“God blast it!  I be allus waitin’ now for some wan’s vengeance!  I caan’t stand this life no more.  I caan’t an’ I won’t—­’t is enough to soften any man’s wits.”

“Quiet! quiet, caan’t ’e?” said the miller, as though he told a dog to lie down.  “Theer now!  You’ve been an’ gived me palpitations with your noise.  Banging tables won’t mend it, nor bad words neither.  This thing hasn’t come by chance.  You ‘m ripening in mind an’ larnin’ every day.  You mark my word; theer ‘s a mort o’ matters to pick out of this new trouble.  An’ fust, patience.”

“Patience!  If a patient, long-suffering man walks this airth, I be him, I should reckon.  I caan’t wait the gude pleasure of that dog, not even for you, Miller.”

“‘T is discipline, an’ sent for the strengthening of your fibre.  Providence barred the road to-day, else you’d be in prison now.  Ban’t meant you should give yourself up—­that’s how I read it.”

“‘T is cowardly, waitin’ an’ playin’ into his hands; an’ if you awnly knawed how this has fouled my mind wi’ evil, an’ soured the very taste of what I eat, an’ dulled the faace of life, an’ blunted the right feeling in me even for them I love best, you’d never bid me bide on under it.  ‘T is rotting me—­body an’ sawl—­that’s what ‘t is doin’.  An’ now I be come to such a pass that if I met un to-morrow an’ he swore on his dying oath he’d never tell, I shouldn’t be contented even wi’ that.”

“No such gude fortune,” sighed Phoebe.

“’T wouldn’t be gude fortune,” answered her husband.  “I’m like a dirty chamber coated wi’ cobwebs an’ them ghostly auld spiders as hangs dead in unsecured corners.  Plaaces so left gets worse.  My mind ’s all in a ferment, an’ ’t wouldn’t be none the better now if Jan Grimbal broke his damned neck to-morrow an’ took my secret with him.  I caan’t breathe for it; it ’s suffocating me.”

Phoebe used subtlety in her answer, and invited him to view the position from her standpoint rather than his own.

“Think o’ me, then, an’ t’ others.  ’T is plain selfishness, this talk, if you looks to the bottom of it.”

“As to that, I doan’t say so,” began Mr. Lyddon, slowly stuffing his pipe.  “No.  When a man goes so deep into his heart as what Will have before me this minute, doan’t become no man to judge un, or tell ’bout selfishness.  Us have got to save our awn sawls, an’ us must even leave wife, an’ mother, and childer if theer ’s no other way to do it.  Ban’t no right living—­ban’t no fair travelling in double harness wi’ conscience, onless you’ve got a clean mind.  An’ yet waitin’ ’pears the only way o’ wisdom just here.  You’ve never got room in that head o’ yourn for more ‘n wan thought to a time; an’ I doan’t blame ’e theer neither, for a chap wi’ wan idea, if he sticks to it, goes further ’n him as drives a team of thoughts half broken in.  I mean you ’m forgettin’ your mother for the moment.  I should say, wait for her mendin’ ’fore you do anything.”