“You might have writ to say how you was faring.”

“I didn’t dare.  You’d bin sure to find me, an’ I didn’t want ’e to then.  ‘Tis awver an’ done, an’ ’twas for the best.”

“You’m a woman, an’ can say them silly words, an’ think ’em true in your heart, I s’pose.  ‘For the best!’ I caan’t see much that happens for the best under my eyes.  Will ’e have bite or sup?”

“No, nothin’.  You get back to your bed.  Us’ll talk in the marnin’.  I’ll bide here.  You an’ Phoebe be well, an’—­an’ dear mother?”

“We’m well.  You doan’t ax me after the fust cheel Phoebe had.”

“I knaw.  I put some violets theer that very night.  We were camped just above Chagford, not far from here.”

“Theer’s a li’l gal now, an’ a bwoy as I’ll tell’e about bimebye.  A sheer miracle’t was that falled out the identical day I buried my Willy.  No natural fashion of words can explain it.  But that’ll keep.  Now let me look at’e.  Fuller in the body seemin’ly, an’ gypsy-brown, by God!  So brown as me, every bit.  Well, well, I caan’t say nothin’.  I’m carried off my legs wi’ wonder, an’ joy, tu, for that matter.  Next to Phoebe an’ mother I allus loved ’e best.  Gimme a kiss.  What a woman, to be sure!  Like a thief in the night you went; same way you’ve comed back.  Why couldn’t ’e wait till marnin’?”

“The childer—­they grawed to love me that dear—­also the men an’ women.  They’ve been gude to me beyond power o’ words for faither’s sake.  They knawed I was gwaine, an’ I left ’em asleep.  ’T was how they found me when I runned away.  I falled asleep from weariness on the Moor, an’ they woke me, an’ I thrawed in my lot with them from the day I left that pencil-written word for ’e on the window-ledge.”

“Me bein’ in the valley lookin’ for your drowned body the while!  Women ’mazes me more the wiser I graw.  Come this way, to the linhay.  There’s a sweet bed o’ dry fern in the loft, and you must keep out o’ sight till mother’s told cunning.  I’ll hit upon a way to break it to her so soon as she’s rose.  An’ if I caan’t, Phoebe will.  Come along quiet.  An’ I be gwaine to lock ’e in, Chris, if’t is all the same to you.  For why?  Because you might fancy the van folks was callin’ to ‘e, an’ grow hungry for the rovin’ life again.”

She made no objection, and asked one more question as they went to the building.

“How be Mrs. Hicks, my Clem’s mother?”

“Alive; that’s all.  A poor auld bed-lier now; just fading away quiet.  But weak in the head as a baaby.  Mother sees her now an’ again.  She never talks of nothin’ but snuff.  ’T is the awnly brightness in her life.  She’s forgot everythin’ ‘bout the past, an’ if you went to see her, she’d hold out her hand an’ say, ‘Got a little bit o’ snuff for a auld body, dearie? ‘an’ that’s all.”

They talked a little longer, while Will shook down a cool bed of dry fern—­not ill-suited to the sultry night; then Chris kissed him again, and he locked her in and returned to Phoebe.