“Like your gude self so to promise; but remember he ’m of a lofty mind and fiery.”

“Stiff-necked he be, for certain; but he may graw quiet ’fore you think it.  Nothing tames a man so quick as to see his woman and childer folk hungry—­eh?  An’ specially if ’t is thanks to his awn mistakes.”

Mrs. Blanchard flushed and felt a wave of anger surging through her breast.  But she choked it down.

“You ’m hard in the grain, Lyddon—­so them often be who’ve lived over long as widow men.  Theer ‘s a power o’ gude in my Will, an’ your eyes will be opened to see it some day.  He ‘m young an’ hopeful by nature; an’ such as him, as allus looks up to gert things, feels a come down worse than others who be content to crawl.  He ‘m changing, an’ I knaw it, an’ I’ve shed more ‘n wan tear awver it, bein’ on the edge of age myself now, an’ not so strong-minded as I was ’fore Chris went.  He ’m changing, an’ the gert Moor have made his blood beat slower, I reckon, an’ froze his young hope a bit.”

“He ’s grawiug aulder, that’s all.  ’T is right as he should chatter less an’ think more.”

“I suppose so; yet a mother feels a cold cloud come awver her heart to watch a cheel fighting the battle an’ not winning it.  Specially when she can awnly look on an’ do nothin’.”

“Doan’t you fear.  You ’m low in spirit, else you’d never have spoke so open; but I thank you for tellin’ me that things be tighter to Newtake than I guessed.  You leave the rest to me.  I knaw how far to let ’em go; an’ if we doan’t agree ’pon that question, you must credit me with the best judgment, an’ not think no worse of me for helpin’ in my awn way an’ awn time.”

With which promise Mrs. Blanchard was contented.  Surveying the position in the solitude of her home, she felt there was much to be thankful for.  Yet she puzzled her heart and head to find schemes by which the miller’s charity might be escaped.  She considered her own means, and pictured her few possessions sold at auction; she had already offered to go and dwell at Newtake and dispose of her cottage.  But Will exploded so violently when the suggestion reached his ears that she never repeated it.

While the widow thus bent her thoughts upon her son, and gradually sank to sleep with the problems of the moment unsolved, a remarkable series of incidents made the night strange at Newtake Farm.

Roused suddenly a little after twelve o’clock by an unusual sound, Phoebe woke with a start and cried to her husband: 

“Will—­Will, do hark to Ship!  He ‘m barkin’ that savage!”

Will turned and growled sleepily that it was nothing, but the bark continued, so he left his bed and looked out of the window.  A waning moon had just thrust one glimmering point above the sombre flank of the hill.  It ascended as he watched, dispensed a sinister illumination, and like some remote bale-fire hung above the bosom of the nocturnal Moor.  His dog still barked, and in the silence Will could hear a clink and thud as it leapt to the limit of its chain.  Then out of the night a lantern danced at Newtake gate, and Blanchard, his eyes now trained to the gloom, discovered several figures moving about it.