those plans were to mean for us all.

We climbed up into the old pippin trees where we had a favourite place between the boughs. Looking at Gideon's face among the bright leaves, I thought it was very queer to think of all those sins being on him. Ever since Father was a little baby, roaring and beating on his cot of rushes, on through the time when he was a lad, taking dog's leave from church; and after, when he went cockfighting and courting, all the evil he did, Gideon had got to carry. All his rages were Gideon's rages.

'Now, Prue,' says Gideon, 'listen what I be going to tell ye. You and me has got to get on.'

'And Mother?'

'Oh, well, Mother too. But she's old.'

'She'd like to get on though, sure.'

'That be neither here nor there. If we get on, she will. You and me ha' got to work, Prue.'

'I amna afeered of work,' I said.

'Well, there'll be a plenty. I want to make money on the place -- a mort of money. Then, when the time's ripe, we'll sell it. Then we'll go to Lullingford and buy a house, and you shall hold up your head with the best, and be a rich lady.'

'I dunna mind all that about being rich and holding up my head.'

'Well you must mind. And I'll be churchwarden and tell the Rector what to do, and say who's to go in the stocks, and who's to go in the almshousen, and vote for the parliament men. And when any wench has a baby that's a love-child, you'll go and scold her.'

'I'd liefer play with the baby.'

'Anybody can play with a baby. None but a great lady can scold. And we'll buy a grand house. I hanna put my eye on one yet, but there be time enow. And a garden with a man to see to it, and serving-wenches, and the place full of grand furniture and silver plate and china.'

'I dearly like pretty china,' I said. 'Can we get some of' them new cups and saucers from Staffordshire, with little people on 'em?'

'You can get anything you like, and a gold thimble and a press full of gowns into the bargain. Only you mun help me first. It'll take years and years.'

'But couldna we stop at Sarn, and get just a little bit of new furniture and china, and do without so many maids and men?'

'No. There's not enow of folks at Sarn, saving at the Wake, and that's only once a year. What's once a year? And what use being chief if there's nobody to be chief of? "Chief among ten thousand." That's a good sounding text. I'd lief be chief among ten thousand.'

'I wonder if it be the lightning in you,' I said, 'makes you feel like that?'

I always used to think he looked as if he'd got it in him when there was anything out of the common going on. His eyes would be all of a blaze, but cold too. And he'd make you feel as if you wanted what he wanted, though you didna. Times, when he wanted to look for badger-earths in the woods, he made me think I did too. And all the while, what I wanted in my own self was to go and gather primmyroses.

'Well, it'll take a deal of lightning in the blood to do what I'm set to do,' he said. 'The place never did more than keep us, Mother says. And Father left naught -- not but just enough to pay the weaver and Sexton and buy the wax candles and gloves and that for the burying.'

'Whatever shall we do, if we'd only just enough afore,' I wondered, 'and Father to work for us? We can never put by money, lad.'

'I shall do what he did and a deal more beside.'

'You never can.'

'I can do all as I've a mind to do. I've got such a power in me that naught but death can bind it. And with you to give a hand --'

He stopped a bit there, and pulled a leaf and tore it. 'Being as how things are, you'll never marry, Prue.'

My heart beat soft and sad. It seemed such a terrible thing never to marry. All girls got married. Jancis would. Tivvy would. Even Miller's Polly, that always had a rash or a hoost or the ringworm or summat, would get married. And when girls got married, they had a cottage, and a lamp, maybe, to light when their man came home, or if it was only candles it was all one, for they could put them in the window, and he'd think 'There's my missus now, lit the candles!' And then one day Mrs. Beguildy would be making a cot of rushes for 'em, and one day there'd be a babe in it, grand and solemn, and bidding letters sent round for the christening, and the neighbours coming round the babe's mother like bees round the queen. Often when things went wrong, I'd say to myself, 'Ne'er mind, Prue Sarn! There'll come a day when you'll be queen in your own skep.' So I said --

'Not wed, Gideon? Oh, ah! I'll wed for sure.'

'I'm afeerd nobody'll ask you, Prue.'

'Not ask me? What for not?'

'Because -- oh, well, you'll soon find out. But you can have a house and furniture and all just the same, if you give a hand in the earning of 'em.'

'But not an 'usband, nor a babe in a cot of rushes?'

'No.'

'For why?'

'Best ask Mother for why. Maybe she can tell you why the hare crossed her path. But I'm main sorry for ye, Prue, and I be going to make you a rich lady, and maybe when we've gotten a deal of gold, we'll send away for some doctor's stuff for a cure. But it'll cost a deal, and you must work well and do all I tell you. You're a tidy, upstanding girl enough, Prue, and but for that one thing the fellows ud come round like they will round Jancis.'

I thought about it a bit, while the water lapped on the banks at the foot of the orchard. Then I said I'd do all Gideon wanted.

'You mun swear it, Prue, a solemn oath on the Book. Maybe, if you didna, you'd tire and give over soon. And I'll swear what I promised, too.'

He went into the house to fetch the Book. I sat still and listened to the rooks going over to the rookery at the back of the house, beyond the garden and the rickyard. They were coming back from their breakfast in the fields away towards Plash. I wanted my breakfast, too; for whoever's dead, we poor mortals clem. And as I listened to the sleepy sound of the cawing, and the flapping of their wings when they came over low down, I thought it seemed a criss-cross sort of world, where you bury your Father at night, and straightway begin to think of breakfast and housen and gold with the first light of dawn; where you've got to go cursed all your life long because a poor silly hare looked at your Mother afore you were born; where a son, eating his Mother's batch-cake and drinking of her brewing, loads his poor soul with all his Father's sins.

Gideon came running back with the great Book in his hands, very heavy, and fastened with a silver clasp.

'Come down, Prue, and swear,' he said. 'Now hold the Book.' I asked him if he was sure Mother would give us leave to do it.

'Give us leave? It's not for her to give us leave. She canna hinder me. The farm be mine. Didna you hear her say so when I took the sin upon me?'

'But will you make Mother abide by that?'

'Will folk pawn their souls for naught? Is another's sin sweet in the mouth that I should eat it save at a price? The farm be mine for ever and ever, until I choose to sell it. Now swear! Say -

'I promise and vow to obey my brother Gideon Sarn and to hire myself out to him as a sarvant, for no money, until all that he wills be done. And I'll be as biddable as a prentice, a wife, and a dog. I swear it on the Holy Book. Amen.'

So I said it. Then Gideon said --

'I swear to keep faith with my sister, Prue Sarn, and share all with her when we've won through, and give her money up to fifty pound, when we've sold Sarn, to cure her. Amen.'

After we'd done, I felt as if Sarn Mere was flowing right over us, and I shivered as if I'd got an ague.

'What ails you?' says Gideon. 'Best go and light the fire if you be cold, and get the breakfast. We can talk while we eat. Mother's asleep. There's a deal to say yet.'

So I went in and lit the fire, and set the table as nice as I could, for it seemed a bit of comfort in a dark place. I wondered if it would be unfeeling to pull a few rosebuds to put in the middle. And seeing that it wasna unfeeling to eat and drink, I thought it wouldna hurt to pull a rose or two.

When Gideon came in from the milking, we sat down, and he told me all that was in his mind. First, I was to learn to make cheeses as well as butter. Then he was going to make some withy panniers for Bendigo, and every market day he'd ride to Lullingford with butter and eggs, cheeses and honeycomb, fruit and vegetables and even flowers.

'Them roses, now,' he said, 'you could bunch 'em up, and they'd bring in a bit.'

Times there'd be dressed poultry and ducks, rabbits, fish, and mushrooms.

'You'll see, Prue, we'll make a deal,' he said.

'But what a journey! Thirty mile in the day.'

'I'll plough a bit of land to grow corn for Bendigo.. As for me, I'm never tired.'

When we'd saved a bit, we were to buy another cow. She'd calve in the spring, and then there'd be two cows milking when one was dry. That ud mean more market butter. After that, we were to buy two oxen to plough and turn the flail and lug manure, and save hiring Beguildy's beasts. When our sow farrowed, we were to keep all the piglets and turn them loose in the oakwoods, and Mother was to take her knitting and mind them. Then there'd be a deal of bacon for market, over and above what we could eat. We'd only got five sheep, but Gideon said we'd mend that by keeping all the lambs, and so have wool to sell and a big flock of sheep next year. Mother and me were to spin yarn all winter, and he'd sell it at the draper's or change it for things we were bound to have at the grocer's, such as salt for curing, yeast and sugar. Soap we made ourselves out of lye. Rushlights we made too, out of fat and large dry rushes. Rye we had, and one small field of wheat. Father used to take a few sacks at a time to be ground at the mill where Tivvy's uncle lived.

'I shall grow more corn, acres of corn,' he said, 'and take it to the mill in the ox-wain. Whatsoever the French do, corn wunna come amiss. And though it's cheap now, it wunna be if they tax it, which I hear tell is more than likely. It'll be better, a power, to have one acre under wheat then than to be coddling about with twenty acres under aught else. We'll grow hops as well, and never be short of a drop of good ale, for though I mean to work you, Prue, I wunna clem you. Good plain food, as much as you can eat, but no fallals. The rough honey after we've put by the best for market, fruit when it's cheap, bacon and taters and bread, and eggs and butter when the roads are too bad for market.'

'I shall put up a prayer for bad roads,' I said.

Gideon looked at me very sharp, but seeing it was only my fun he laughed.

'A' right, but it'll take the Devil's own weather to stop me.' He'd got a plan that I should learn to do sums and keep accounts and write. I was glad, for I dearly loved the thought of. being able to read books, and especially the Bible. It always werrited me in church when Sexton read out of the Bible, for no matter what he read, it all sounded like a bee in a bottle. It didna matter when he was reading --

'And he took unto him a wife and begat Aminadab...'' for it was naught to me if he did. But when there were things to be read with a sound in 'em like wind in the aspen tree, it seemed a pitiful thing that he should mouth it over so, being very big-sorted at being able to read at all. I wanted to be able to read

'Or ever the silver cord be loosed'

for myself, and savour it. It would be grand to be able to write, too, and put down all such things as I wanted to keep in mind. So when Gideon said I was to learn, I was joyfully willing.

'But if Mister Beguildy learns me, how can I pay?' I said. 'You can dig taters for 'em, and give a hand in the hay, and drive plough for 'em now and again. Beguildy's so mortal lazy, and so big-sorted with being a wise man, there's not a hand's turn of work in the man. Mooning, mooning! A salve for every sore, he's got, saving for idleness. You be strong. You can pretty near dig spade for spade with me. Pay that way. And if you've a mind, you can put on your black and go and ask him this evening.'

He went off to the hay meadow with his scythe, and I set about my work with a will, and should have sung a bit, but called poor Father to mind. It made me gladsome to be getting some education, it being like a big window opening. And out of that window who knows what you metna see?

When I took Gideon's nooning, going through the rookery, I called to mind that we'd never told the rooks about a death in the place. It's an old ancient custom to tell them. Folk say if you dunna, a discontent comes over them, and they fall into a melancholy and forget to come home. So in a little while there are your ellums with the nests still like dark fruit on the sky, but all silent and deserted. And though rooks do a deal of mischief, it's very unlucky to lose them, and the house they leave never has any prosperation after. So I remembered Gideon of this, and we went to the rookery.

They were the biggest ellum trees I've ever seen, both common and wych ellums. Under them it was all dimmery with summer leaves. The ground was green with delandine, that had just left blowing, and enchanter's nightshade, not quite in blow. The leaves were white with droppings. It was a very still, hot day, with only a little breeze rocking the very tops of the trees, and a sleepy caw coming down to us time and again. I used to like to come to the rookery on days like this, after tea, when I'd cleaned myself. And on Ascension Day in special I liked to come and watch if they worked. For they say no rook'll work on Ascension Day. And sure enough I never saw them bring even a stick on that day, but they seemed very thoughtful and holy in their minds, sitting each in his tree like Parson in pulpit.

'Ho, rooks!' shouted Gideon, 'Father's dead, and I be maister, and I've come to say as you shall keep your housen in peace, and I'll keep ye safe from all but my own gun, and you're kindly welcome to bide.'

The rooks peered down at him over their nests, and when he'd done there was a sudden clatter of wings, and they all swept up into the blue sky with a great clary, as if they were considering what was said. In a while they came back, and settled down very serious and quiet. So we knew they meant to bide.

When we were back in the field, Gideon laughed a bit, while he was whetting his scythe on the hone, and he said -- 'I'm glad they mean stopping. I be despert fond of rooky-pie.'

With that, he swept the scythe through the grass, thinnish and full of ox-eye daisies, and sighing with a dry sound. And because the grass was so thin, you could watch the scythe, like a flash of steely light, through the standing crop before the swathe fell. And it seems to me now that it was like the deathly will of God, which is ever waiting behind us till the hour comes to mow us down; yet not in unkindness, but because it is best for us that we leave growing in the meadow, and be brought into His safe rickyard, and thatched over warm with His everlasting loving-kindness.

So soon as I'd milked, Gideon being still hard at it in the meadow, I went upstairs and put on my black, and my mob-cap. I never wore it to work in, to save washing, and folk thought I was a heathen, pretty near, what with no mob-cap and no shoes or stockings most of the time, but bare feet or clogs. Gideon could whittle a clog right well, and they be grand for doing mucky work like I did. I'd made me a sacking gown, too, short to the knee, for cleaning the beast-housen in. I know everybody called me the barn-door savage of Sarn. But when I remembered the beautiful house at Lullingford that was to be, and the flowered gowns and dimity curtains and china, I didna take it to heart much.

I was very choice of my homespun gown with the crossover, and the new mob-cap trimmed with little sausages made of sarsnet, very new-fangled. So I did my hair in ringlets -- one on each side and two at the back, down to my waist.

I was comfortable in my mind, thinking how we were going to send away for simples to make me as beautiful as a fairy. While I milked I thought about it, and while I cleaned the sties, and while I scrubbed the kitchen quarries.

Mother winnocked a bit, to hear I was off to Plash, for she was low and melancholy from abiding under the shadow of death. She'd been so used to humouring a tempersome man that she felt as restless as you do when you've just cast off the second stocking-toe of a pair.

She'd sit quiet a bit in the chimney corner, and you'd hear the wheel whirring softly, like a little lych-fowl. Then suddenly she'd give over spinning, and wring her hands, that always made me think of a mole's little hands, lifted up to God when it be trapped. And she'd say, 'Sunday was a week, he had no bacon to his tea! Sunday was a fornit, he didna like the dumplings, and no wonder, for they were terrible sad, Prue. Twice I o'er-boiled his eggs in that last week, and the new smock, Prue --'

At that, she'd cry a long while.

'I hivered and hovered over it, Prue, so he died afore it was done. Oh, my dear, to think on it! It wanted but the shoulder pieces and the cuffs, and it would ha' been the best smock ever I made. But I hivered and hovered, and he couldna bide any longer. He heard the mighty voice, child, calling among the ellums out yonder, and he couldna tarry for his smock, poor soul. All my stitches for naught.'

'Now, Mother, you mun finish it for Gideon,' I said. 'It'll fit Gideon right well, for he's a fine big man, though not so broad as Father. But he'll fill out. Come his eighteenth birthday, I shouldna wonder but he'll look right well in it. So you'd best hurry up.'

'Well,' she said, 'well, there's sense in that, child. He took the sin, to wear all his life long. He shall have the smock.'

She fetched Gideon's Sunday coat, and took the smock out of the dresser drawer, to measure it.

I sent up a wish that they might be enough of a size to content her. And so they were, and she quieted down again, and set off once more, whirring like a little lych-fowl.

But it wunna for long. She gave me a look, time and again, while I was putting on me mittens, and said --

'The ringlets be right nice, Prue.' And then: 'You've got a very tidy figure, child.'

And all in a minute she bent two-double over the wheel and began the old weariful cry --

'Could I help it if the hare crossed my path: could I help it?'

'Oh, Mother, Mother!' I beseeched her, 'give over crying for what we canna mend. I canna bear to hear you cry, my dear. Mother! Look ye! I dinna mind at all. There, there now, my lamb!' (I was used to call her that, because she seemed so little and so lost). 'There, dunna take it to heart. Listen what I'll tell you! I'd as like have a hare-shotten lip as not!' With that, I ran out of the house and through the wicket and up the wood path, roaring-crying.

I cried so loud that there was a whirr of wings on this side and on that, and far up the glade a coney heard me, and sat up in the middle of the path like a Christian, with one paw held up, just as Parson does, giving the blessing. Only it was a curse that his cousin, the hare, gave me.

I wondered why it cursed me so. Was it of its own free will and wish, or did the devil drive it? Did God begrutch me an 'usband and a cot of rushes, that He's let it be so? In the years after, it did often seem a queer thing that I should be obliged to work weekdays and Sundays so as to earn enough money to put straight what a silly hare had put crooked. And I knew it would take a deal of money to cure a hare-shotten lip. There was a kind of sour laughter in the thought of it. It called to mind the blackish autumn evenings, when grouse rise from the bitter marsh and fly betwixt the withered heather and the freezing sky, and laugh. Old harsh men laugh that way at the falling down of an enemy. And the good ladies of the town, big with stiff flowered silks and babes righteously begotten, laughed so behind their fans when they went to the prison to see a lovely harlot whipped. With that kind of bitterness a man might laugh when he was dying of a wound gotten in the king's cause, and one came busily in while the Parson was reading the prayer for the dying, and cried out, 'The king doth give you an earldom, and send you a bidding letter to his palace.'

Ah! Those be the ways grouse laugh, and that was how I laughed in those days. But now I sit here between the hearth and the window, with the tea brewing for one that will be home afore sundown, and the clouds standing upon the mountains, and when I laugh, I laugh easy, like the woodpecker in spring. He was ever a laugher, was the woodpecker, and a right merry laugher too. He'll fly into an ellum tree, and laugh to see it so green. And he'll fly into an ash, and laugh to see it so bare, with only the black buds and no leaves. And then he'll fly into an oak, and laugh fit to burst to see the young brown leaves. Ah, the woodpecker's a good laugher, and the laughter's sweet as a sound nut. If we can laugh so at the end of long living, we've not lived in vain.

But that evening I laughed like the grouse, and my heart was rebellious within me.

Yet I could not but be pleased to think of the writing. I was glad also because it would give me a hold over Gideon, since if he was too harsh with Mother and me, I could be a bit awkward about the writing. I ran along by the water, feeling light and easy in my best sandal shoes, thinking how I'd work to get the stuff that was to make me as beautiful as a fairy, and how in a while there'd come a lover, and the axings would be put up in church, and in another while I'd sit in my own houseplace with my foot on a rocker and with a babe, grand and solemn, on my knee, better than all the French wax dolls they told of, that I'd never seen, but wanted very bad.

I was contented to see the coots swimming about with a trail of coot chickens after them, for all the world as if they were on a string. And I laughed to see the heron that lived on the far side of the water, and had got a missus and a nest there, standing knee-deep among the lilies, fair comic-struck. In after days I saw Gideon look like that, time and again, when he'd lief talk to Jancis and couldna call to mind a single word, or when he'd put his best cravat on and couldna get it to his liking, looking in the glass that he bought out of his second wool money, after he'd seen Jancis under the rosy light.

I met Jancis afore I got to the Stone House. She was bringing the oxen in, because they were ordered for a fair and the people were coming for 'em early in the morning. Betwixt the two white beasts, with a hand on each, with all that gold hair shining, and a face like a white rose, she looked like the ghost of a beautiful lady that died a long while ago and came again every midsummer and fled at cockcrow.

'Oh!' she said, 'you've gotten ringlets, Prue. Shall I have ringlets for Sarn Wake?'

'As you please,' I answered, very snappy. For she was pretty enough without ringlets, and her mouth more a rose than ever. I thought how rich the ringlets would look, hanging down like ripe yellow bunches of white currants when they be traced very thick on the boughs, and she saying 'O!' and the fellows wanting to kiss her.

When she'd fastened the beasts in the trevis, we went indoors. 'Mister Beguildy!' I called out, 'I want you to learn me to read and write and sum, and all you know. I'm to pay in work. Gideon and me's going to get rich, and buy a place in Lullingford, and have maids and men, and flowered gowns for me, and china --'

Beguildy looked at me over the rim of a great measure of mead. 'Saddle your dreams afore you ride 'em, my wench,' he said.

'How mean you, Mister Beguildy?'

'The answer's under your mob-cap,' says he. 'If I be to learn ye, there's to be no argling, no questions and no answers. I say the saying, but you mun find the meaning. Now you come back to me a week to-day and tell me what I meant, and then for a bit of a treat I'll show you the bottle with the old Squire in it, old Camperdine, great-grandad to this un, him as came again so bad every Harvest Home, and sang a roaring bawdy song somewhere up in the chance!, only none could see un, so none could catch un.'

'Saving you.'

Beguildy smiled. He'd got a very slow stealing smile, that came like a ripple on the water, and stayed a long while.

'Ah. Saving me. I caught un proper.'

'What way did you?'

'If I told you, Prue Sarn, you'd know as much as me.'

'But so tell how you got him into the bottle!'

'Dear to goodness! You've forgotten the bargain. No questions.' He picked up the hammer and beat upon the row of flints, making out a little tune. And with that, in came Missis Beguildy, like the dancing woman at the fair comes in when they sound the drum. She'd got a basket of trout and a couple of fowl she was going to dress for the Wake the oxen were going to. She'd got on an old bottle-green hat of Beguildy's, tall in the crown, such as gentlemen of the road were partial to then, and it looked very outlandish atop of her frizzy grey hair.

'Did you hear tell?' she said to me.

She'd got a deep, solemn voice, and as she was too busy to speak often, everything she said seemed very weighty, as if the Town Crier said it, standing on the steps of the market in his braided coat.

'I heard as the Devil was dead,' said Beguildy, 'but it inna true, for I met un yestreen, and very pleasant spoken he was indeed, and right pleased to have your Feyther's company, Prue.'

'Now hush your gabble,' said Missis Beguildy, pulling the feathers out of the fowl in handfuls, so that the room was like a snowstorm. 'Did you hear tell, Prue, as poor John Weaver strayed off the road going through the woods in the dark of the moon last night, and was drownded in Blackmere? Death's very catching, poor soul.'

'Why it wanted but an hour to dawn when he left,' I said.

'Time enow, time enow. It's dark as Egypt in the woods down yonder.'

'Who'll take his place?'

'They seyn there's a nephew learning the trade. But he's bound 'prentice for a year or two. They'll make shift with a hired mon, I reckon.'

'And it ud be better, a power,' burst out Missis Beguildy, 'if you took that sort of job.'

She took the poker from the fire and singed the fowl very shrewdly, as if it met have been Beguildy.

'Woman, I've better things to think on than weaving weeds to cover the poor dying body. Dunna I snare souls like conies, and keep 'em from troubling the lives of men? Canna I bless, and they are blessed, curse, and they are cursed? Canna I cure warts and the chin-cough and barrenness and the rheumatics, and tell the future and find water, though it be in the depth of the earth? Dunna the fowls I bless beat all the other fowls in the cock-fighting? Ah, and if I chose, I could make a waxen man for every man in the parish, and consume them away, wax, men, and all. Canna I do all that, woman?'

'So you say, my dear.'

Missis Beguildy set the fowl's legs to rights and ran a skewer through, to make all safe.

Seeing that the Wizard was becoming very angry, I told his missus how I was going to be his scholar, and he was to learn me to spell and write.

'Will your headpiece stand it, child?' she asked. For she always thought, in common with many people, that if there was anything wrong with a person's outward seeming, there must be summat wrong with their mind as well. By that measure, Jancis, who was so silly that oftentimes she appeared to be well-nigh simple, would be a very clever woman.

'Ah. Prue's headpiece be right enow,' said Beguildy. 'Only I do think there be too many questions in it. But her'll fettle into a good scholar, will Prue. We'll start to-day's a week, Prue. Jancis, you can get the besom and sweep out my room a bit. Put the tuthree books together, gather me some quills, and be very careful of all my bottles, for you never know who's in 'em. We dunna want any frittening about the place. Oh, and you met as well turn them toads out from behind the locker; they be all dead.'

'Prue,' says Jancis, when I went out, 'if yo'll tell me the way to make ringlets like that, I'll tell you what Feyther's old riddle-me-ree means. I know, because he's said it over and over, and I've heard un tell the answer.'

'I made 'em round and round the poker, my dear,' I said. 'Not too hot, and give it a good clean first. But you needna tell me the answer to the riddle-me-ree, for I'd liefer find it out.'

The dew came showering on to my gown as I went past the bushes of wild roses at the wood gate, spilling out of the hearts of the blossoms. It was so quiet that I could hear the sheep cropping across the corner of the mere in the glebe, and the fish rising out in the middle, and the water lapping against the big, stiff leaves of the bulrushes.

I felt like a lady, walking out in my best on a weekday. It wasna often that I could be spared, and it was to be a deal less often now. So I was glad Gideon wanted me to be a scholar, for once every week I should get the afternoon and evening off.

When a breeze came, the leaves lapped up the silence like the tongues of little creatures drinking. Up in heaven there were clouds like the bit of lace on Mother's wedding-gown, and a setting moon as green as a young beech leaf. And down under the polished water was another moon, not quite so bright, and other clouds, not quite so lacy, and the shadow of the spire, very faint and ghostly, pointing across the water at us.

Mother looked up when I went in. She was stitching the smock.

'What a big girl you look, coming in, Prue,' she said. 'And you are not near sixteen yet!'

I asked where Gideon was.

'Cutting by moonlight. Such a lad I never saw! Labours and sweats as if summat was after un.'

'Well, the moon's setting down behind the church croft now, Mother,' I said, 'so he'll be bound to give over.'

I went to the meadow. He'd got as much cut as a full-grown man could ha' done. He was rubbing the scythe down with a handful of grass, and honing it for putting away, as I came over the field. I thought it sounded nice, coming over the wet, dimmery swaths, and sad as well. When I called to mind all the things he'd taken on shoulder, I was sorry for un.

'Come thy ways in to supper, Gideon,' I said.

'By gum! You look like a ghost, stealing out from under the dark hedge, all in you blacks, with that white face.'

Then he seemed to remember him of all we'd got in hand. He began to cross-waund me about the work.

'Shut the fowl up?'

'No.'

'Be quick about it, then; it should ha' bin done this hour. Looked the traps?'

'No. I thought you would.'

'When I'm mowing, I canna do aught else, saving the jobs that are too heavy for you.'

'There binna many of them.'

'When you've done the fowl and the traps, you can set a tuthree night-lines in the mere. I've got some sawing to do yet.'

'It'll take a terrible long while, and I'm no good at setting the night-lines,' I said, nearly crying, being tired already, and it late, and another day's work beginning, seemingly.

'Did you make a bargain, or didna you?'

'Ah, I did, Gideon.'

'Then abide by it.'

Wandering about the place when Mother was abed and Gideon in the fields, I felt lonesome. I wished there was some shorter way to be as beautiful as a fairy. Then a thought came to me all of a sudden. I wonder it didna come afore, but then I'd never much minded having a hare-lip afore. It seems to me that often it's only when you begin to see other folks minding a thing like that for you, that you begin to mind it for yourself. I make no doubt, if Eve had been so unlucky as to have such a thing as a hare-lip, she'd not have minded it till Adam came by, looking doubtfully upon her, and the Lord, frowning on His marred handiwork.

Now my thought was this: why shouldna I, that was in sore need of healing, do as the poor folk did here at Sarn in time past, and even now and again in our own day. Namely, at the troubling of the waters which comes every year in the month of August, to step down into the mere in sight of all the folk at the Wake, dressed in a white smock. It was said that this troubling of the water was the same as that which was at Bethesda, and though it had not the power of that water, which healed every year, and for which no disease was too bad, it being in that marvellous Holy Land where miracles be daily bread, yet every seventh year it was supposed to cure one, if the disease was not too deadly. You must go down into the water fasting, and with many curious ancient prayers. These I could learn, when I could read, for they were in an old book that Parson kept in the vestry. Not that he believed it, nor quite disbelieved it, but only that it was very rare and strange.

The thing I misdoubted most was it being such a public thing. I had need be a very brazen piece to make a show of myself thus, as if I were a harlot in a sheet, or a witch brought to the ducking-stool. And sure enough, when I spoke of it timidly to Mother and Gideon, they liked it not at all.

'What,' says Gideon, 'make yourself a nay-word and a show to three hundred folk? You met as well go for a fat woman at the fair and ha' done with it.'

'Only I amna fat,' I said.

'That's neither here nor there. You'd be makng yourself a talked-about wench from Sarn to Lullingford and from Plash to Brampton. Going down into the water the like of any poor plagued 'oman without a farden! Folk ud say, 'There's Sarn's sister douked into the water like poor folk was used to do, because Sarn's too near to get the Doctor's mon, let alone the Doctor.' And when I went to market, they'd laugh, turning their faces aside. Never shall you do such a brassy thing! It ud be better, a power, if you took and made some mint cakes and spiced ale for the fair when the time comes, like Mother was used to do. You'd make a bit that way.'

'Yes, my dear,' said Mother, 'you do as Sarn says. It'll bring in a bit, and you'll see all as is to be seen, which you couldna, saving in the way of business, for it'll be scarce two months from Father's death. And come to think of it, what an unkind thing it would be for a poor widow to have it flung in her face afore such a mort of people that her girl had got a hare-shotten lip.'

She began to wring her little hands, and I knew she'd go back to the old cry in a minute, so I gave in.

'You've got to promise me you'll never do such a thing, Prue,' ordered Gideon.

'I promise for this year, but no more.'

'You've got a powerful curst will of your own, Prue, but promise or no, you shanna do such a thing, never in life shall you!'

'And in death I shanna mind,' I said. 'For if I do well and go to heaven I shall be made all new, and I shall be as lovely as a lily on the mere. And if I do ill and go to hell, I'll sell my soul a thousand times, but I'll buy a beautiful face, and I shall be gladsome for that though I be damned.'

And I ran away into the attic and cried a long while.

But the quiet of the place, and the loneliness of it comforted me at long last, and I opened the shutter that gave on the orchard and had a great pear tree trained around it, and I took my knitting out of my reticule. For it was on Saturday after tea that I had spoken of the troubling of the water, and the week's work being nearly done, I had my tidy gown on, and the reticule to match. Sitting there looking into the green trees, with the smell of our hay coming freshly on the breeze, mixed with the scent of the wild roses and meadowsweet in the orchard ditch, I hearkened to the blackbirds singing near and far. When they were a long way off you could scarcely disentangle them from all the other birds, for there was a regular charm of them, thrushes and willow-wrens, seven-coloured linnets, canbottlins, finches, and writing-maisters. It was a weaving of many threads, with one maister-thread of clear gold, a very comfortable thing to hear.

I thought maybe love was like that - a lot of coloured threads, and one maister-thread of pure gold.

The attic was close under the thatch, and there were many nests beneath the eaves, and a continual twittering of swallows. The attic window was in a big gable, and the roof on one side went right down to the ground, with a tall chimney standing up above the roof-tree. Somewhere among the beams of the attic was a wild bees' nest, and you could hear them making a sleepy soft murmuring and morning and evening you could watch them going in a line to the mere for water. So, it being very still there, with the fair shadows of the apple trees peopling the orchard outside, that was void, as were the near meadows, Gideon being in the far field making hay-cocks, which I also should have been doing, there came to me, I cannot tell whence, a most powerful sweetness that had never come to me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at a preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my bosom. On all things there came a fair, lovely look, as if a different air stood over them. It is a look that seems ready to come sometimes on those gleamy mornings after rain, when they say, 'So fair the day, the cuckoo is going to heaven.'

Only this was not of the day, but of summat beyond it. I cared not to ask what it was. For when the nut-hatch comes into her own tree, she dunna ask who planted it, nor what name it bears to men. For the tree is all to the nut-hatch, and this was all to me. Afterwards, when I had mastered the reading of the book, I read--

His banner over me was love.

And it called to mind that evening. But if you should have said 'Whose banner?' I couldna have answered. And even now, when Parson says, 'It was the power of the Lord working in you,' I'm not sure in my own mind. For there was naught in it of churches nor of folks, praying nor praising, sinning nor repenting. It had to do with such things as bird-song and daffadowndillies rustling, knocking their heads together in the wind. And it was as wilful in its coming and going as a breeze over the standing corn. It was a queer thing, too, that a woman who spent her days in sacking, cleaning sties and beast-housen, living hard, considering over fardens, should come of a sudden into such a marvel as this. For though it was so quiet, it was a great miracle, and it changed my life; for when I was lost for something to turn to, I'd run to the attic, and it was a core of sweetness in much bitter.

Though the visitation came but seldom, the taste of it was in the attic all the while. I had but to creep in there, and hear the bees making their murmur, and smell the woody o'er-sweet scent of kept apples, and hear the leaves rasping softly on the window-frame, and watch the twisted grey twigs on the sky, and I'd remember it and forget all else. There was a great wooden bolt on the door, and I was used to fasten it, though there was no need, for the attic was such a lost-and-forgotten place nobody ever came there but the travelling weaver, and Gideon in apple harvest, and me. Nobody would ever think of looking for me there, and it was parlour and church both to me.

The roof came down to the floor all round, and all the beams and rafters were oak, and the floor went up and down like stormy water. The apples and pears had their places according to kind all round the room. There were codlins and golden pippins, brown russets and scarlet crabs, ciffins, nonpareils and queanings, big green bakers, pearmains and red-streaks. We had a mort of pears too, for in such an old garden, always in the family, every generation'll put in a few trees. We had Worcester pears and butter pears, jargonelle, bergamot and Good Christian. Just after the last gathering, the attic used to be as bright as a church window, all reds and golds. And the colours of the fruit could always bring my visitation back to me, though there was not an apple or pear in the place at the time, because the colour was wed to the scent, which had been there time out of mind. Every one of those round red cheeks used to smile at poor Prue Sarn, sitting betwixt the weaving-frame and the window, all by her lonesome. I found an old locker, given up to the mice, and scrubbed it, and put a fastening on it, and kept my ink and quills there, and my book, and the Bible, which Mother said I could have, since neither she nor Gideon could read in it.

One evening in October I was sitting there, with a rushlight, practising my writing. The moon blocked the little window, as if you took a salver and held it there. All round the walls the apples crowded, like people at a fair waiting to see a marvel. I thought to myself that they ought to be saying one to another, 'Be still now! Hush your noise! Give over jostling!'

I fell to thinking how all this blessedness of the attic came through me being curst. For if I hadna had a hare-lip to frighten me away into my own lonesome soul, this would never have come to me. The apples would have crowded all in vain to see a marvel, for I should never have known the glory that came from the other side of silence.

Even while I was thinking this, out of nowhere suddenly came that lovely thing, and nestled in my heart, like a seed from the core of love.

In telling this story I take little count of time. For when the heart is in stress, what is time? It is naught. Does the bridegroom, that has clemmed for his love a long while, hearken to the watchman's voice telling over the hastening hours? Does he that dies in the dawn care to what hour the dial points when the sun arises, that rises not on him? And when we poor beings take up our stand against all the might of the things that be, striving to win through to our peace, or to what we think is our peace, when we are dumbfounded like a baited creature in the bull-ring, then we forget time. So four years went by, and though a deal happened out in the world, naught happened to us.

Rumours came to us of battles over sea and discontents at home. The French went to Russia and never came back, save a few.

At last, one golden summer evening, there came one riding all in a lather to tell of the great victory of Waterloo. But the news Gideon liked best, which came in the same year, was the news of the corn tax.

'Fetch me a mug of home-brewed, Prue,' he shouted, when he raught home from market and told me. 'It's the best news ever we had. We'll be rich in a tuthree years. We must get more land under corn. I thought corn would never come amiss, but I didna hope for anything like this'll be. When Callard came up to my stall with the tidings, I was fair comic-struck. "Dang me!" I says. "What?" I says. "Make the furriners pay to lug their corn to us?" "Ah, that's the size of it," says Callard. "And that'll make it scarce, seesta, and that'll make it dear, seesta!" "Why, mon, I've seen that this long while," I says. "But I never thought they'd do it." And what d'ye think I did then, Prue? Why, axed un to the Mug of Cider and stood un a drink! So you can tell how comic-struck I must ha' bin. And now all we've got to do is to drive plough, both of us.'

So there was a prospect of living harder than we had in the four years gone, when we'd slaved from daybreak to dark, and in the dark too, by the wandering light of the horn lanthorn. It wouldna have come so hard to me, if it hadna been all for the money, if I could have been a bit house-proud, and if Gideon had taken a pride in fettling the farm. But there was none of that. It was just scrat and scrape to get the money out of the place and be off.

I grew as lanky as a clothes prop, and Mother began to show signs of wringing her hands about that too. For being little herself, and Missis Beguildy and Jancis and most of the women about being little, it seemed meet to Mother that a woman should be small. So when I grew and grew, and was very slender also (for indeed, with such a deal of work and little time to eat, anybody would be slender) she said I was like a poplar in an unthinned woodland or an o'er-tall bulrush in the mere, and I got used to being ashamed of my tallness as well as the other trouble, until -- but I munna be too forrard with the tale.

Gideon wore his smock and looked right well in it. He was two-and-twenty now, a man grown, very personable, broad in the shoulder, with a firm, well-knit figure. As his body set, his mind set with it, harder than ten-days' ice. He'd no eye for the girls at market, though there was a many looked at him. And once at market when he was wearing Father's blue coat with the brass buttons, Squire Camperdine's daughter (not the squire in the bottle, but his great-grandson) came riding past his booth, and smiled at him. But Gideon would only laugh when I questioned him, and stroke his chin, and look at me warily. There was no doubt he was a very comely man, and it used to seem to me unfair that it was me, and not Gideon, that was born after the hare looked at Mother. For Gideon could have grown what they call a moustachio and looked very well, and none need have known he'd got a hare-shotten lip. But with me it was past hiding.

As to the farm, it was doing pretty well. We'd got a big flock of sheep, so that the shearing took us above a week. We'd got a herd of pigs that kept Mother busy all the time the acorns lasted, tending them in the oakwood. The grass-meadow by the orchard was under wheat, but we had no good of it the first year, for the wheat sprouted and acker-spired in the ear, it being a very wet season.

There was enough saved to buy two oxen for ploughing and other heavy work about the place. Being a bit out of fashion, they were not very dear. Gideon said that when he went to buy them I could go too and give a hand driving them back. And I could look in the shop windows while he haggled over the beasts, and then we could look at the house he'd set his mind on buying when it should come into the market. But Mother must know naught about the house, or she'd tell folk. 'And if they thought I had such a thing in mind, they'd bant all my prices and double all their own, and where should we be then?' said Gideon.

You may guess I was glad to be going pleasuring, for I'd scarcely been away from Sarn since Father died, and Lullingford always seemed a wonderful place to me.

I was in the cornfield, leasing, when Gideon said it, he being just back from market, coming across the field in the last light of evening; and the shadows of him and Bendigo stretched away over the grass from the far gate to the orchard as I watched them come.

'But how'll I go!' I asked. 'I canna ride pillion, for there be the panniers.'

'If you'll do a bit extra leasing, I'll hire the mill pony when I take the next corn to be ground. Going to Plash for a lesson to-morrow?'

'Ah.'

'Then fetch back the beasts, oot, and I'll go with corn Saturday.'

'But I've leased till there's scarce an ear left in any part of this field or the other,' I said.

'Ask Beguildy to let you lease his. I saw them lugging their corn.'

'But Jancis and Missis Beguildy --,

'Now you know very well Jancis is too bone-idle to pick up as much as an ear. Though I like her right well, and as for looks --'

He stopped and stood, with his hand on Bendigo's neck, gazing away to where Plash shone like bright honey in the long light, dreaming.

It was but seldom Gideon sat still, and very seldom he gave his mind to any thought but the thought of making money. But the name of Jancis would often quieten him, and when he fell into one of his silences he would make me think of a tranced man that was once brought to Beguildy to be awakened. And he made me think of a brooding summer tree on a windless day, minding its own thoughts above the water. He was like the lych-gate yew that dreams the year long, and keeps its dream as secret as it keeps its red fruit under the boughs. Gideon had been used to fall into a dream like this ever since he saw Jancis under the rosy light. Times, he'd mutter 'No, no!' and shift his shoulders as though from a weight, and bestir himself, and be more of a driver than ever. For Gideon was a driver if ever there was one, and what he drove was his own flesh and blood. It seemed a pity to me that a young man should be so set in his ways, and have no pleasant times, for I was mighty fond of Gideon. I knew well where he went of a Sunday, when he took off his smock and put on the bottle-blue coat. He was a deal more regular at Plash than ever he was at church. The rosy light started it, but it would have likely been the same, anyway. Missis Beguildy told me how he'd come and knock, and Jancis would run to the door in her best gown and ribbon or a flower in her hair, and go red and white by turns. And I saw for myself too, when she came to our place, how she would pant under her kerchief, and I wondered how this might be. For Gideon was just Gideon to me, but to her he was fire and tempest and the very spring, and his voice was as the voice of the mighty God.

He'd come in, Missis Beguildy said, with no word, and he'd sit down, and Beguildy would scowl, having no mind for Jancis to marry. He'd scowl from the innermost chimney corner, for he felt the cold very bad, living in such a damp place and being a very stay-at-home man. And Gideon would scowl back.

Jancis blushed and trembled over her spinning, taking sideways looks at Gideon as a wren will. And Missis Beguildy set her face like a flint, and laid plans to get her good man out of the kitchen. She dearly loved to see a bit of lovering going on, being short of summat to think of and talk of. She wanted to be a granny too. So she'd go to any length, but she'd get Beguildy out of the room. Once, when Gideon was glowering more than common, being very desirous to kiss Jancis because she'd put on some new ribbon or what-not to set her off, and when Missis Beguildy had called her man and come back and argufied, and gone out and called again, but still he'd only sit there like a goblin in the dark of the fire, she even went so far as to set a light to the thatch on the barn. Ah! She did! She was a very strong-minded woman. And she kept the poor man, who couldn't abide any work with his hands, running to-and-agen with buckets all evening. When he'd nearly douted one place, she set light to another while he was dipping water from the lake.

'I kept the flint and tinder right hot, my dear,' she said to me. And she laughed! I never saw a woman laugh more lungeously over anything than she did over that. She said she took a peep at the window, just to encourage her, and she could see through the clear bits in among the bottle-glass that they were sitting side by side on the settle.

'Very right and proper!' she says, and runs back to her work.

Another time she loosed the sow, and it made straight for our oakwood, she having taken it there afore. Beguildy liked his rasher, and the sow meant many a bacon-pig, so for fear she should come to harm, he took stick and went after her, cursing considerable. After a bit he began to be suspicious, because any ill that came, came on a Sunday, and he liked his day of rest, though he was a heathen man. So he said to Gideon, 'There's no luck with you. When you come, harm brews. Keep off.'

So he had to give over going. Then he wiled Jancis into the woods, and I'd see them going up the dim ways, rainy or frosty was no matter, she with her face like a white rose, shining, and he looking down at her, loving, and angered to be loving. When they were in the woods, Missis Beguildy was so interested in the wizard's bottles with the ghosts in them (so he said) that he'd have hard work to answer her questions. And she'd give him such a tea that it lasted nearly to supper. But he found out. He began to wonder why Jancis had taken such an affection for Tivvy, it being Tivvy she said she went to see. And as he couldn't speak to Sexton, being at daggers drawn, he followed her one evening unbeknown. And when she got home, he leathered her so that her eyes were red for weeks, and she came running to Gideon all bedraggled with tears. He was in a rage with Beguildy, and he told Jancis he'd lief wed with her, only not till he'd won through, and was rich. For how could he get along, he said, with a helpless one like Jancis clinging to him, and a tribe of children, very likely? But he was moody and troubled in mind, for he could see Jancis but seldom, Beguildy being so watchful. I thought maybe the plan to show me the house he wanted was to comfort himself and strengthen his will, because he was afraid of giving in. He wanted to give in, mind you, for he was sore set on Jancis, only he was fixed, and when he was fixed he couldna let himself give in, not if it was ever so.

It turned out that we couldna borrow the mill pony for a good few weeks, because she'd gone lame. So the harvest was long over, winter upon us, and Christmas drawing nigh, when they sent a message to say we could have the loan of it for the Christmas market, for they'd just bought one of the old horses from the Lullingford and Silverton coach, and they would drive that to market themselves. I may say I was very pleased to think of the outing, and watched the weather very anxious, for it boded snow.

I was up at four on market day, setting the place to rights for Mother and getting the things together for market. Eggs and dressed fowl we had in plenty, and greens and apples and a bit of butter. Polishing the apples in the attic, peace came upon me, as it ever did up there, since the time I told of. While the rushlight flickered in the cold air, and the mice scuttled, I stood at the open window that was like an oblong of black paper. No sound came in. Naught stirred outside. Even the mere was frozen round the edges, so that the ducks must go skating every morning afore they could come at the water. The world was all so piercing still that it was almost like a voice crying out. It was used to seem to me that when the world was so quiet, it was like being along of somebody as knew you very well, ah! like being with you dear acquaintance.

Down in the dark barn the cock crew, thin and sweet, and I thought it sounded like no earthly bird; but maybe that was because I was in the attic, where things were always new. You may think it strange that a woman like me should think such things, being one that worked with my hands always, at poor harsh tasks, whereas you'd expect such thoughts to come to fine ladies sitting at their tapestry work. But I was so lonesome, and had such a deal of time for thinking, and what with that and the book-learning I was getting, all sorts of thoughts grew up in my mind, like flowering rushes and forget-me-nots coming into blow in a poor marshy place, that else had naught. And I can never see that it did much harm, for the thoughts seldom came but in the attic, and they did never make me dreamy over my work.

So now, hearing the clear sound of our game-cock crying out upon the dawn, that was yet more than two hours away, I ran downstairs all of a lantun-puff to get the breakfast. When Gideon came in, it was all ready, and a great fire roaring, for we need never stint of wood at Sarn, which was much to be thankful for at a time when many poor families in England must herd together six or seven in one cottage to boil their kettles all on one fire. I was always thankful for our plenteous wood, that cost naught, and need not take up too much of Gideon's time neither, for if I burnt more than he cut I could make shift to chop it myself.

We were as snug as could be, sitting in the merry firelight with a red glow shining on the quarries and the ware and the spinning-wheels in the corner. I was pleased to think Mother wasna to be lonesome, for I'd asked Tivvy to come and keep her company, since I never could enjoy anything if one I loved was lonesome or sad. Shaking the cloth out of the door after it got light, I could see her red cloak coming along under the dark woods; for as Tivvy never did anything nor thought anything, she had all her time to herself, as you met say, and so she had no cause to be late.

Gideon had roughed Bendigo and the mill pony overnight, so all being ready and the sun just risen, we set off.

All the lake was full of red lights, as if our farm was on fire, reflected in the water. The black pines stood with their arms out, dripping with hoar frost, all white-over, so that the tips of their drooping branches were like your fingers when you take them from the suds. The rooks were very contented, cawing soft and pleasant, as if they knew their breakfast was ready as soon as our ploughland thawed a bit, and in the stackyard there was a great murmuration of starlings.

'Bring me a fairing!' screams Tivvy from across the water. Gideon looked sullen, and I knew the only fairing he'd a mind to bring was one for Jancis. So I called out -'I will. What shall it be?'

'A bit of cherry-coloured sarnet to tie up my hair,' she calls. For though she was a foolish piece in most things, she knew very well she'd got pretty curls, bright brown and thick. She'd toss them ever so when Gideon was there, and take every chance to miscall Beguildy, though she durstna say anything against Jancis, for fear Gideon might blaze out. But she was clever enough in this, as oftentimes a stupid girl is when she's in love, and she could always make it seem a very poor, ill-liking sort of thing to be sweet on a wizard's wench, and a grand thing to be in love with the sexton's daughter whose dad could mouth texts as fast as the wizard could mouth charms.

It was a grand morning, very crispy underfoot, with moor-fowl about, especially widgeon. We were riding to the hills. Across the far woods and the rough moors beyond, and the bits of ploughland here and there, and the frostly stubble where partridges ran from the noise of the trotting, we could see the hills, as blue as pansies. Promising hills, they seemed to me. There was a clatter in the spinney, and a flock of wood-pigeons got up and took their flight, with wings flashing blue in the sun, for the same hills. It was as if some wonderful thing was there, as it might be a healing well, or some other miracle, or a holy person such as there were of old time.

I said as much to Gideon, but he was looking away over shoulder to Plash and the long spire of blue smoke going up from the Stone House. He began to whistle below his breath, for he'd never whistle outright, even at the merriest, but always very quiet and to his mommets. So I said no more, and in a while our old road ended, and we came into the main road where it was bad going, for whatever the weather was, the road the Romans made was good going, and even better than the turnpike. In a little we passed the mill folk going soberly along, and then a tuthree more, and soon we were riding up the hill into the town, with the plovers crying about us in their winter voices.

So we rode to Lullingford to look upon a dream. For the house we were about seeing was woven into the dream of Gideon's life. The house, that is, along with what it meant, the maids and the men, the balls and the dinners with the gentry at the Jug of Cider at election time.

When we were going through the ford as you come into the lower part of the place, Gideon said --

'I wish Jancis was riding pillion with me.'

'Why, so she shall,' I said, 'the very next time we come. Why shouldna she come every time?'

'There be Beguildy.'

'Oh, Beguildy! I'll wile un with his own spells and charm un with his own charms,' I said, and I laughed as we went up the narrow street, so that heads came out of windows here and there to see what it might be.

'Husht now, girl!' says Gideon. 'Laugh quiet. Not like a wild curlew.'

'But a curlew's very good company, and a pleasanter voice I seldom heard, and I'm pleased with the compliment, lad.'

And indeed I was pleased with the world and all. For there was summat about Lullingford, as if a different air blew there, and as if there was a brighter sun and a safer daylight. I knew not why it was. It was a quiet place, though not near so quiet as now. Folk go off to the cities these days, but when I was young they gathered together from many miles around into the little market towns. Still, it was quiet, and very peaceful, though not with the stillness of Sarn, that was almost deathly, times.

There was one broad street of black and white houses, jutting out above, and gabled, and made into rounded shop windows below. They stood back in little gardens. At the top of the street was the church, long and low, with a tremendous high steeple, well carved and pleasant to see. Under the shadow of the church was the big, comfortable inn, with its red sign painted with a tall blue mug of cider. It had red curtains in the windows, and a glow of firelight in the winter, and it seemed to say, in being so nigh the church, that its landlord's conscience was clear and his ale honest, and that none would get more than was good for him there. But of the last I a little doubt.

Of a Sunday the shops had each a bit of white canvas stuff hung afore the window like an apron, which made it seem very pious and respectable. There were few shops, and only one of each kind, so you could never run from one to another, cheapening goods.

There was the Green Canister, where they kept groceries and spools and pots and pans, and there was the maltster's, and the butcher's and the baker's, for Lullingford was well up with the times, since it wasna all towns could boast a baker in days when nearly everybody baked at home. Then there was the leather shop, for boots and harness, and the tailor's which was only open in winter, for in summer he travelled round the country doing piecework. There was the smithy too, where the little boys crowded after Dame-School every winter dusk, begging to warm their hands and roast chestnuts and taters. It was a pleasant thing to see the sparks go up, roaring, and to feel the hearty glow about you, warming you to the heart's core, with nothing to pay or to do, like love. Near by the smithy was the row of little cottages where was the weaver's. Like the tailor, he went abroad over the country-side in summer, and sometimes to a village in winter, if it was open weather. But in hard weather he stayed in his snug slip of a house and heard the wind roaring over from the mountains north to the mountains south. I never could tell why this cottage drew me, even from a child. It had a narrow garden and a walk of red brick, an oaken paling, and bushes of lavender on either side the walk. Three well-whitened steps led up to the door, and there was a window of many little panes, not bottle-glass. Above was another window. At the back, a patch of garden ran down to the meadows, and there was a second window in the living-room that looked over this garden and the meadows, to the mountains. This I knew, because I went there once with a message in the old weaver's time. Upon the front of the house was a vine, very old and twisted. This was a rare thing in a place of such hard winters, but the town was sheltered by the mountains, and the weaver's house faced south, so the vine throve, and though in cold seasons the grapes didna always ripen, in some years they ripened very well. What with the vine and the lavender and the pleasant shadows on the strip of green lawn, and the lilac tree that stood beside the door, and what with the great weaving frame in the living-room, which was comfortable with firelight shining on brasses and copper vessels, and very well kept; what with it all, I could never pass it without a look of longing. I was used to envy the fat thrushes hopping on the lawn. It drew me as heaven draws the poor sinner, weary of his miry wanderings.

So to-day, as we rode by, I said --

'Gideon, what is it makes that house different to the other housen?'

'It inna different.'

'Oh, but it's as different as if it was builded of stone fetched from another world!' I cried out. 'It's as different as if the timbers were failed in the forests of the Better Land.'

'Dear to goodness, girl, you bin raving,' says he. 'Husht, or the beadle'll put you in pound.'

So I hushed, and we came to the Mug of Cider, and after turning our beasts in among the rest, we set out our goods in the market.

The market was in the open, in a paven square by the church. Each had his own booth, and the cheeses stood in mounds between. There were a sight of old women in decent shawls and cotton bonnets selling the same as we had, butter and eggs and poultry. There was a stall for gingerbread and one for mincepies. There was a sunbonnet stall and a toy stall, and one for gewgaws such as strings of coral and china cats, shoe buckles and amulets and beaded reticules. It was a merry scene, with the bright holly and mistletoe, the cheeses yellow in the sun, and the gingerbread as brown and sticky as chestnut buds.

The butcher stood at his door, which gave on to the market-place, shouting his meat, and holding up a long, shining knife, enough to make you think the French were coming. There was a woman selling hot potatoes and pig's fry and a crockman who put up his wares to auction, and every time the clock chimed he broke summat, keeping some 'seconds' in readiness, which served to amuse the people. Then the mummers came along and gave us a treat, and in one corner the beast-leech was pulling teeth out for a penny each, and had a crowd watching. What with them all shouting, and the mummers mouthing their parts, and the crash of broken china, and beasts lowing and bleating from the fair ground close by, and the chimes ringing out very sweet at the half-hours, you may think there was a cheerful noise.

When we'd got rid of our goods, we went into the Mug of Cider for a snack. Ten or a dozen old men sat without, though the air was so nipping that they must have bin starved. Each one was holding a great pewter tankard, and they were roaring out at the top of their voices --

'The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not fear.'

Each one went his own way and made his own tune, and I thought how angered Mister Beguildy would be if he could hear 'em making such an untuneful sound, for he was very particular over his row of flints, and when he struck them he was troubled if they didna strike the note true.

But when we were come by these old ancients, every one held his mug where it was, and stopped in his singing, and so sat with his mouth open and his eyes fast on me. They were like those new-fangled mommet-shows with the little dolls that stop all together when the showman unhands them. There they sat, with the inn behind them and the frosty sunshine on their old, red, veiny faces, and a kind of frittened look. As we passed the bench, every head of them came round slow, and the score or so of eyes stared slantwise over the rims of their cups, as young owls will stare and turn their heads, watching you over their feathers.

As we went through the dark doorway, with its door studded with nails like a prison, and came into the inn parlour, where sat the more genteel, I saw their looks fasten on me too, but more shyly. The farmers and their ladies and two or three folk that had come by the early coach and were baiting here, and the Squire's son, who was a parson in Silverton and was on the way home for Christmas and was taking some refreshment because his nag had cast a shoe, all of them looked up, quiet and careful but very curious, at me. All on a sudden I knew that all these folk, the grand ones within and the old fellows without, were staring at my hare-shotten lip. They were thinking, according to their station and their learning --

'Here's a queer outlandish creature!'

'This is a woman out of a show, sure to goodness!'

'Here be a wench turns into a hare by night.'

'Her's a witch, an ugly, hare-shotten witch.'

Maybe in the tu three times I'd come to Lullingford in the past they'd stared so, but then I was but a child and didna see. I could hear the old men without croaking like a lot of rooks, and one said.

'Dunna drink while she's by. It'll p'ison yer innards.'

Another said.

'Dunna look upon the baigle. Her'll put the evil eye on you. You'll dwine and dwine away.'

The folk inside looked each at other, and I wished I could die. For all the bitter cold and my thin gown and us being far from the fire, I was all in a swelter. For indeed I loved my kind and would lief they had loved me, and I felt a friendliness for the drovers and for the gentry, and the host and his missus. For they were part of my outing and part of Lullingford and of the world, that ever seized my heart in its hands, as a child will hold a small bird, which is both affrighted and comforted to be so held. I would lief have ridden forth and seen new folk, new roads, new hamlets, children playing on strange village greens, unknown to me as if they were fairies, come there I knew not whence nor how, singing their songs and running away into the dusk; old folk wending their way along paths in meadows of which I knew not so much as the name of the owner, to churches deep in trees, with all the bells a-ringing, pulled by men I never saw afore. Ah, I should dearly ha' liked that. Only the gist of it must ever be that the old folk looked kind as they saw me go by, and the children smiled or threw me a blossom, and that when I came to inn or tavern they'd say, 'Draw in to the fire now, dear 'eart, for night thickens.' Ah, I'd dearly ha' liked that!

This made it all the more of a shocking thing to me that the real world was thus towards me, for living so apart I had not truly felt my grief afore. But now I knew that I was fast bound in misery and iron, as the Book saith. Ah, prisoned beyond a door to which the great nailed door of the inn was but paper!

As I was bending over my plate so that my bonnet met hide the tears, a lady came in. She was a handsome piece if ever there was one! She was lissom as a wand, dressed in a long scarlet riding coat and a highwayman hat to match with a great swath of chestnut hair tied in a bow. She'd got black eyes with no human soul in them, but sparkles instead, like a cat's eyes on a frosty night. Gauntlets on her little hands, spurs on her boots, she came in laughing from a talk with the old men on the bench.

'A besom, host!' she says. 'We want a besom here.'

Everybody smiled and sniggered a bit. I knew well what she meant, for once when Mother was talking to me she said that if folk began to speak of besoms I'd best go, since it was their way of saying I was a witch.

But Gideon never noticed, for not being afflicted like me he never thought of such things, and being used to me he didna have it in mind that other folk met not be. And he was very deep in considering over whether Jancis or the big house and the maids and men were best, so it all went by him.

The lady ran to the Squire's son and clapped him on shoulder, which made him frown because of his dignity, and she says --

'So you've come Christmasing like a good lad! Who's the woman with the hare-shotten lip?'

He made a sign to warn her to talk soft, and nodded towards Gideon ever so little.

'Why, if yonder isn't young Sarn of Sarn!' she says, flushing a bit and coming running across to where Gideon sat, very handsome in the blue coat with the brass buttons and the black band for Father on the arm, and his eyes darkling over the thought of Jancis. I nudged him, and he stood up, and looked all the better for it, being such a fine figure.

She held out her hand, for the gentry were always friendly to the farmers, in especial to voters about election time, and she sparkled at him out of her black eyes and said --

'There's to be an election soon, and Father's got some work for you, Sarn. So you'd best come and see us one day, and take bite and sup, if your sweetheart ca