“So it won’t be me ’at does for ye, love,” she sobbed, and she carried Jimmy yet a little further. The road turned to pass down round Wadsworth Shelf, and again the two women dropped behind. In a few minutes Dooina rejoined the little party alone; and when a lad asked after Cicely, she sobbed and laughed and choked all at once, and answered him that he’d know more o’ women and life th’ longer he lived. They dropped to the Horwick valley.
Cicely had left the road at the mouth of a narrow grassy gully that turned behind a fold of the hill to a small dean half a mile away. Far away a glimpse of the distant Holdsworth moors and rocky Soyland showed. Cicely had known the dean from her infancy; there was a hollow cavity in the sandy bank of a beck, overgrown with scrubby alder, that long ago had been her playing-hole, and it was there that she was to wait for Arthur. If possible, too, she was to sleep, for they would have to foot it during the night.
In twenty minutes she was ascending the bleached stones of the dry bed of the stream, stepping carefully so as to make as little noise as possible; and then she found the alder, drew it aside, and crept into her retreat. She unburdened herself of a basket and a jar of milk, and stretched herself on the sand, Jimmy asleep in her arms.
The curtains of the parson’s house had been flung back again, and the sentry had disappeared from the passage. The parson and Monjoy could now talk freely. As much as a merry word had passed between them, for a year of Back o’ th’ Mooin had set the parson longing for the conversation of his own kind; and then his brow had become clouded again. He had taken to this great red bear of a guest of his, as he had taken immediately to Cicely; but that did not excuse his lapse from rectitude; and, moreover, it appalled him to find that he was, for the time being, at any rate, no longer capable of prayer. He envied the beguiled captain his peace of mind. He sighed; but he was too fully occupied just then for remorse to stay long. His bad hour was yet to come.
“Monjoy,” he said suddenly, on the afternoon of Sally’s funeral, “you owe me something.”
“I haven’t forgotten it yet,” Monjoy replied.
“You owe it to me to let me do now what I refrained from before—to improve the occasion.”
“I’d like to repay you in a better sort than that,” Monjoy replied.
“Ah, you can’t; and even that will not clear me of my fault. You see how reluctant I am to speak—this cloth of ours is more often than not a disadvantage, for none but professional words are expected from it——”
“Go ahead,” said Monjoy.