“Aye; if us hadn’t nothin’ but him, theer’s many would envy our lot.”

“Childer’s no such gert blessin’, neither.”

“Will!  How can you say it?”

“I do say it.  We ‘m awnly used to keep up the breed, then thrawed o’ wan side.  I’m sick o’ men an’ women folks.  Theer’s too many of ’em.”

“But childer—­our li’l Will.  The moosic of un be sweeter than song o’ birds all times, an’ you’d be fust to say so if you wasn’t out of yourself.”

“He ’m a braave, small lad enough; but theer again!  Why should he have been pitched into this here home?  He might have been put in a palace just as easy, an’ born of a royal queen mother, ‘stead o’ you; he might have opened his eyes ‘pon marble walls an’ jewels an’ precious stones, ‘stead of whitewash an’ a peat fire.  Be that baaby gwaine to thank us for bringing him in the world, come he graw up?  Not him!  Why should he?”

“But he will.  We ‘m his faither an’ mother.  Do ’e love your mother less for bearin’ you in a gypsy van?  Li’l Will’s to pay us noble for all our toil some day, an’ be a joy to our grey hairs an’ a prop to our auld age, please God.”

“Ha, ha!—­story-books!  Gi’ me a cup o’ milk; then us’ll go to bed.”

She obeyed; he piled turf upon the hearth, to keep the fire alight until morning, then took up the candle and followed Phoebe through another chamber, half-scullery, half-storehouse, into which descended the staircase from above.  Here hung the pale carcase of a newly slain pig, suspended by its hind legs from a loop in the ceiling; and Phoebe, many of whose little delicacies of manner had vanished of late, patted the carcase lovingly, like the good farmer’s wife she was.

“Wish theer was more so big in the sties,” she said.

Arrived at her bedside, the woman prayed before sinking to rest within reach of her child’s cot; while Will, troubling Heaven with no petition or thanksgiving, was in bed five minutes sooner than his wife.

“Gude-night, lad,” said Phoebe, as she put the candle out, but her husband only returned an inarticulate grunt for answer, being already within the portal of sleep.

A fair morning followed on the tempestuous night, and Winter, who had surely whispered her coming under the darkness, vanished again at dawn.  The Moor still provided forage, but all light was gone out of the heather, though the standing fern shone yellow under the sun, and the recumbent bracken shed a rich russet in broad patches over the dewy green where Will had chopped it down and left it to dry for winter fodder.  He was very late this year in stacking the fern, and designed that labour for his morning’s occupation.

Ted Chown chanced to be away for a week’s holiday, so Will entered his farmyard early.  The variable weather of his mind rarely stood for long at storm, but, unlike the morning, he had awakened in no happy mood.

A child’s voice served for a time to smooth his brow, now clouded from survey of a broken spring in his market-cart; then came the lesser Will with a small china mug for his morning drink.  Phoebe watched him sturdily tramp across the yard, and the greater Will laughed to see his son’s alarm before the sudden stampede of a belated heifer, which now hastened through the open gate to join its companions on the hillside.