The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the field where the competitions had been held in the morning, and some of the crowd with them. Another portion streamed into the church, and soon only a few scattered groups were left.
The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing, which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before. When it was over, he noticed a group of elderly labourers. They had come late into the meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before they entered it Delane went up to one of them.
"I'm a stranger here," he said carelessly. "Can you tell me who all these people were in the wagons?"
The man addressed—who was old Halsey—gave the speaker a reconnoitring look.
"Well, I dunno neither," he said cautiously, "leastways, many of 'em.
There was my old missus, in the first one. She didn't want to go, dressed
up in them sunbonnets. But they made such a fuss of her, she had to.
There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an' I don't know nobody else."
"Well, but the second wagon?" said Delane impatiently.
"Oh, the second wagon. Why, that was Miss Henderson. Don't ye know 'er? I works for 'er?"
"Is she on the land?"
The old man laughed.
"That she be! She's a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an' she frames pretty fair. She don't know much yet, but what she don't know Hastings tells, her."