Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

"What! That a horse should go mad when burning touchwood is set in his ear?"

"He did not purpose to put it into his ear. The horse tossed his head, and Fox's hand slipped."

"And his hand slipped when your fingers were cut?"

"No, not his hand, but his knife; it was in his sleeve. You would not have had it slip upwards?"

Urith was silent; she was angered, vexed—angered and vexed at Anthony's easy good-nature. Any excuse satisfied him. So with regard to his father's displeasure; it did not concern him greatly—cost him not an hour's wakefulness. All would come right in the end, he said, and satisfied himself with sanguine hope. His was a buoyant nature, the opposite to her own, which was gloomy and mistrustful. She raised no further objection to Anthony leaving her to return home alone. He was in a touchy mood, and, for the first time since their marriage, answered her testily.

But she made allowance for him. He had been cut off from his friends, he had been forced out of his wonted course of life. He had been pinched for money, obliged to work hard. Was it not reasonable that on a fair-day and holiday he should wish to be with his old companions and make merry, and have a glass of ale or a bottle of sack? Uncle Sol could not or would not accompany her home; he also had friends to detain him, and purposed to pass the evening in an alehouse singing and making merry.

Urith's knowledge of men, their ways, and their fancies, was limited to the study of her uncle; and though she could not believe that her Anthony was a sot and witless, yet she supposed that he partook of the same taste for society and for the bottle, which she regarded as much a characteristic of men as a rough chin and a masculine voice.

Anthony, with unconcern, was on his way to Kilworthy. This ancient mansion stood high, with its back to the north wind; before it the hills fell away in noble park-land studded with oak and beech over a century old—trees that had been planted by Judge Glanville in the reign of Elizabeth—and beyond the valley of the Tavy rose the tumbled, desolate ridges of Dartmoor, of a scabious blue, or wan as ashes.

The side of the hill was hewn away near the house into a series of terraces, one planted with yews, the others rich with flowers. The house itself had that stately beauty that belongs to Elizabethan mansions.

When Anthony arrived along with Fox, he was not a little surprised to see a large company assembled. Many of the young people and their parents of the best families around were there, sauntering in the gardens, or playing bowls on the green.