“My father would never give his men tail corn,” cried Timothy, indignantly.
“Wouldn’t he? Then I was wrong. I wouldn’t go against un for all the tin hid on Dartymoor. But theer ’tis. I doan’t see how the man’s gwaine to save against a wife an’ fam’ly unless his wage be bettered. An’ I don’t want to see my darter grow into an auld virgin mumphead while he’s tryin’ to scrape brass enough to give her a home. ’Tis wisht work such waitin’.”
“I’ll not forget John Aggett. He’s a very well-meaning man, and honest, and a splendid shot.”
“So he is then, an’ a gude shot as you say, though I’ll allus be sorry as he brought down my li’l bird.”
“If she loves him, ’twill fall out all right, you know, Belworthy.”
“If love could taake the place o’ victuals an’ a stone cottage an’ a snug peat hearth, it might fall out right; but I’m sorry for the maiden’s love as have got to burn at full pitch o’ heat year arter year wi’ marriage no nearer. ’Tis a withering thing for a girl to love on, knawin’ in her secret heart as each winter doan’t pass awver her for nought but leaves its awn touch o’ coldness an’ greyness. She hides it from the man, o’ course—from everyone else tu, for that matter,—but ’tis with her all the seasons through an’ dims her eye, an’ furrows her smooth young forehead at night-times unbeknawnst to them that love her best.”
Timothy doubted not that the blacksmith spoke truth, then he trotted off up the hill, and without set purpose overtook Sarah on her way home. Her voice and the frankness of her face thrilled him as she smiled shyly, her temper gone. Again she chid him for listening to her parent’s nonsense, and he tried to assume a friendly, fatherly manner toward her, and failed. The girl made his blood burn and his hand shake on his horse’s mane. His breath came short, his eyes grew bright, and only with difficulty did he arrest a frantic, reckless petition for a kiss at any cost. Perhaps such an abrupt and volcanic climax had been best; but he restrained himself, swallowed his ardour and became humble before her. Seeing that she preferred this attitude, he sank to servility; then, rating him for wasting his time and her own, she turned away hard by her cottage door, and he, without formal farewell, walked his horse onward all a-dreaming. Sarah, too, was not unmoved, but she hid her emotion and was glad that neither her mother’s nor any other pair of eyes had seen her with young Chave.
Timothy met the third party to that unfolding drama as he proceeded on to the Moor. Then came John Aggett with an anxious face looking out upon the world above his pale beard. The labourer stopped Tim, and in broken sentences—like a child that wrestles to describe new things within his experience but beyond his vocabulary—strove clumsily to express a mental upheaval which he lacked words to display. He made it clear, however, that he was in a great turmoil of mind and much driven by fear of appearances in connection with Gammer Gurney’s predictions of the previous night.
“I be just come from speech with the old woman, and can’t say as ’twas sense or yet nonsense I got out of her. She kept a close watch on her lips, ’peared to me; but her eyes threatened bad things an’ her weern’t at ease. ‘What will happen, will happen,’ she sez to me; an’ at the fust utterance it seemed a deep sayin’, yet, come to think on’t, ’twas a thing known so well to me as she.”
“Why did you go to her?” enquired Timothy, knowing without need of answer.