"Have ye got a home?" asked Thomasine.
"Ees, a proper old cave to Belstone Cleave."
"What be I to du?" she murmured.
"Come wi' I," said Brightly gallantly. "I be going home."
The girl tried to think, but soon gave up in despair. She was barely twenty-three, and her life seemed done already. Her parents had shut the door upon her, and erased her name from the book of life—the family Bible which retained the record of those who were respectable—not so much because she had done wrong as because the man who had led her astray would not marry her. It was quaint logic, but the world reasons that way. She was ready to go with Brightly because he was friendly and she required friendship badly; she hardly looked upon him as a man; he was such a poor incomplete thing; if a man, without the power of sinning like a man. She would go with him to the cave in the cleave, and cook for him, if there was anything to be cooked, with the old frying-pan with a bottom like a sieve.
"Ees, I've got a butiful home," muttered ridiculous Brightly with pride.
He was regarding Thomasine as the reincarnation of Ju. The little dog had come back to him in the form of a woman. He could talk to her, tell her trade was dull, and he was hungry; could whistle, and sing for her amusement, and pat her gently when she rested upon the heather. She could reply to him in a manner that was better than tail-wagging. Ju had come to the cave gladly and found it homelike, so why not Thomasine? He would not be called on to pay seven-and-sixpence a year for her; but on the other hand she was so big, larger than himself in fact, and he was afraid she would want a lot of food. Brightly became prouder every minute. He had a woman of his own and "duppence" wrapped up in bits of paper. He would not touch his hat to the next man he met on the road. He would stare him in the face and say: "How be ye?" just as if he had been a man himself.
"Shall us get on?" he said again.
They went on and reached windy Bridestowe that night. Brightly, who knew every building upon that part of the moor, found a shelter for Thomasine in a peat-linhay, and a resting-place for himself in a farmyard. They started off early in the morning, and Brightly produced eggs with the half-apologetic and half-proud explanation: "Us be criminals." He had stolen them. Up to the time of his conviction he had never been a thief, but since leaving prison he had felt it was necessary to live up to his reputation as a desperate character, and so he took anything he could find. Under the oil-cloth of his basket was a feathered fowl, and Thomasine was informed there would be a good supper for her that evening.
"Yew stoled 'en?" exclaimed the girl.