comp'ny. An' if theer ban't no offence, I'd ax 'e what I should take for't."
Mr. Endicott smiled.
"Take less, my son; an' don't swallow every mouthful as if the devil was arter you. Eat your meat an' sup your drink slow."
"Ban't a calamity as caan't be cured, you reckon?"
"Nothing at all but greediness. Watch how your betters take their food an' see how the women eat. 'Tis only gluttony in you. Remember you're a man, not a pig; then 'twill come right."
Mr. Collins was greatly gratified.
"I'm sure I thank 'e wi' all my heart, maister; for 'twould be a sorry thing if such a ill-convenience should come between me an' a bowerly maid like Sally Cramphorn, the out-door girl."
"So it would then," assented the elder kindly; "but no need—no need at all."
Collins repeated his sense of obligation and withdrew; while elsewhere that identical young woman who now began to distract the lethargic solidity of his inner life was herself seeking advice upon a deep matter touching heart's desire. Soon after five o'clock Sally escaped from the supervision of her jealous parent, and started upon a private and particular errand through leafy lanes that led northerly from the farm and skirted the Moor in that direction. Presently she turned to the left, where a gate marked the boundaries of common land and arrested cattle from straying on to the roads. Here, dipping into a little tunnel of living green, where hazels met over a watercourse, Sally proceeded by a moist and muddy short cut to her goal. It was a cottage that rose all alone at a point where the Moor rippled down to its hinder wall and a wilderness of furze and water-meadow, laced with rivulets and dotted with the feathers of geese, extended in front. A dead fir tree stood on one side of the cot, and the low breast-work of granite and peat that separated a little garden from the waste without was very strangely decked with the vertebræ of a bygone ox. The bones squatted imp-like in a row there—a spectacle of some awe to those who knew the significance of the spot. Upon the door were nailed many horse-shoes, and walls of red earth or cob, painted with whitewash and crowned by venerable and moss-grown thatch, formed the fabric of the cottage. Upon fine days this mural surface displayed much magic of varied colour; it shone cool in grey dawns, hot at noon, delicate rose and red gold under such brief gleams of sunset light as the Moor's ragged mane permitted to reach it. Stone-crops wove mellow tints into the rotting thatch above, and the moss cushions of dark and shining green were sometimes brushed and subdued by a haze or orange veil thrown over them by the colour of their ripe seed-vessels. In the garden grew many herbs, knowledge of whose potency their owner alone possessed, and at one corner arose the golden spires of great mullein—a flower aforetime called "hag's taper" and associated with witches and their mystic doings. Here the tall plant towered, like a streak of flame, above pale, widespread, woolly leaves; and it was held a sign and token of this wise woman's garden, for when the mullein flowered she had proclaimed that her herbs and simples were most potent. Then would such of her own generation as remained visit ancient Charity Grepe in her stronghold; while to her also came, with shamefaced secrecy, young men and maidens, often under cover of darkness, or in the lonely hour of winter twilights.
"Cherry," as old Charity was most frequently called, had openly been dubbed a witch in times past. She recollected an experience, now near fifty years behind her, when rough hands had forced open her jaws to seek those five black spots observed upon the roof of a right witch's mouth; she knew also that the same diabolic imprint is visible upon the feet of swine, and that it indicated the point where unnumbered demons, upon Christ's command, once entered into Gadara's ill-omened herd. Since then, from a notoriety wholly sinister, she had acquired more seemly renown until, in the year of grace 1870, being at that date some five or six years older than the century, Mother Grepe enjoyed mingled reputation. Some held her a white witch, others still declared that she was a black one. Be that as it may, the old woman created a measure of interest in the most sceptical, and, like the rest of her vanishing class, stood as a storehouse of unwritten lumber and oral tradition handed on through generations, from mother to daughter, from father to son. The possessor and remembrancer of strange formularies and exorcisms, she would repeat the same upon proper occasion, but only after a solemn assurance from those who heard her that they would not commit her incantations to any sort of writing. In her judgment all virtue instantly departed from the written word.
At this season of her late autumn, the gammer was entering upon frosty times, for, under pressure of church and school, the world began to view her accomplishments with indifference. Yet the uncultured so far bowed to custom and a lustre handed down through half a century as to credit Cherry with some vague measure of vaguer power. Little Silver called her the "wise woman," and granted her all due credit for skill in those frank arts that pretend to no superhuman attribute. It is certain that she was familiar with the officinal herbs of the field. She could charm the secrets and soothing essences from coriander and anise and dill—with other of the umbel-bearing wild folk, whose bodies are often poison, whose seeds are little caskets holding carminative and anodyne. Of local plants she grew in her garden those most desirable, and there flourished peppermint, mother-o'-thyme, marjoram, and numerous other aromatic weeds. With these materials the old woman made shift to live, and exacted trifling sums from the mothers of Little Silver by preparing cordials for sick children; from the small farmers and credulous owners of live stock, by furnishing boluses for beasts.
Sally Cramphorn, however, had come on other business and about a widely different sort of potion. She was among those who respected Cherry's darker accomplishments, and her father himself—a man not prone to praise his fellow-creatures—openly confessed to firm belief in Mother Grepe's unusual powers.
The old woman was in her garden when Sally arrived. It had needed sharp scrutiny to observe much promise of wisdom about her. She was brown, wrinkled and shrivelled, yet exhibited abundant vitality and spoke in a voice that seemed musical because one expected the reverse. Her eyes alone challenged a second glance. They were black, and flashed in the twilight. Dame Grepe's visitor, a stranger to shyness, soon explained the nature of the thing desired. With blushes, but complete self-possession in all other respects, she spoke.
"'Tis 'bout the matter of a husband, Cherry; an' you'm so wise, I lay you knaw it wi'out my tellin' you."
"Ess—you be wife-auld in body; but what about the thinking part of 'e, Sally Cramphorn? Anyway I wonder you dare let your mind go gadding arter a male, seeing what fashion o' man your faither is."
Sally pouted.
"That's the very reason for it I reckon. What gal can be happy in a home like mine?"
"A man quick to think evil—your faither—a vain man—a man as scowls at shadows an' sees gunpowder treason hid behind every hedge—poor fule!"
"So he do then; an' ban't very nice for a grawed woman like me. If I lifts my eye to a chap's face, he thinks I be gwaine to run away from un; an' there ban't a man in Little Silver, from Squire Yeoland to the cowboy at the farm, as he've got a tender word for."
"I knaw, I knaw. Come in the house."
Sally followed the old woman into her cottage, and spoke as she did so.
"It's hard come to think on it, 'cause I'm no more against a husband than any other gal. 'Tis awnly that they'm feared of the sound 'pon theer tongues as gals won't awn up honest they'd sooner have husbands than not. Look at missis—she'll find herself a happy wife bimebye if squire do count for anything."
"Be they much together?"
"Ess fay—allus!"
The old woman shook her head.
"A nature, hers, born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. Fine metal, but easy to
