“’Tworn’t your message at all, Passon, don’t you think it!” said Bainton; “You ain’t got so fur as that.  She’s not the sort o’ lady to take a message from no one, whether passon, pope or emp’rur.  Not she!  It was old Josey Letherbarrow as done it.”  And he related the incidents of the past evening in a style peculiar to himself, laying considerable weight on his own remarkable intelligence and foresight in having secured the ’oldest ‘n’abitant’ of the village to act as representative and ambassador for the majority.

Walden listened with keen interest.

“Yes,—­Leach is likely to be quarrelsome,” he said, at its conclusion; “There’s no doubt about that.  We mustn’t leave Spruce to bear the brunt of his black rage all alone.  Come along, Bainton!—­I will enforce Miss Vancourt’s orders myself if necessary.”

This was just what Bainton wanted,—­and master and man started off at a swinging pace for the scene of action, Bainton pouring forth as he went a glowing description of the wonderful and unexpected charm of the new mistress of the Manor.

“There ain’t been nothin’ like her in our neighbourhood iver at all, so fur as I can remember,” he declared.  “A’ coorse I must ha’ seed her when I worked for th’ owld Squire at whiles, but she was a child then, an’ I ain’t a good hand at rememberin’ like Josey be, besides I never takes much ‘count of childern runnin’ round.  But ’ere was we all a-thinkin’ she’d be a ‘igh an’ mighty fashion-plate, and she ain’t nothin’ of the sort, onny jest like a little sugar figure on, a weddin’-cake wot looks sweet at ye and smiles pleasant,—­though she’s got a flash in them eyes of her which minds me of a pony wot ain’t altogether broke in.  Josey, he sez them eyes is a-goin’ to finish up Leach,—­which mebbe they will and mebbe they won’t;—­all the same they’s eyes you won’t see twice in a lifetime!  Lord love ye, Passon, ain’t it strange ’ow the Almighty puts eyes in the ’eads of women wot ain’t a bit like wot he puts in the ’eads of men!  We gets the sight all right, but somehow we misses the beauty.  An’ there’s plenty of women wot has eyes correct in stock and colour, as we sez of the flowers,—­but they’re like p’ison berries, shinin’ an’ black an’ false-like,—­an’ if ye touch ’em ye’re a dead man.  Howsomever when ye sees eyes like them that was smilin’ at old Josey last night, why it’s jest a wonderful thing; and it don’t make me s’prised no more at the Penny Poltry-books wot’s got such a lot about blue eyes in ’em.  Blue’s the colour—­there’s no doubt about it;—­there ain’t no eye to beat a blue one!”

Walden heard all this disjointed talk with a certain impatience.  Swinging along at a rapid stride, and glad in a sense that the old trees were to be saved, he was nevertheless conscious of annoyance,- -though by whom, or at what he was annoyed, he could not have told.  Plunging into the dewy woods, with all the pungent odours of moss and violets about his feet, he walked swiftly on, Bainton having some