and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with Jack Changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. But the next moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for I called to mind that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they’d been at it twenty times since they’d been man and wife, and I zid myself as the next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess.... Ah—well, what a day ’twas!” 

 “Wildeve is older than Tamsin Yeobright by a good-few summers. A pretty maid too she is. A young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that.” 

 The speaker, a peat- or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour, and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire. 

 “A hundred maidens would have had him if he’d asked ’em,” said the wide woman. 

 “Didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?” inquired Humphrey. 

 “I never did,” said the turf-cutter. 

 “Nor I,” said another. 

 “Nor I,” said Grandfer Cantle. 

 “Well, now, I did once,” said Timothy Fairway, adding more firmness to one of his legs. “I did know of such a man. But only once, mind.” He gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. “Yes, I knew of such a man,” he said. 

 “And what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, Master Fairway?” asked the turf-cutter. 

 “Well, ’a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. What ’a was I don’t say.” 

 “Is he known in these parts?” said Olly Dowden. 

 “Hardly,” said Timothy; “but I name no name.... Come, keep the fire up there, youngsters.” 

 “Whatever is Christian Cantle’s teeth a-chattering for?” said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. “Be ye a-cold, Christian?” 

 A thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, “No, not at all.” 

 “Come forward, Christian, and show yourself. I didn’t know you were here,” said Fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter. 

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