Also, there was a child to be baptised, a matter that would keep, and a wench to be married, a matter that would not.
"For to-day," thought the Parson, "I have got my hands full; to-morrow I shall be free again, and it's strange if I fail to find out something more of your goings on, Mistress Nelly, and put a spoke in the wheel of that young spark down by the water-side, who seems to make himself so much at home!"
Though he never saw him before, though he had not the vaguest notion that John Garnet was the man he had sworn to hunt to death, some antagonistic instinct caused him to hate this man with a deadly hatred, scarcely to be accounted for, even by that jealousy which is proverbially cruel as the grave.
In no appropriate frame of mind, the Parson was about to don his frayed and dirty canonicals for administration of that matrimonial rite it would be unwise to delay, when his quick eye caught sight of a man riding on the moor, whose appearance caused him to cast aside his sacred vestments with an oath, and rush to the door, carrying a brimming jug of cider in his hand.
Mr. Gale swore when he was pleased, and when he was angry, when he rode and when he walked, when he worked and when he rested. Altogether he swore a good deal between morning and night.
"It's the harbourer!" he exclaimed, steadying the vessel not to spill a drop; "the harbourer, as I'm a living sinner, Red Rube!" he shouted, while the new arrival drew the rein at the mounting-block, "stop and wet your whistle—you're always welcome, and you're always dry."
Red Rube, whose real name was Reuben Rudd, needed no second bidding. Raising the jug to his weather-tanned face, he took a hearty pull, a pull that nearly emptied its contents.
The Parson scanned him approvingly. Rube wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and sat motionless in the saddle without a word.
He was a man of seventy at least, short, shrunken, withered, and tough as shoe-leather, with a keen grey eye, set in countless wrinkles, that seemed traced in the red-brown skin with the point of a needle. He rode a broken-kneed Exmoor pony, low in condition, but as hard as nails. Sportsman was written in every line of his face, every turn of his limbs, yet his steed, saddle, bridle, and the clothes on his back would have been dear at five pounds.
Like a ghost, it was Rube's custom not to speak till he was spoken to. His answers too were ghostly and mysterious, and he loved to vanish like a ghost when he had delivered his pithy say.