"Well, I don't fear it. But my men shiver at the name of it. It haunts their summer. They begin to see the phantom of it before September. Woodman and Beer are always crying about it. Is it not so, man?"
He addressed Mr. Beer, who was ploughing up potatoes with a yoke of oxen. The stalks had been drawn and collected in huge heaps, and now, with his coulter held close on the left of each row, Richard flung up fine tubers at every step, while Tom Putt, Mark Bickford, and several women, specially engaged for this important business, followed and filled the carts.
The crop was heavy, and Mr. Malherb regarded it triumphantly.
"These will astonish some of our neighbours, I fancy," he remarked.
"You must have brought this land with you!" commented Peter; and the farmer was constrained to admit that the soil had called for costly preparation.
The weather broke anon, and before midday the mist lifted sluggishly to the crowns of the hills, sulked there awhile, then prepared to roll down again.
At his parting meal Norcot had some speech with Grace and, afterwards, succeeded in winning a little conversation with her alone. She showed indifference and impatience. Then he interested her by describing his visit to Prince Town.
"The hero of the chisel honoured me with his attention. I am to do him a service if I can. He is a gentleman from the State of Vermont. He congratulated me on my fortune and I expressed a hope that he might be at your wedding. If I win his parole for him, it is quite possible that he may be."
"I am resolved with all my soul and all my strength never, never to marry you, Peter; and you know it; and you are ungenerous and cruel to press it."
Mr. Norcot nodded thoughtfully.