"I meant it once—not now. We change our most fixed purposes under the battering of the world; and small enough our old thoughts often look, when seen again, after things have happened and years have passed. I'll creep to join my own, if you please. They won't mind, I reckon, if I sink into the pit beside 'em. I'll go by my wife and my son and my brothers. We'll all rise and brave the Trump together, as well as erring man may."
The stone was set in its place presently and Mr. Baskerville, well pleased with the result, set off homeward. His tethered pony stood at the gate, and he mounted and went slowly up the hill.
CHAPTER XIV
"Some say they believe the old saying and some say they don't," declared Mr. Abraham Elford to a thin bar at six o'clock on Christmas Eve; "but for my part I know what I've proved to be true with my own eyes, and I will stick to it that apples picked at wane of moon do shrivel and scrump up cruel. In fact, for hoarding they be no use at all."
"And you swear that you've proved that?" asked Mr. Head in his most judicial manner. "You stand there, a man up home sixty years of age, and steadfastly declare that apples gathered when the moon be on the wane do dry up quicker than others that be plucked when it begins to grow?"
"Yes, I do," declared the innkeeper. "Don't I tell you that I've proved it? Pick your apples when the moon be first horning, that's my advice."
They wrangled upon the question, and missed its real interest as an example of the value of evidence and the influence of superstition and individual idiosyncrasy on all human testimony.
Jack scoffed, Abraham Elford grew warm; for who is there that can endure to hear his depositions brushed aside as worthless?
Upon this great topic of the shrinking of apples at wane of moon, some sided with Mr. Head; while others, who held lunar influence as a force reaching into dark mysteries of matter and mind, supported the publican.