And Jonas Bird agreed instantly, for at the bottom of his heart he weren’t feeling it no wildgoose chase for him; because, though a simple man in some ways, he didn’t lack caution, and he’d unfolded his feelings pretty oft to Milly, speaking, of course, in general terms; and he well knew that she felt high respect for his character and opinions and good position.

Then William spoke.

“If you’d like it in writing, you can have it,” he said, “but for my part I trust you, and I doubt not you trust me, and I’m inclined to think the less that be put down on paper about it, the better.  ’Tis a deed of darkness, in a manner of speaking, and written documents have often brought disasters with ’em afterwards, so us had best to trust each other and sign nought.”  Jonas agreed to this most emphatic and then they parted.

But it weren’t twenty-four hours later before the carpenter felt the deed was afoot, for he soon saw that Milly had got a weight on her mind.  She said nought, however, till a week was past and then told Jonas, confidential, that she savoured something in the air.

“There’s some people can smell rain,” she said, “and others, if they go in a churchyard, know to a foot when they be walking over their own future graves; and though I’m not one to meet trouble half-way, it’s borne in on me that I be going to face changes afore long.”

“In what direction?” asked Jonas, cunning as a serpent.  “God send you don’t mean that William be going to get his rise and take you away?”

“I do not,” she said.  “Quite the contrary.  I mean that William be going to change his mind about me.”

“And would you call that meeting trouble exactly, or contrariwise?” asked Bird.

“Well,” she answered.  “Between you and me, I may say that I shall doubtless get over it; but I’m a good bit hurt, because it had got to be an understood thing and I little like changes.  But there it is:  the man’s getting restless and be pruning his wings for flight if I know him.”

“’Tis beyond belief that any living man should want to fly from you,” declared Jonas.  “I wouldn’t come between lovers for a bag of gold; but in a case like this, feeling for you as I always have done since you kept your promise to Sarah with such amazing perfection—­feeling that, if you say the word, I’ll talk to William White as no man yet have talked to him.”

“Do nothing,” she said.  “Let nature take its course with William; and if it takes him away from me, so be it.  I can very well endure to part from the man and, so like as not, when I’m satisfied that things are so, I shall tell him I understand, and give him his freedom.”

“Such largeness of mind I never heard tell about in a woman,” answered Jonas.

And six weeks later William and Milly were cut loose, without any fuss on her part but to the undying amazement of Thorpe-Michael.  And then Jonas paid his first instalment at dead of night and got a receipt for the same.