Calote walked down the hall to the windows, pondering. She had kept her dagger secret even from this peddler. How should he know? Yet, 't were a simple thing, no doubt; her gown was ragged. But at night, when she lay on the sheepskin a-turning over the day in her mind, she asked herself why the peddler should stay for her.
“Alas,—wehl awey!” she sighed, and her face burned in the dark.
After a little she said again: “Wehl awey!”
The heather was not in blossom, but the breath of spring sweetened the wolds. Diggon the shepherd gave his new man a sheepskin to warm him in, and together they two kept the flock. Out in the lonely open the peddler forsook his stammer as much as he might, for the nonce; yet now and again 't would master him against his will, and so did all his life after. If a man hold his unruly member halting two year, 't will take revenge.
This Diggon, shepherd, was a gentle being, with a mind like to the Yorkshire wolds, filled full of space, and sky and silence. Whiles, likewise, was his mind purple-clad; then he 'd speak slow words concerning God, and the creatures, and life. Last Christmas Eve he heard the angels singing in heaven, he said. The night of Good Friday, three weeks past, he had a vision of the Rood.—The peddler crossed himself.—One day he lost a lamb, and when he had searched from noon till sunset, and the sea mist was coming in, he met a man larger than life, carried the young lamb in his arm.
When the peddler told him the tale of Piers Ploughman, he listened with a great joy in his eyes.
“In that day,” quoth he, “they 'll cease to ride the hunt across the wolds and scatter the sheep.”
When the peddler instructed him of the Fellowship that was joining hand over all England, he rubbed his head, perplexed.
“We been brothers and Christen men ever,” he said. “Here 's no new thing.”
Of new laws and new masters and freedom he took no keep.