“You’d better be quick and do it, then, master,” she answers him, still mild and gentle, “for I’m very sorry to say there’s that be going to happen to you, as will spoil your usefulness for a month of Sundays or longer; and that afore a fortnight’s out.  Of course, if you don’t believe what I know too well to be the truth, then you’ll go your rash way and meet it; but so sure as Christmas Day be Quarter Day, I’m right, and you’ll do far wiser to look after your own affairs than to trouble about mine.  And now I’ll wish you good evening.”

She made to go in, for Hacker was sitting on his horse at her very door; but that weren’t enough for him.  His cowardly heart was shaking a’ready.

“Don’t you go,” he said.  “I’ll onlight and hear more of this.”

He dismounted and came in the house; and Charity Badge bade me go out of the kitchen, where I was to work, and leave ’em together, but I catched what came after through the keyhole.

“Now,” he said.  “It lies in a nutshell.  My Mary was tokened in a sort of childish way to a man called Nathan Coaker—­a horse-stealer or little better, and a devil of a rogue, anyway.  But it seems you looked in your bit of glass and pretended to see—­”

“Stop!” cried Charity, putting on her grand manner and making her eyes flash like forked lightning at the man.  “How do you dare to talk about ‘pretending’ to me?  Begone, you wretched creature!  I’ll neither list to you, nor help you now.  Go to your death—­and a good riddance.  You to talk about ‘pretending’ to me!”

He caved in at that, and grumbled and growled, but she’d hear nought more from him till he’d said he was sorry, and that so humbly as he knowed how.

“Now you can go on again,” she said, “but be civil, or I’ll not lift a finger to aid you.”

“’Tis like this,” he went on.  “It do look as if that man, Nathan Coaker, was coming back.”

“That’s so.  I never seed the fellow myself, but his name certainly was Nathan Coaker, and Mary called him home in a minute from my picture in the crystal.  They was certainly tokened, and if she’s forgot it, he haven’t; and such is the report I hear of him, that ’tis sure he’ll overmaster such a man as you by force of arms.  No woman can resist him.  I guess he’s made his fortune and be coming in triumph to marry her.”

“She’s going to marry me, however.”

“So you think.”

The man began to grow more and more cowed afore her cold, steady eyes, and the scorn in her voice.

“The strongest will win,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered him, “that’s true without a doubt—­so the cards showed.”

“And what’s stronger than money?” he axed.

“A man in a righteous rage,” she replied; “and a charge of heavy shot with gunpowder behind ’em.”

“Lord save us!  You don’t mean he’d lie in a hedge for me?”

“He’d do anything where his own promised woman was concerned,” she said.  “But ’tis more likely, from what I hear, that he’d meet you face to face in the open street, and hammer you to death for coming between him and her.”