To-day a native had returned to his home; and as a vacant room at the “Bellaford” Inn well served his purpose, Mr. Robert Bates secured it for a fortnight, that he might wander again about his boyhood’s haunts and shine a little in the eyes of those who still remembered him. That night he had promised to relate his experiences in the public bar; he had also let it be known that upon this great occasion beer and spirits would flow free of all cost for old friends and new.
“He’ll have to address a overflowed meeting, like a Member of Parliament,” said Michael French, the Moor-man, “for be blessed if us can all get in your bar, Mrs. Capern.”
“Lots of room yet,” she said, “if you’d only turn some of they boys out-of-doors. They won’t drink nought, so I’d rather have their room than their company.”
“I should think you was oncommon excited to see this chap, ban’t you?” asked Noah Sage of a very ancient patriarch in the corner. “It was up to Hartland Farm, when you was head man there, that Bob Bates comed as a ’pretence from Moreton Poorhouse, if I can remember.”
“Ess fay, ’tis so,” said the other. “You ax un if the thrashings I used to give un every other day for wasting his time weern’t the makin’ of un; an’ if he ban’t a liar, he’ll say ’twas so. If he owes thanks to any man, ’tis to old Jacob Pearn—though I say it myself.”
“That’s the truth, an’ I’ll allow every word of it, Jacob; an’ I’m terrible glad you ban’t dead, for you were the first I meant to see come to-morrow.”
Mr. Bates himself spoke. He was a small, wiry man of fifty or thereabout. His clothes were well cut, and he wore a gold watch-chain. His face and hands were tanned a deep brown; his hair was grizzled, and his beard was also growing grey at the sides. His eyes shone genially as he grasped a dozen hands in turn, and in turn answered twice a dozen salutations.
Robert Bates had run away from the heavy hand of Gaffer Pearn some five and thirty years before the present time, and he looked round him now and saw but one familiar face; for the old men had passed from their labours, the middle-aged had taken their places, his former mates were growing grey and he could not recognise them.
“I’ll tell you the whole tale if you’m minded,” he said. “’Tis thirty years long, but give two minutes to each of they years an’ I’ll finish in a hour. An’ meantime, Mrs. Capern—as was Nancy Bassett, an’ wouldn’t walk out Sundays with me last time I seed ’e—be so good as to let every gen’leman present have what he wants to drink, for I be going to leave ten pounds in Postbridge, an’ I’d so soon you had it as anybody.”
Great applause greeted this liberal determination.