“She laughed out loud, and said there was no fear of that; and then she called a lad, and he led off White-face and Strike-a-light and Jenny and the Cutler, and they was all gone, and the horse-dealer and Sophia, afore I had time to say good-night. She never come into these parts again—at least, I never seed her; but I heard tell she lived a score of years more after that, and died of a broken blood-vessel at Beriton Races.”
He moved a little further down the choir, and went on with his dusting; but Westray followed, and started him again.
“What happened when you got back? You haven’t told me what Farmer Joliffe said, nor how you came to leave farming and turn clerk.”
The old man wiped his forehead.
“I wasn’t going to tell ’ee that,” he said, “for it do fair make I sweat still to think o’ it; but you can have it if you like. Well, when they was gone, I was nigh dazed with such a stroke o’ luck, and said the Lord’s Prayer to see I wasn’t dreaming. But ’twas no such thing, and so I cut a slit in the lining of my waistcoat, and dropped the notes in, all except the one she give me for myself, and that I put in my fob-pocket. ’Twas getting dark, and I felt numb with cold and wet, what with standing so long in the rain and not having bite nor sup all day.
“’Tis a bleak place, Beacon Hill, and ’twas so soft underfoot that day the water’d got inside my boots, till they fair bubbled if I took a step. The rain was falling steady, and sputtered in the naphtha-lamps that they was beginning to light up outside the booths. There was one powerful flare outside a long tent, and from inside there come a smell of fried onions that made my belly cry ‘Please, master, please!’
“‘Yes, my lad,’ I said to un, ‘I’m darned if I don’t humour ’ee; thou shan’t go back to Wydcombe empty.’ So in I step, and found the tent mighty warm and well lit, with men smoking and women laughing, and a great smell of cooking. There were long tables set on trestles down the tent, and long benches beside ’em, and folks eating and drinking, and a counter cross the head of the room, and great tin dishes simmering a-top of it—trotters and sausages and tripe, bacon and beef and colliflowers, cabbage and onions, blood-puddings and plum-duff. It seemed like a chance to change my banknote, and see whether ’twere good and not elf-money that folks have found turn to leaves in their pocket. So up I walks, and bids ’em gie me a plate of beef and jack-pudding, and holds out my note for’t. The maid—for ’twas a maid behind the counter—took it, and then she looks at it and then at me, for I were very wet and muddy; and then she carries it to the gaffer, and he shows it to his wife, who holds it up to the light, and then they all fall to talking, and showed it to a ’cise-man what was there marking down the casks.
“The people sitting nigh saw what was up, and fell to staring at me till I felt hot enough, and lief to leave my note where ’twas, and get out and back to Wydcombe. But the ’cise-man must have said ’twere all right, for the gaffer comes back with four gold sovereigns and nineteen shillings, and makes a bow and says:
“‘Your servant, sir; can I give you summat to drink?’
“I looked round to see what liquor there was, being main glad all the while to find the note were good; and he says: