Tradition had it that a man had been hanged there in chains, and it was true that from an ancient oak in its midst there still depended some rusty scraps and links of iron which clanked and clinked in the wind when it penetrated through the wood. Therefore, of course, Badger's Hollow was haunted; no Martinsthorpe man or woman would ever have dreamed of venturing near it after nightfall. But Pippany Webster had no fear of ghosts, and he knew Badger's Hollow to be a rare place for rabbits, and when the rest of the village folk were asleep he might have been found making his way through the wood to a favourite spot in this retired place, whereat he had set a snare on the previous night. There had been times when Pippany had returned from these midnight maraudings with a cock-pheasant in his company.
On the third week after his dismissal from Perris's employ Pippany found no work to do beyond one day's threshing. The three shillings which he received for that was not enough to provide him with rum for the week's consumption, and he had to dip into his secret store. The fact that this was diminishing induced Pippany seriously to consider a proposition which had recently been made to him. During that spring a certain itinerant vendor of fish had started coming round Martinsthorpe and the neighbouring villages; getting into conversation with Pippany in the kitchen of the Dancing Bear, what time no one else was about, he had asked him if he ever had a few rabbits to dispose of. Pippany had returned an evasive answer at the time, but he and the fish-seller had foregathered again, and at last Pippany had a definite offer. After all, there seemed to be small danger about the matter. The country was so lonely, so houseless, about Martinsthorpe, that it would be an easy thing for the man to meet Pippany at an appointed place in some solitary by-way to receive a consignment of dead rabbits, and to pay cash for them on the spot. Pippany decided to commence business on these lines.
And so it came about that one evening, after such darkness had fallen as an early summer night brings, Pippany was in the woods on his way to Badger's Hollow, where he hoped to find a dozen rabbits in his snares. He had traversed those woods hundreds of times o' nights, and had never encountered human being in them. But on this night, as he went noiselessly along, he suddenly became aware of two human beings who were coming his way, and, with the rapidity of a weasel, he slipped beneath the neighbouring undergrowth and became as quiet as the motionless twigs and leaves which shrouded him. The figures which his sharp eyes had made out came nearer, passed in front of him, passed by him, went on their way into the deeper shades of the wood and disappeared. And Pippany crawled out of his shelter, muttering to himself, and as delighted as he was surprised.
"Taffendale and Perris's wife!" he said. "An' he wor makkin' love to her; he had his arm round her waist. An' her a respectable wed woman! Weel, theer is some wickedness i' this here world. Gow, I wonder what Mistress Graddige 'ud say to that theer?"
But before he returned home in the grey light of morning Pippany had resolved not to communicate his news to Mistress Graddige or to anybody else. He would keep the secret to himself: he was already beginning to see vaguely that it might be profitable. But there was no need to trade on it yet; he had carried out a good transaction with the vendor of fish, and rabbits ran by thousands in the woods.
"But shoo's a bad 'un, is yon Mistress Perris!" reflected Pippany. "An' her that theer religious an' all! I'll go to t' chappil o' Sunda' and hear her sing i' t' choyer."
He carried this design out on Sunday, and heard Rhoda sing a solo at each of the services. She sang better than ever, and the old women wiped tears off their cheeks, and Pippany listened with his mouth wide open. But that night he watched her and Taffendale meet again, and he went home wiser than ever.
Chapter X
The immediate result of Taffendale's visit of advice and suggestion was that Perris suddenly turned over a new leaf and began to mend his ways. He kicked Pippany Webster clear of Cherry-trees, and engaged a more capable man who happened to be out of work at the time. He forswore the Dancing Bear and all other hostelries, and he never went to market unless it was really necessary that he should go there, nor stayed longer in the market-town than his business demanded. He was up early, and he worked hard, and Rhoda had no fault to find with him. He followed out Taffendale's hints: Cherry-trees began to look prosperous. The under-steward reported to his superior that new stock had been put on the farm, and that Perris appeared to be doing well; the neighbouring farmers, looking over the hedges as they rode by, saw that the land was being properly treated, and came to the conclusion that its tenant had got a bit of money from somewhere. But nobody suspected Taffendale of generosity, and only Perris and his wife knew whence this help had come.
"I'm sure we owt to feel deeply obligated to Mestur Taffendale, Rhoda, my lass," Perris would observe, as he sat smoking his pipe at his hearth of a night. "He just come i' the nick of time, as it weer. Now, ye see, my lass, all them there bits o' good advice as he gev' me have all turned out well, and ye'll see 'at there 'll be no need for us to go to him nor to any other for help about t' next half-year's rent. He's what I call a reight friend, is yon there man, and I hope ye feel as grateful to him as what I do, my lass."
And Rhoda always replied that she felt very much obliged to Mr. Taffendale, and that it was very kind of him to take so much interest in them. She was more than surprised that Perris had developed such a strong line of good purpose and endeavour, and sometimes she found herself looking at him wonderingly, and speculating as to whether he was not a better man than she thought him. All his thought and attention was now given to his work; he appeared to have no time for anything else, and it was an easy matter to hoodwink and deceive him. He never asked questions of his wife when she seemed to be unduly late home from the chapel; he was, in fact, usually fast asleep in bed when Rhoda came in from her meetings with Taffendale, and he had forgotten by next morning whether she had been out or not. The new interest in his farm which Taffendale's friendly intervention had given him had driven all other matters out of Perris's mind; his one idea now was to make things pay, and Rhoda found that, instead of being obliged to goad him to work, she had nothing to do but to stand by and see him ceaselessly labouring. She and Taffendale looked on at Perris's new line of conduct from a detached point of view; it suited them both that his attention was fully occupied; careful to the finest degree about their assignations, they believed that the secret between them was their own, and that they were safe from discovery. Taffendale never came to the little farmstead; now and then, riding past, he exchanged a few words with Perris over the top of the hedgerow; sometimes he talked to husband and wife together at the orchard gate: it was his idea to keep the world from knowing that he was in any way mixed up with them. The folk of the village in the valley, who rarely went up the hillside to the uplands, knew nothing of the links between the rich man at the Limepits and the Penises of the Cherry-trees.
Pippany Webster kept his knowledge of the love affairs of Mr. Taffendale and Mrs. Perris to himself during the summer that followed his summary dismissal from Perris's employment. He had got another regular job; he could always add a half-sovereign to his week's wages by his transactions with the itinerant fish-vendor, and there seemed to be no immediate reason for turning his knowledge to account. At that time, indeed, being in full feather as regards money, he had no idea of profiting pecuniarly by that knowledge: his great idea was to revenge himself on Rhoda. He became an adept in tracking her; many a night when she went away from the choir-practice he followed her to lonely parts of the adjacent woods, and was witness to her meetings with Taffendale, and he chuckled to himself as he thought of the time when he would expose her treachery to Perris and let the small world around them know what manner of woman she was.
"It'll be a nice come-down for mi lady, will that theer!" he mused. "An' a bonny come-up for t' Methodisses to hear 'at their fine leadin' singer i' t' choyer-pen's carryin' on wi' Taffendale same as if shoo wor one o' them leet wimmen 'at they talk about. Nobbut wait a bit, mi lass, and I'll mak' ye as ye'll repent takkin' that bit o' brass out o' my pocket—I will so!"
Although he told her nothing in return, Pippany
