With the coming of spring he repaired one evening to a town some miles away and interviewed a choirmaster. Thereafter Dan Pavey journeyed to and fro twice every Sunday to sing in a church that lay seven or eight miles off, and he kept it all a profound secret from Thasper until his appearance at the county musical festival, where he won the treasured prize for tenor soloists. Then Dan was himself again. To his crude apprehension he had been vindicated, and he was heard once more carolling in the lanes of the Vale as he had been heard any time for these twenty years.
The child began its schooling, but though he was free to go about the village little Martin did not wander far. The tidy cluster of hair about his poll was of deep chestnut colour. His skin—Meg said—was like “ollobarster”: it was soft and unfreckled, always pale. His eyes were two wet damsons—so Meg declared: they were dark and ever questioning. As for his nose, his lips, his cheeks, his chin, Meg could do no other than call it the face of a blessed saint; and indeed, he had some of the bearing of a saint, so quiet, so gentle, so shy. The golden ring he no longer wore; it hung from a tintack on the bedroom wall.
Old John, who lived next door, became a friend of his. He was very aged—in the Vale you got to be a hundred before you knew where you were—and he was very bent; he resembled a sickle standing upon its handle. Very bald, too, and so very sharp.
Martin was staring up at the roof of John’s cottage.
“What you looking at, my boy?”
“Chimbley,” whispered the child.
“O ah! that’s crooked, a’nt it?”
“Yes, crooked.”
“I know ’tis, but I can’t help it; my chimney’s crooked, and I can’t putt it straight, neither, I can’t putt it right. My chimney’s crooked, a’nt it, ah, and I’m crooked, too.”
“Yes,” said Martin.