Desire for food was the one straightforward agent. He looked across the moor and saw a black-walled cottage standing up against the sky; without conscious thought he took a bee-line, over bog-land and dry, to the cottage. At another time he would have recognized Sorrowstones Spring, but this afternoon the country showed only a blurred, unknown waste. A surly admonition to enter greeted his knock, and he went in. Old Mother Strangeways was taking down a canister of tea from her cupboard; she turned and looked him up and down.
"Oh, it's thee, Gabriel Hirst?" she croaked. "What dost 'a want?"
"Food. I'm like to drop with hunger."
She laughed mirthlessly.
"Then drop, tha praching crow. I know thee well; tha'rt friends wi' young Lummax, if I'm noan mista'en."
The preacher winced.
"I'm no friend of his, nor he of mine."
"Art'n't 'a? Sin' when?"
"Since the morning. He's played me false, and it's a pity that vengeance belongs to the Lord."
Rachel dropped into her chair and motioned Gabriel to take the other.