With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed to prosper. He might rise early and go to bed late, he might pinch and pare as relentlessly as he pleased, every year of his life he grew leaner and poorer, till the scowl on his features deepened permanently among its lines, and in the end transformed his features as completely as a mask.
He was no more like the clear-eyed, whistling young farmer who had gone a-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat-fields, than the wrinkled tree, with its heart rotted out of it, is like the green young sapling in the bravery of its spring.
Ever watching hungrily to see Misfortune seize his rival and set her teeth thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah held aloof from commerce with his neighbours, sour and discontented, and wishing each day to end, in the hope that on the morrow he might see the evil he desired.
Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that Elijah Trevorrow was a bit touched here—the villagers tapping their brows significantly as they spoke.
"He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, an' he've seed her. Up in that owld fogou he've mit her, he do say. An' he's all'ys sayin' she ha'nt keeped her word to un. Whatever do 'a mayne, weth 'es gashly owld tales?"
'Miah, whose name had got mixed up in the tale, one day called at the lonely farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and reason with him if he could.
But Elijah, as 'Miah approached, set the dogs on him savagely, and the fisherman was obliged precipitately to beat a retreat.
At last, one day in the depth of winter, when the hills were white with whirling snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared.
They searched everywhere for him, but could find no trace of him, and the search was finally abandoned in despair.
Elijah had made his way to the fogou, determined to front Hate and to compel her to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed her life out through her throat.