John cantered forward and Stark, as many a man had done before him, admired the rider's perfect skill.
"How magnificently that fellow sits his horse," he said.
"Well enough; but it was not I who taught him—a natural gift," confessed Mr. Malherb.
When they reached Mrs. Lee's hut, both dismounted and entered the squalid den, to find a pan of milk already steaming upon a great peat fire. Malherb showed by no word or sign the nature of his last meeting with Lovey Lee, and the American was similarly cautious. As for the miser, she treated them both with equal indifference.
Cecil Stark gazed round him to see the salvation he had fought to find in the storm. With better knowledge of the Moor, his amazement grew at his own recent escape; and yet a thing not less remarkable had fallen out on the same tremendous night.
When Lovey Lee handed a cup to the prisoner, Malherb proposed to add spirits from his flask, but the old woman objected.
"Put nothing in, young sir. There's a drop of cordial there already. Think you I don't know what cold men need to warm their vitals?"
Stark laughed but read the look in her eyes and took the cup quickly. Then he saw that a hollow hazel-nut floated in the milk and, familiar with Lovey's expedients, drank at once. The nut he kept within his cheek and presently transferred to his pocket.
Anon they went their way refreshed, and, commenting upon the grim and starved object who had ministered to them, Stark listened to new sentiments from Maurice Malherb, and saw a little deeper into the gulf that separated their convictions.
"The peasant's mind has ever been my close study, and I have endeavoured to supply his requirements all my life," declared the older man. "His path is narrow, but well marked. To attempt to draw him from it would be madness. Poverty is no hardship in itself, and to teach a peasant to be other than poor is no part of a wise man's work."