“And what has become of Captain Pearse?”

Prawle answered, “Zurr, I belave ’e went to China, ’tis onsartin.”

“He’s not dead?”

Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.

“Yu cudden’ kell ’en!  ’Tis true, mun ’ll die zome day.  But therr’s not a one that’ll show better zport than Capt’n Zach’ry Pearse.”

I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up, with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.

I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I heard him saying to a lady, “Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee over her?”

After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same; but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves beginning to go yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance’s cats passed me in the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign alluded to the past.  He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now, without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under control; he often stops to lean on his stick.  He was very ill last winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.

I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as nothing but scents can.  The dear old lady’s hair, drawn so nicely down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled.  The tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her “lamb.”

Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse’s death.

“Therr they found ‘en, zo to spake, dead—­in th’ sun; but Ha-apgood can tell yu,” and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something, and smiled his wooden smile.

He came to see me off from the straw-yard. “’Tis like death to the varrm, zurr,” he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders into the buckling of my girths.  “Mister Ford—­well!  And not one of th’ old stock to take it when ’e’s garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my old woman’s never been hersel’ since.  Tell ’ee what ‘tis—­don’t du t’ think to much.”

I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers, quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone, already stained: 

        “ >Pasiance

        “Wifeof Zachary Pearse

        “‘The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.’”