“The name’s nought if the place is weather-tight, an’ healthy, an’ clean. Call it what you please, Daniel.”
Sweetland turned triumphantly to the innkeeper.
“That’s the sort she is,” he said.
“Ah—strong-minded, without a doubt,” admitted Mr Beer. “Wish my Jane was. Wish I was too. ’Tis a very good gift on Dartymoor; but we’m soft in heart as well as body. We live by yielding. I couldn’t bide in a place by that name. It’s owing to the poetry in me. ’Twill out. I must be rhyming. So sure as there comes a Bank Holiday, or the first snow, or an extra good run with hounds, then verses flow out of me, like feathers off a goose.”
The lovers drank a pint of beer between them turn and turn about; but Minnie’s share was trifling. Then they walked off to Hangman’s Hut, where it stood alone in a dimple of the hillside half a mile from the high road.
The cottage looked east and was approached by a rough track over the moor. High ground shielded it from the prevalent riot of the west wind; and nearly two miles distant, in the midst of a chaos of broken land and hillocks of débris, a great waterwheel stood out from the waste and a chimney rose above Vitifer Mine.
Minnie gravely examined the cottage and directed Daniel where to take measurements. The place was in good repair, and had only been vacant two months. It was not the last tenant who had destroyed himself, but an unhappy water-bailiff many years previously.
“The golden plover nearly always come this way when they first arrive in winter. Many’s the pretty bird I’ll shoot ’e, Min.”
She nodded. Her thoughts were on the kitchen range at the time.