It did not appear to occur to Peter that the man could not get up.
The next course was the very obvious one of securing those good things which the gods had provided. Farmer Chegwidden had not much money left in his pockets, but Peter discovered it was almost enough to pay for the new lamps. Mary had advanced the money for them, so what Peter gained through the farmer's misfortune was all profit. Then he picked up his lamps, and hurried back to the village to lodge the information of the "dead corpse lying up on Dartmoor" in the proper quarter.
He had not been gone long when Pendoggat rode up. Thomasine had hurried back to Town Rising by the "lower town," afraid to cross by the moor in that wind. He too discovered the farmer, or rather his horse did; and he too refused to pass by on the other side. Dismounting, he knelt and struck a match. The wind blew it out at once, but the sudden flash showed him the man's face. Chegwidden was breathing heavily, a fact which Peter had omitted to notice.
"Dead drunk! He can bide there," muttered Pendoggat.
He got upon his horse and rode on. As he crossed the brow, and reached a point where there was nothing to break the strength of the wind, he pulled his horse round, hesitated a moment, then cantered back. The wind was in his lungs and in his nostrils, and he was himself again, a strong man, not a weak creature in love with a farm-wench, not a singer of hymns nor a preacher of sermons, but a hungry animal to whom power had been given over weak and lesser beings of the earth.
He knelt at Chegwidden's side, and tore the clothes off him until he had stripped him naked. He dragged the body to the side of the road and toppled it into the gorse. The clothes he rolled up, took with him, and higher up flung into an old mine-shaft. Then he rode on his way, shouting, fighting with the wind.
CHAPTER XIV
ABOUT A STRUGGLE AT THE GATE OF FAIRYLAND
Old Weevil walked about the moor, because there was no room in the cottage or garden, and whispered to the sun: "I wish she wasn't so happy, I wish she wouldn't laugh so, I wish she wouldn't talk about that boy." A good many other things he wished for. Mr. Bellamie had written to present his compliments to Abel Cain Weevil, Esquire—though the old man was not used to that title—and to announce that he proposed giving himself the pleasure of calling at Lewside Cottage and enjoying a little conversation with its tenant. Weevil guessed how he would blunder through that interview in his simple beetle-hearted way; and then he would have to break his little girl's heart as carefully as he could. After all she was very young, and hearts broken early can be put together again. Plants broken off in the spring grow up as well as ever. It is when they are broken in the late summer that there is no chance, and no time, to mend.