’I’d fain go back to Moynton, and have at ’em again!’ said Latimer.

‘So would we!’ said his comrades.

‘Fight till we die!’ said Latimer.

‘We will, we will!’ said his men.

‘But,’ said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation, ’we don’t know that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men?  And proof is a hard thing.’

‘So it is,’ said the rest.

‘And therefore we won’t do nothing at all,’ said Latimer, with complete dispassionateness.  ’For my part, I’d sooner be them than we.  The clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two strapping women tied round ’em.  My opinion is, now I have had time to think o’t, that you may serve your Gover’ment at too high a price.  For these two nights and days I have not had an hour’s rest; and, please God, here’s for home-along.’

The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the Cross, taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back to Nether-Moynton.

During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful kind.  As soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in which Lizzy usually sat with her mother.  He found her there alone.  Stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak still on.  As he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye.

‘Where are they gone?’ he then said listlessly.

’Who?—­I don’t know.  I have seen nothing of them since.  I came straight in here.’

’If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great profit to you, I suppose?’

’A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett’s, a share to each of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.’

‘And you still think,’ he went on slowly, ’that you will not give this business up?’

Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder.  ‘Don’t ask that,’ she whispered.  ’You don’t know what you are asking.  I must tell you, though I meant not to do it.  What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my mother and myself with.’

He was astonished.  ‘I did not dream of such a thing,’ he said.  ’I would rather have swept the streets, had I been you.  What is money compared with a clear conscience?’

’My conscience is clear.  I know my mother, but the king I have never seen.  His dues are nothing to me.  But it is a great deal to me that my mother and I should live.’

‘Marry me, and promise to give it up.  I will keep your mother.’

‘It is good of you,’ she said, trembling a little.  ’Let me think of it by myself.  I would rather not answer now.’