Myles wandered to the circle of Scor Hill and mused there. Here she had denied him in snow, offered herself to him in springtime. Honor he did not see, but another woman met his gaze. She was aged and bent, and she passed painfully along under a weight of sticks gathered in the valley. He spoke from his seat on a stone.
"I should not carry so much at one load, Cherry; you'll hurt yourself."
Gammer Grepe, thus accosted, flung her sticks to the ground and turned to Myles eagerly.
"'Tis a gude chance I find 'e alone," she said, "for I'm very much wantin' to have a tell with 'e if I may make so bold."
"Sit down and rest," he answered.
Then the gammer began with tearful eagerness.
"'Tis this way. For years an' years the folks have been used to look sideways 'pon me an' spit awver theer shoulders arter I'd passed by. An' I won't say the dark things my mother knawed be hid from me. But I never could abear the deeds I've been forced into, an' was allus better pleased doin' gude than harm. God's my judge of that. But I've so fair a right to live as my neighbours, an' I've done many an' many a ugly thing for money, an' I shall again, onless them as can will come forrard and help me. Eighty-four I be—I'll take my oath of it; an' that's a age when a lone woman did ought be thinkin' of the next world—not doin' dark deeds in this."
Myles had seen his wife far off and caught the flutter of her dress in the valley a mile distant. She was still fishing as her tardy progress testified, but where she stood the river was hidden under a tumble of rocky ledges. He turned in some surprise to the old woman.
"D'you mean that here, now, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-one, folks still ask you for your help to do right or wrong and seriously think you can serve them?"
"Ess fay; an' I do serve them; an' 'tis that I'm weary of. But, seein' theer's nought betwixt me an' the Union Workhouse but theer custom, I go on. Theer's cures come fust—cures for childern's hurts an' the plagues of beasts."