'Listen to me, Elijah,' exclaimed Mehalah passionately. 'If you find me there, then you may hope to see your other fond dream fulfilled. Destiny will have been too strong for me.'
'Farewell.'
'May we not meet again.'
'We shall. It cannot be helped. I feel it coming. You may fight against it; you cannot escape. Destiny must fulfil itself. We must fight and love, and love and fight in life, in death, and through eternity, like the old warriors in Grim's Hoe.'
'Farewell.'
'Till this day sen'night.'
CHAPTER XV.
NEW YEAR'S EVE.
No more sheep were stolen; but then the moon was filling her horns, and a robbery could not be committed without chance of detection. But though nothing further had been taken, Mehalah was uneasy. Some evilly-disposed person had visited the Ray and plundered her and her mother of four ewes; others, or the same, might attempt the house, in the hopes of finding money there. The auction had shown people that Mistress Sharland was not without money.
On New Year's Eve Mehalah went to Colchester to make some purchases for the New Year. The kalends of January and not the Nativity of Christ is the great winter festival among the Essex peasantry on the coast. They never think of wishing one another a Happy Christmas, but only a Merry New Year. No yule log is burnt, no mummers dance, no wassail bowl is consumed at Christmas, but each man who can afford it deems himself bound to riot and revel, to booze and sing, to wake the death of the old year, and baptise the new with libations of brandy or ale.