The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing, which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before.  When it was over, he noticed a group of elderly labourers.  They had come late into the meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before they entered it Delane went up to one of them.

“I’m a stranger here,” he said carelessly.  “Can you tell me who all these people were in the wagons?”

The man addressed—­who was old Halsey—­gave the speaker a reconnoitring look.

“Well, I dunno neither,” he said cautiously, “leastways, many of ’em.  There was my old missus, in the first one.  She didn’t want to go, dressed up in them sunbonnets.  But they made such a fuss of her, she had to.  There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an’ I don’t know nobody else.”

“Well, but the second wagon?” said Delane impatiently.

“Oh, the second wagon.  Why, that was Miss Henderson.  Don’t ye know ’er?  I works for ’er?”

“Is she on the land?”

The old man laughed.

“That she be!  She’s a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an’ she frames pretty fair.  She don’t know much yet, but what she don’t know Hastings tells, her.”

“Who’s Hastings?”

“Why, her bailiff, to be sure.  You do be a stranger, not knowin’ Muster Hastings?”

“I’m just here for a few weeks.  It’s a rum business, isn’t it, this of women taking farms?”

Halsey nodded reflectively.

“Aye, it’s a queer business.  But they do be cleverer at it than ye’d think.  Miss Henderson’s a good head-piece of her own.”

“And some money, I suppose?”

“Well, that’s not my look out, is it, so long as I gits my wages?  I dessay Colonel Shepherd, ee sees to that.  Well, good-day to you.  I’m goin’ in to get summat to drink.  It’s a dryin’ wind to-day, and a good bit walk from Ipscombe.”

“Is that where you live?”

“Aye—­an’ Miss Henderson’s place is just t’other side.  A good mile to Ipscombe, and near a mile beyont.  I didn’t want to come, but my old woman she nagged me to come an’ see her ’ome.”

And with another nod, the old man turned into the public, where his mates were already enjoying the small beer of the moment.

For a few minutes, Delane strolled down the main road in silence, the child playing at his heels.  Then he turned abruptly, called the child, and went up the side street from which he had appeared when the meeting began.

A quarter of an hour later he returned to the market-place alone.  The service in the church was still going on.  He could hear them singing, the harvest hymn:  “We plough the fields and scatter—­The good seed on the land.”  But he did not stop to listen.  He walked on rapidly in the direction of Ipscombe.

Delane found the main line from Millsborough to Ipscombe dotted at intervals with groups of persons returning from the harvest festival—­elderly women with children, a few old labourers, a few soldiers on leave, with a lively fringe of noisy boys and girls skirmishing round and about their elders, like so many young animals on the loose.  The evening light was failing.  The pools left by a passing shower, gleamed along the road, and the black elms and oaks, scarcely touched as yet by autumn gold, stood straight and sharp against a rainy sky.