CONTENTS.

CHAPTERPAGE
I. The Moor Man comes back to his Own[1]
II. The Perversion of Gabriel Hirst[13]
III. A Moor Woman[28]
IV. At the Sign of the Dog and Grouse[37]
V. Concerning Parsley and Strong Drink[45]
VI. The Rising Wind[55]
VII. 'Twixt Wynyates and Ling Crag[63]
VIII. Kate Strangeways asserts herself[72]
IX. Confession[81]
X. The Woman of Sorrowstones Spring[89]
XI. The Ghost of Wynyates[95]
XII. Release[104]
XIII. A Moonlight Introduction[110]
XIV. Frender's Folly[123]
XV. A Home-coming[136]
XVI. Roddick's Wife[145]
XVII. In which Mrs. Lomax grows Angry[152]
XVIII. The Cutting of Peats[161]
XIX. The Link that bindeth Man and Wife[172]
XX. The Fight at the Quarry Edge[183]
XXI. Afterwards[198]
XXII. White Heather[207]
XXIII. A "Revival"[218]
XXIV. A Tale from the Heart of the Night[226]
XXV. The Beginning of the Rift[236]
XXVI. How they fought round the Peat-rick[244]
XXVII. The Rift gapes Wide[253]
XXVIII. Janet[258]
XXIX. What the Snowflakes fell upon[264]
XXX. By Way of Wynyates[272]
XXXI. The Moor Man goes out to his Own[280]

A MAN OF THE MOORS.

CHAPTER I. THE MOOR MAN COMES BACK TO HIS OWN.

Joe Strangeways the husband was called; and if roughness could make any man a diamond, then he was emphatically of the purest water. But, apart from his roughness, the untrained eye could detect few good qualities in him; his wife had searched, with tears and prayer, for any redeeming point in his character, and now, at the end of five years, she found herself further than ever from the goal. A harsh man he was, indifferent when not jealous, callous when not actively cruel: his speech was coarse, his voice harsh and raucous, and he was in a perpetual state of growing a beard—a thick, black scrub, as rough as his uncouth tongue. Once a week he got very drunk, and his wife, before she learned to know the signs of the times and to prepare herself accordingly, was apt to suffer physical discomfort.