It hit the old man in a very tender part.

“I play the fool wi’ ne’er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert.  Animals likes their ’customed food, and don’t like no other.  I never changes my food, nor’d e’er a sheep, nor’d a cow, nor’d a bullock, if animals was masters.  I’d as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed—­of my own will, that’s to say—­a mel’n.  They rots.”

Robert smiled, though he was angry.  The delicious unvexed country-talk soothed Rhoda, and she looked fondly on the old man, believing that he could not talk on in his sedate way, if all were not well at home.

The hills of the beacon-ridge beyond her home, and the line of stunted firs, which she had named “the old bent beggarmen,” were visible in the twilight.  Her eyes flew thoughtfully far over them, with the feeling that they had long known what would come to her and to those dear to her, and the intense hope that they knew no more, inasmuch as they bounded her sight.

“If the sheep thrive,” she ventured to remark, so that the comforting old themes might be kept up.

“That’s the particular ‘if!’” said Robert, signifying something that had to be leaped over.

Master Gammon performed the feat with agility.

“Sheep never was heartier,” he pronounced emphatically.

“Lots of applications for melon-seed, Gammon?”

To this the veteran’s tardy answer was:  “More fools ’n one about, I reckon”; and Robert allowed him the victory implied by silence.

“And there’s no news in Wrexby? none at all?” said Rhoda.

A direct question inevitably plunged Master Gammon so deep amid the soundings of his reflectiveness, that it was the surest way of precluding a response from him; but on this occasion his honest deliberation bore fruit.

“Squire Blancove, he’s dead.”

The name caused Rhoda to shudder.

“Found dead in ’s bed, Sat’day morning,” Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on:  “He’s that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he’ll have to get into a rounded coffin:  he’s just like half a hoop.  He was all of a heap, like.  Had a fight with ‘s bolster, and got th’ wust of it.  But, be ’t the seizure, or be ’t gout in ’s belly, he’s gone clean dead.  And he wunt buy th’ Farm, nether.  Shutters is all shut up at the Hall.  He’ll go burying about Wednesday.  Men that drinks don’t keep.”

Rhoda struck at her brain to think in what way this death could work and show like a punishment of the heavens upon that one wrong-doer; but it was not manifest as a flame of wrath, and she laid herself open to the peace of the fields and the hedgeways stepping by.  The farm-house came in sight, and friendly old Adam and Eve turning from the moon.  She heard the sound of water.  Every sign of peace was around the farm.  The cows had been milked long since; the geese were quiet.  There was nothing but the white board above the garden-gate to speak of the history lying in her heart.