However, from all anxieties on this score she is at length and ere long relieved; her mind set at rest by a sound heard on the tranquil air of the night, the dip of a boat’s oars, distant but recognisable. Often before listening for the same, she instinctively knows them to be in the hands of her son. For Jack rows with a stroke no waterman on the Wye has but he—none equalling it in timbre and regularity. His mother can tell it, as a hen the chirp of her own chick, or a ewe the bleat of its lamb.
That it is his stroke she has soon other evidence than her ears. In a few seconds after hearing the oars she sees them, their wet blades glistening in the moonlight, the boat between.
And now she only waits for it to be pulled up and into the wash—its docking place; when Jack will tell her where they have been, and what for; perhaps, too, the Captain will come inside the cottage and speak a friendly word with her, as he has frequently done.
While thus pleasantly anticipating, she has a disappointment. The skiff is passing onward—proceeding up the river! But she is comforted by seeing a hat held aloft—the salute telling her she is herself seen; and that Jack has some good reason for the prolongation of the voyage. It will no doubt terminate at the Ferry, where he will get the candles and comestibles, saving him a second journey thither, and so killing two birds with one stone.
Contenting herself with this construction of it, she returns inside the house, touches up the faggots on the fire, and by their cheerful blaze thinks no longer of candles, or any other light—forgetting even the canwyll corph.
Volume Three—Chapter Six.
A Sacrilegious Hand.
Between Wingate’s cottage and Rugg’s Captain Ryecroft has but slight acquaintance with the river, knows it only by a glimpse had here and there from the road. Now, ascending by boat, he makes note of certain things appertaining to it—chiefly, the rate of its current, the windings of its channel, and the distance between the two places. He seems considering how long a boat might be in passing from one to the other. And just this is he thinking of: his thoughts on that boat he saw starting downward.