'Well, I'll gang and see what's doing.'
Chapman sauntered off, turning up his collar and jamming his hat down on his brows. The pits lay between the Mires and Old Lafer on the moor above the Hall, and here the three able-bodied men of the Mires worked in all seasons except hay-time. At hay-time they hired out to the low-country farmers as monthly labourers. A small stock of coal sufficed in summer to eke out the dwindling turfs in the peat shanties, and keep the fire smouldering while the household laboured in the meadows.
But there were days all the year round when the wild west wind, sweeping off Great Whernside, brought tempests of rain, and made it 'that rough on the tops' that no man could stand against it and even the sheep went uncounted. Then the doors at the Mires were fast shut, except when a woman in clogs pattered round for a skep of peats, or a man slouched down to the marsh to count the foaming streams pouring into it. This when it 'abated like.' Then would come another rush of wind and wet, blotting out the whole world to within a yard or two of the cottage windows.
If there were one kind of weather that Scilla detested more than another it was fog. A snow-storm or deluge of rain kept Hartas at home, but betwixt the liftings of fog he would make his way to the Inn at East Lafer, and when he came back at night there was a wath over the beck to cross, the moor-track to strike, and the pit-shaft to miss. It was nothing when he finished off by rolling down the slape sides of the hollow.
It was foggy to-day. Hartas was restless, and she was sure he would slip off after dinner. She had run into Chapman's and suggested the pits. But her hope had failed and she foresaw a vigil. She had not dared say a word while the men were talking, lest evident anxiety should make Hartas contradictious. But despite her forbearance he had been so. There was no managing him! She was frying bacon, and sighed over the pan, as into her simple mind there rushed the certainty of his headlong course to perdition, a perdition symbolised to her by the flames curling and hissing at every turn of the fork that sent sprints of fat on to the embers. This was really her idea of hell. She had an equally vivid one of heaven. Three miles away, straight as an arrow to the north, lay Wherndale. She had walked many a time to the edge of the moors to see it. Skirting a deep natural moat round an old copperas mine, she had slid down the refuse slide, and plunged through bracken, rush, and spagnum to a great rock overhanging the valley. From hence the view was glorious on a fine summer evening. The western valley lay bathed in sun-rays falling through the vapoury heat-mists shrouding the mountains; the eastern flooded with sunshine; the Meupher range clear against the sky. Below, the moor fell abruptly into meadow-land; rocks were scattered in Titanic confusion among the ling; the meadows dimpled with hollows; the lowering sun streamed through the foliage, and cast long shadows from every tree and hay-pike; mists of blue smoke hung above the farmsteads; here and there was a lake-like gleam of river. Scilla, with the velvet breeze blowing against her, felt that here was heaven. Did she not touch it, when the very tufts of grass over which she walked glistened like frosted silver, and the bent-flower gleamed like cloth of gold?
'I wish the fog would lift,' she said, as she placed dinner on the table, and they drew up their chairs. 'If it would, I'd mount Nobbin and give her a good stretch, better than you'll have patience for, maybe. We mustn't have her leg worsen.'
'It only worsens with standing in t' stable. We hevn't plenty o' work for her, winding up t' coil at t' pits; she'd thrive better on twice as much, and that's truth. I've an extra job for her to-day, and spite o' t' fog I'll carry it through.'
'Why, father, she'll be that stiff after these few days!'
'It works off t' farther she goes, and what with t' weather-shakken look o' t' skies when there is a rift, and Martinmas holiday at hand, she'll be heving so much stable that her leg 'll be her doom i' now.'
Scilla listened with a sensation of breathlessness. It was rarely he talked so much, or informed her of any of his intentions. She wondered what the 'extra job' was, but was so certain that she was to know that she easily hid her curiosity.