“Be us all here?” he asked.
“Davey’s out somewheers,” answered his wife; “ess, an’ Jane Stanberry be—” She broke off, and looked at the farmer.
“Down-long, I s’pose,” he said carelessly; then he turned to Richard. “Us can’t blink these meetings between ’em, Dick. Best man wins where a maid’s the prize; or which she thinks be the best. Awnly God send her ban’t in the powder-mills to-night.”
“’Tis most certain she be,” answered Mary Daccombe. “Her didn’t know as the young man—Mr. Maybridge—was called off sudden to Moreton to serve ’pon a committee for the Hunt Dinner next month. A chap rode out, and he saddled his mare hisself and galloped off we him directly after he’d ate his meat.”
“Jane didn’t know?” asked Richard.
“No, she went out counting to find him, I’m afraid.”
“An’ he’m at Moreton?”
The man asked in a voice so strange that none failed to note it, even in this dark moment of fear and turmoil.
“Her went to wait for him usual place, no doubt,” said Jonathan Daccombe. “Us had better come an’ look around for her, an’ Davey too—not to name the things in the long byre by the wood.”
A hideous cry suddenly cut Jonathan short, for a storm had swept the sinner’s brain upon these words. He saw what he had done, and the shock overset the balance of his mind.