“Matter enough,” said Ted; “’tis a ewe cat!”
“A ewe cat! Oh, Ted, doan’t say that!”
“’Tis so; an’ God send her doan’t have chets ’fore we’m married, else Postbridge won’t hold your dear faither—nor Dartymoor neither.”
“A PICKAXE, AND A SPADE, A SPADE”
CHAPTER I
Nearly two hundred years ago, when Miser Merle departed from life, his little corner of earth took heart and breathed again. Not that he had raised any very mighty mound of gold to stand between himself and the sunshine, but, according to his power, he had followed the traditional road of those similarly cursed, and though the circumstances of his life, as innkeeper of a small hostelry at Two Bridges by Dart on the Devon moors, made any huge accumulation impossible, none the less he was a right miser in grain, and died without a tear to balance his two thousand pounds of money. Some heartily cursed him on his unknown way; not one pretended to mourn his passing.
His wife was long dead—starved with cold on a winter night, so certain gossips loved to tell; his son the miser had driven out of England, and subsequent rumours of the young man’s death troubled him not at all.
So it came about that, when the “Ring o’ Bells” was masterless, an obscure maiden, who had dwelt there since Mrs. Merle’s demise, found herself possessor of all the money, for Miser Merle left no will. Minnie Merle was his orphaned niece, and when the old man’s unhappy partner shuffled off, he bethought him of this girl. As a relation, lacking friends or position, she would come without wages. So, from the position of domestic servant in a Plymouth tradesman’s family at three pounds a year, Minnie was exalted to be the handmaid of Miser Merle without remuneration of any kind.
“A man’s own flesh and blood,” he said, when first she came, “will understand, but I don’t want to poison your regard for me with money, or reduce you to the level of a hireling. You are my niece; you and Nicholas Merle, in the North Country, are all the kindred left to me now that my wife has been taken.”
So Minnie settled at the “Ring o’ Bells,” and, being young and healthy, survived conditions that had thrust her aunt untimely into the grave. The old man never trusted his niece again after a day upon which he caught her helping two hungry tramps to bread and cheese, because Minnie’s idea of a pennyworth was far more liberal than Mr. Merle’s; but she stayed at the inn, encouraged to the dreary necessity by local friends, who hinted to her, behind her uncle’s back, that such self-denial must in the long run find itself rewarded.