trial of patience was to end.  The load would drop from his shoulders at daylight.  His letter to Mr. Lyddon had been written; in the morning the miller must read it before breakfast, and learn that his son-in-law had started for Plymouth to give himself up for the crime of the past.  John Grimbal had made no sign, and the act of surrender would now be voluntary—­a thought which lightened Blanchard’s heart and induced a turn of temper almost jovial.  He joined a chorus, laughed with the loudest, and contrived before closing time to drink a pint and a half of the famous special brew.  Then the bell-ringers departed to their duties, and Mr. Chapple with Mr. Blee, Will, and one or two other favoured spirits spent a further half-hour in their host’s private parlour, and there consumed a little sloe gin, to steady the humming ale.

“You an’ me must see wan another home,” said Will when he and Mr. Blee departed into the frosty night.

“Fust time as ever you give me an arm,” murmured Billy.

“Won’t be the last, I’m sure,” declared Will.

“I’ve allus had a gude word for ’e ever since I knawed ’e,” answered Billy.

“An’ why for shouldn’t ’e?” asked Will.

“Beginning of New Year ’s a solemn sarcumstance,” proceeded Billy, as a solitary bell began to toll.  “Theer ’s the death-rattle of eighteen hunderd an’ eighty-six!  Well, well, we must all die—­men an’ mice.”

“An’ the devil take the hindmost.”

Mr. Blee chuckled.

“Let ’s go round this way,” he said.

“Why?  Ban’t your auld bones ready for bed yet?  Theer ’s nought theer but starlight an’ frost.”

“Be gormed to the frost!  I laugh at it.  Ban’t that.  ’T is the Union workhouse, wheer auld Lezzard lies.  I likes to pass, an’ nod to un as he sits on the lew side o’ the wall in his white coat, chumping his thoughts between his gums.”

“He ’m happier ’n me or you, I lay.”

“Not him!  You should see un glower ’pon me when I gives un ‘gude day.’  I tawld un wance as the Poor Rates was up somethin’ cruel since he’d gone in the House, an’ he looked as though he’d ‘a’ liked to do me violence.  No, he ban’t happy, I warn ’e.”

“Well, you won’t see un sitting under the stars in his white coat, poor auld blid.  He ’m asleep under the blankets, I lay.”

“Thin wans!  Thin blankets an’ not many of ’em.  An’ all his awn doin’.  Patent justice, if ever I seed it.”

“Tramp along!  You can travel faster ’n that.  Ess fay!  Justice is the battle-cry o’ God against men most times.  Maybe they ’m strong on it in heaven, but theer ’s damned little filters down here.  Theer go the bells!  Another New Year come.  Years o’ the Lard they call ’em!  Years o’ the devil most times, if you ax me.  What do ’e want the New Year to bring to you, Billy?”

“A contented ‘eart,” said Mr. Blee, “an’ perhaps just half-a-crown more a week, if ’t was seemly.  Brains be paid higher ’n sweat in this world, an’ I’m mostly brain now in my dealin’s wi’ Miller.  A brain be like a nut, as ripens all the year through an’ awnly comes to be gude for gathering when the tree ’s in the sere.  ’T is in the autumn of life a man’s brain be worth plucking like—­eh?”