‘Nature-ally they weren’t goin’ to let me see where they kep’ their monies.  She went upstairs with it—­for the whisky.’

‘I never knowed Jim was a drinkin’ man—­in his own house, like,’ said Jabez.

’No more he isn’t; but what he takes he likes good.  He won’t tech no publican’s hogwash acrost the bar.  Four shillin’s he paid for that bottle o’ whisky.  I know, because when the old lady brought it down there wasn’t more’n jest a liddle few dreenin’s an’ dregs in it.  Nothin’ to set before neighbours, I do assure you.’

’"Why, ’twas half full last week, mother,” he ses.  “You don’t mean,” he ses, “you’ve given him all that as well?  It’s two shillin’s worth,” he ses. (That’s how I knowed he paid four.) “Well, well, mother, you be too tender-’carted to live.  But I don’t grudge it to him,” he ses.  “I don’t grudge him nothin’ he can keep.”  So, ’cardenly, we drinked up what little sup was left.’

‘An’ what come to Mary’s Lunnon father?’ said Jabez after a full minute’s silence.

‘I be too tired to go readin’ papers of evenin’s; but Dockett he told me, that very week, I think, that they’d inquested on a man down at Robertsbridge which had poked and poked up agin’ so many bridges an’ banks, like, they couldn’t make naun out of him.’

‘An’ what did Mary say to all these doin’s?’

’The old lady bundled her off to the village ’fore her Lunnon father come, to buy week-end stuff (an’ she forgot the half o’ it).  When we come in she was upstairs studyin’ to be a school-teacher.  None told her naun about it.  ‘Twadn’t girls’ affairs.’

‘Reckon she knowed?’ Jabez went on.

‘She?  She must have guessed it middlin’ close when she saw her money come back.  But she never mentioned it in writing so far’s I know.  She were more worritted that night on account of two-three her chickens bein’ drowned, for the flood had skewed their old hen-house round on her postes.  I cobbled her up next mornin’ when the brook shrinked.’

‘An’ where did you find the bridge?  Some fur down-stream, didn’t ye?’

’Just where she allus was.  She hadn’t shifted but very little.  The brook had gulled out the bank a piece under one eend o’ the plank, so’s she was liable to tilt ye sideways if you wasn’t careful.  But I pooked three-four bricks under her, an’ she was all plumb again.’

’Well, I dunno how it looks like, but let be how ‘twill,’ said Jabez, ‘he hadn’t no business to come down from Lunnon tarrifyin’ people, an’ threatenin’ to take away children which they’d hobbed up for their lawful own—­even if ‘twas Mary Wickenden.’

‘He had the business right enough, an’ he had the law with him—­no gettin’ over that,’ said Jesse.  ‘But he had the drink with him, too, an’ that was where he failed, like.’

’Well, well!  Let be how ’twill, the brook was a good friend to Jim.  I see it now.  I allus did wonder what he was gettin’ at when he said that, when I talked to him about shiftin’ the stack.  “You dunno everythin’,” he ses.  “The Brook’s been a good friend to me,” he ses, “an’ if she’s minded to have a snatch at my hay, I ain’t settin’ out to withstand her."’