“Nelly Baker took in all I said; an’ inside a week she’d dropped my brother. But ’twas what he done after that startled folks, for without a word to any living soul, he vanished, like the dew of the morning, four-an’-twenty hours after she’d flinged him over. I was the last that seed him. We were working together out ’pon the land; an’ he was sour an’ crusty wi’ his trouble, an’ hadn’t a word to fling at me. Dimpsy light fell, an’ I went in a tool shed to don my jacket an’ go home. ’Twas autumn, an’ us had been spreading manure upon the meadow.
“‘Be you coming, John James?’ I said.
“‘You go to hell,’ he answered. ‘I’ll come when I’ve a mind to, an’ maybe I won’t come at all!’
“So home I walked wi’out another word; an’ he never comed; an’ nobody ever heard a whisper about him again from that day to this. For a soldier he went, ’twas thought; but the after history of un never reached nobody at Postbridge; an’ whether he was shot or whether he gathered glory in foreign parts none ’pon Dartymoor can tell you.
“A nine days’ wonder it was, an’ it killed my mother; for John James was the apple of her eye. Her never cared a button for me, ’cause I was the living likeness of her brother—my uncle, Silas Bond. They sent him to Botany Bay for burning down wheat stacks. A bad lot he was, no doubt; an’ a fool to boot, which is worse. For he got catched an’ punished. An’ he deserved all he got—for letting ’em catch him.
“With John James out of the way, I comed to be a bit more important in the house, an’ when my mother died, father got to trust me with his money. I was old for my years, you see. As for Nelly, she kept so true to me as the bird to her nest—for five years; an’ then I’d got to be twenty, an’ had saved over three hundred pound for her; an’ she was twenty-two. A good many chaps wanted to marry her; but she kept our secret close, an’ said ‘nay’ to some very snug men, an’ just waited for me an’ Aller Bottom Farm.
“Then, when I’d reckoned to name the day an’ take her so soon as I comed of age, Oliver Honeywell turned up from down country an’ rented that old tenement farm what be called Merripit. So good land as any ’pon all Dartymoor goes with it. An’ he comed wi’ a flourish of trumpets an’ plenty of money. He was going to larn us all how to farm, an’ how to make money ’pon weekdays, an’ how to get to heaven Sundays.
“Rot the devil! I see him now—a smug, sleek, fat, handsome, prosperous man, with the insolence of a spoilt cat! He’d preach in the open air of a Sunday, for there was no parson nor church here in them days. Strong as a horse,—a, very practical man,—always right. Did plenty of good, as the saying goes, an’ went about like a procession, as if he expected angels from heaven to be waiting for him at every street corner with a golden crown. His right hand was generous, but he took very good care his left hand knowed it. He didn’t do his good in secret, nor yet hide his light under a bushel.
“He was a black-haired man, wi’ scholarship an’ money behind him. He knew the better-most folk. They called upon him, I believe, an’ axed him to their houses, it was said. He hunted, and paid money to help three different packs o’ hounds. An old mother kept house for him. He tried to patronize the whole of Postbridge an’ play the squire an’ vicar rolled into one. Men as owed him nought an’ thanked him for nought pulled their hair to him. But there be some fools who will always touch their hats to a pair o’ horses. There comed to be an idea in people’s minds that Honeywell was a Godsend, though if you axed them why, they generally couldn’t tell you.
“An’ my Nelly falled in love with him.