She too was a little sorry she had let herself be betrayed into these confidences.
Meanwhile outside, the moon had climbed the first steeps of the horizon, and had put out the last fires of the sunset; the merest memory of gold was left floating on the western clouds and yellowing the streak of clear sky above the solemn, purple downs; but in the blue overhead the moon had sway, and hung silver on the gently swaying plumes of the pines upon the hills hard by.
Bill Hewson was climbing the hill in obedience to the promise given to his wife an hour before.
But he was not alone; he had met Moss on the village green down yonder by the “Public,” and Moss, in his genial way, had accosted him to wish him joy of his marriage, and so it had come to pass that the two—never more than the merest acquaintances when both lived in the village—had fallen into intimate converse.
Hewson was panting a bit as he kept pace up the road beside his great, long-limbed companion, for the air was coming briskly from the west, and the first frosts were falling at night, and he was asthmatic.
“Ye didn’t ought to be out o’ nights now it’s turned so sharp,” said his companion kindly.
“A man can’t afford to think o’ such things,” said Hewson.
“Well, leastways when there bain’t no need,” allowed the miller. “And ye didn’t so much as put a drop inside ye at the bar to warm ye up for the job.”
“I scarce ever touches sperrits,” said Hewson quietly. “Martha, she don’t think it’s right.”
The miller stopped short in the road and stared at his comrade; but they were in a wood now, and he couldn’t see his face.