"Yes, I see," smiled Griff. "All right; I'll call for you on the way."
The preacher's brow was clouded as he went back through the fading stocks and asters that lined the garden path.
"Just the same, just the same," he muttered; "when you're serious, a devil of passion, and when you're gay, a scoffer. But, God knows, lad, how I love you!"
"I'm late, mother," said Griff, rushing into the Manor parlour at his usual hurricane speed. "Old Gabriel has been in a poor sort of way, lately, and I had to bully him. Where are we going to-day?"
"Anywhere you like, Griff. Let us take the first path we come to, and go straight ahead. We won't bind ourselves to anything."
Every day since he returned, the mother and Griff had had a long walk together. The man's zest for the moors was increasing apace; the more heather he got, the more he wanted, and the two of them found so much to talk about, that Kate Strangeways, the quarry-master's wife, went clean out of the old lady's head. Their cross-country tramp this morning, however, chanced to bring them in sight of Peewit House.
"Were you ever in that house up there?" asked Mrs. Lomax.
"Never; but I have often thought of exploring it. Who lives there? Some one must do, as there is smoke coming out of the chimney."
"The worst-assorted couple you can imagine; a husband who ought to be horse-whipped every day of his life, and a wife who is, in my judgment, as fine a woman as I know anywhere. I want to drop in, by the way; Mrs. Strangeways has been ill for a long while, and I stop for a chat now and then. Will you come?"