"And what did he answer?"
My grandfather looked over his shoulder. "I couldn't, Sir, not for a pocketful of crowns, and your good lady, so to speak, within hearing."
"Nonsense, man! She's not within a hundred yards."
"Well, then, Sir, he up and hoped the devil would fly away with me, and from that he went on to say——" But here my grandfather came to a dead halt. "No, Sir, I can't; and as a minister of the Gospel, you'll never insist on it. He made such horrible statements that I had to go straight home and read over my old mother's marriage lines. It fairly dazed me to hear him talk so confident, and she in her grave, poor soul!"
"You ought to have demanded his name."
"I did, Sir; naturally I did. And he told me to go to the naughty place for it."
"Well, but what like is he?"
"Oh, as to that, Sir, a man of ordinary shape, like yourself, in a plain blue coat and a wig shorter than ordinary; nothing about him to prepare you for the language he lets fly."
"And," put in Arch'laus Spry, "he's taken lodgings down to Durgan with the Widow Polkinghorne, and eaten his dinner—a fowl and a jug of cider with it. After dinner he hired Robin's boat and went for a row. I thought it my duty, as he was pushing off, to sidle up in a friendly way. I said to him, 'The weather, Sir, looks nice and settled': that is what I said, neither more nor less, but using those very words. What d'ee think he answered? He said, 'That's capital, my man: now go along and annoy somebody else.' Wasn't that a disconnected way of talking? If you ask my opinion, putting two and two together, I say he's most likely some poor wandering loonatic."
The evening was dusking down by this time, and Parson Polwhele, though a good bit puzzled, called to mind that his wife would be getting anxious to cross the ferry and reach home before dark: so he determined that nothing could be done before morning, when he promised Arch'laus Spry to look into the matter. My grandfather he took across in the boat with him, to look after the parcels and help them up to the Vicarage: and on the way they talked about a grave that my grandfather had been digging—he being sexton and parish clerk, as well as constable and the Parson's right-hand man, as you might call it, in all public matters.