“Oh, Jim,” she said at last.  “I’m so frightened.  I’m so horribly frightened.”

She stretched out her arm and slid her hand into his.

Jim’s hand pressed hers and let it go.  He leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees, his hands clutching his forehead.  And in his thick, mournful voice he spoke.

“Yo wouldn’t bae freetened ef yo married mae.  There’d bae an and of these scares, an’ wae sudn’t ‘ave t’ roon these awful risks.”

“I can’t marry you, darling.  I can’t.”

“Yo caann’t, because yo’re freetened o’ mae.  I coom back to thot.  Yo think I’m joost a roough man thot caann’t understand yo.  But I do.  I couldn’t bae roough with yo, Ally, anny more than Nad, oop yon, could bae roough wi’ t’ lil laambs.”

He was lying flat on his back now, with his arms stretched out above his head.  He stared up at the rafters as he went on.

“Yo wouldn’t bae freetened o’ mae ef yo looved mae as I loove yo.”

That brought her to his side with her soft cry.

For a moment he lay rigid and still.

Then he turned and put his arm round her.  The light streamed on them where they lay.  Through the open doorway of the loft they heard the cry of the sheep coming down into the pasture.

* * * * *

Greatorex got up and slid the door softly to.

XLVI

Morfe Fair was over and the farmers were going home.

A broken, straggling traffic was on the roads from dale to dale.  There were men who went gaily in spring carts and in wagons.  There were men on horseback and on foot who drove their sheep and their cattle before them.

A train of three were going slowly up Garthdale, with much lingering to gather together and rally the weary and bewildered flocks.

Into this train there burst, rocking at full gallop, a trap drawn by Greatorex’s terrified and indignant mare.  Daisy was not driven by Greatorex, for the reins were slack in his dropped hands, she was urged, whipped up, and maddened to her relentless speed.  Her open nostrils drank the wind of her going.

Greatorex’s face flamed and his eyes were brilliant.  They declared a furious ecstasy.  Ever and again he rose and struggled to stand upright and recover his grip of the reins.  Ever and again he was pitched backward on to the seat where he swayed, perilously, with the swaying of the trap.

Behind him, in the bottom of the trap, two young calves, netted in, pushed up their melancholy eyes and innocent noses through the mesh.  Hurled against each other, flung rhythmically from side to side, they shared the blind trouble of the man and the torment of the mare.

For the first two miles out of Morfe the trap charged, scattering men and beasts before it and taking the curves of the road at a tangent.  With the third mile the pace slackened.  The mare had slaked her thirst for the wind of her going and Greatorex’s fury was appeased.  At the risk of pitching forward over the step he succeeded in gathering up the reins as they neared the dangerous descent to Garthdale.