Tom Wycombe stood beside the last waggon upon which he had just helped to hoist the last load of hay.
It was not his own land, though he had his bit up on the hill behind the old gateway of the ancient town. But he had given his day’s work to a farmer, as many another neighbour had done likewise.
He was a man somewhere near fifty on its wrong side, square and fair and rough-visaged, but the neighbours said kind of heart though sparing of speech.
But then he was a widower, and it was said he had never been the same man since he had become so, saving all his words and all his gentleness for his little mite of a motherless daughter—all the kin that he had.
As he stood now, wiping his brow with his hand, he glanced about him as though seeking something, and a woman guessing his mind, answered the unasked question,
“She be down by the river,” she said, “with farmer Daring’s lad.”
The man looked uneasy.
“Ain’t no one looking after ’em?” asked he.
The woman smiled.
“Ye be over timid about that child, Mr. Wycombe,” she said. “Ye cosset ’er more than her mother would ha’ done. And ye didn’t ought to, ye know. You’ll make ’er that tender and fearsome, she won’t be fit to stand up to the world.”