'Say no more, say not another word, mother,' exclaimed Mehalah. 'You know that I never, never will forsake you, that you are more to me a thousand times than my own life. But there is one thing I never will do for you. I never will marry Elijah.'
'I am afraid, Mehalah, that folks will talk.'
'I fear so too, but they have no occasion. I will show them that. I will find a situation elsewhere.'
'You shall not, Mehalah!'
'I must, mother.'
She thought for some time what she should do, and then put on her bonnet, and walked into Salcott. She had not been into the village since her arrival at Red Hall.
Salcott is a small village of old cottages at the head of a creek that opens out of the Blackwater. It has a church with a handsome tower built of flints, but with no chancel. Within a bowshot, across the creek, connected with it by a bridge, is Virley church, a small hunchbacked edifice in the last stages of dilapidation, in a graveyard unhedged, unwalled; the church is scrambled over by ivy, with lattice windows bulged in by the violence of the gales, and a bellcot leaning on one side like a drunkard. Near this decaying church is a gabled farm, and this and a cottage form Virley village. The principal population congregates at Salcott, across the wooden bridge, and consisted—a hundred years ago—of labourers, and men more or less engaged in the contraband trade. Every house had its shed and stable, where was a donkey and cart, to be let on occasion to carry smuggled goods inland. At the end of the village stands a low tavern, the Rising Sun, a mass of gables; part of it, the tavern drinking-room, is only one storey high, but the rest is a jumble of roofs and lean-to buildings, chimneys, and ovens, a miracle of picturesqueness. Mehalah walked into the bar, and found there the landlady alone.
'I have come here, mistress,' she said abruptly, 'in search of work. I am strong and handy, and will do as much as a man. I will serve you faithfully and well if you will engage me. I have an infirm mother who must be lodged somewhere, so I ask for small wage.'
'Who are you? Where do you come from?' asked the landlady eyeing her with surprise.
'My name is Mehalah Sharland. I lived on the Ray till the house was burned down. Since then I have been at Red Hall.'