If, in the very heart of the romp at Blackwater Hall, Jinny’s insight could perceive that this reconciliation of her two males (or her two mules as she called them to herself) had left her marriage problem unsolved, still more did afterthought bring home the sad truth. There was no way of leaving the old man, no way of adding Will to the household. The latter alternative she never even suggested. It would bring her husband into public contempt to be thus absolutely swallowed up by the female carrier, and supported as in a poorhouse. So far off seemed the possibility of marriage that the Gaffer was considerately left in ignorance of the engagement—the only man in a radius of leagues from whom it was hidden, though Will was constantly about the cottage, having supplanted poor Ravens as a house repairer. But ever since the Gaffer had clapped him in the trunk—and the old man had forgotten he was not the first to do so—his affections had passed to the victim of his humour, and he often recalled it to Will with grins and guffaws as they sat over their beer. “Ye thought to git over Daniel Quarles,” he would chuckle, poking him in the ribs, “but ye got to come in on your hands and knees! Ho, ho, ho!” He seemed to imagine Will called on purpose to be thus twitted with his defeat, though as a matter of fact the privation of his pipe was a great grievance to the young man, and supplied a new obstacle to his taking up his quarters there as son-in-law. But outwardly Will had fallen into Jinny’s way of humouring the old tyrant, and this parade of affection rather shocked her, for she felt that Will was more interested in the veteran’s death than in his life. Once when, recalling the delectable memory, the Gaffer remarked, “Lucky ye ain’t as bonkka as Sidrach, Oi count they had to make him a extra-sized coffin,” she caught an almost ghoulish gleam in her lover’s eyes. He had indeed lugubriously drawn her attention to a paragraph in the paper saying that six thousand centenarians had been counted in Europe in the last half-century. Evidently the age of man was rising dangerously, he implied. The worst of it was that Jinny herself, though she would have fought passionately for the patriarch’s life, found shadowy speculations as to the length of his span floating up to her mind and needing to be sternly stamped under. For she had told Will definitely that so long as her grandfather lived, she could neither marry nor leave England. Gloomily he cited Old Parr—he seemed to have become an authority on centenarians—who had clung to existence till 152. “At that rate I shall be over eighty,” he calculated cheerlessly.

“Oh, it isn’t very likely!” she consoled him.

“Well, it’s lucky we aren’t living before the Flood, that’s all I can say,” he grumbled. “Fancy waiting six hundred years or so!”

“I wish we were living before our flood,” she said. “Then you’d have your livelihood.”

“And what would have been the good of that without you? You’d have stuck to your grandfather just the same.”

No, there was no way out. Australia resurged, black and menacing, and finally she even wrote herself to the London agents about his ship, consoled only by the entire supervision of his wardrobe and the famous trunk. And the only wedding that followed on their engagement was Elijah’s. For—according to Bundock’s father—till that had become certain, Blanche had refused to marry, despite the calling of her banns. “I didn’t think that a man who once aspired to me could ever keep company with a common carrier,” was her final version to Miss Gentry. “It shows how right you were to spurn him,” said that sympathetic spinster, who had transferred her adoration of the Beautiful from the faithless Cleopatra to the clinging Blanche, and figured at the altar in her now habitual rÔle of bridesmaid.

And it was on that very wedding-day—so closely does tragedy tread on the sock of comedy—that poor Uncle Lilliwhyte fell asleep in a glorious hope of resurrection. Jinny had not suspected the imminence of his last moments till the evening before, though she and Will had paid him several visits at his now weathertight hut. But she had become rather alarmed about him, and returning from her round one Tuesday, she set off alone, as soon as supper was over. Will had seen sufficient of her during the day, and it was understood he was to give his mother his company that evening, for Martha had fallen into a more distressful state than ever. “Will’s got to go just the same,” she kept moaning when Jinny came, “and Flynt vows he’ll never be baptized into the Ecclesia, and turns round and tells me I lack faith. Me, who’ve learnt him all the religion he knows!”

There was a full moon as Jinny set out with a little basket for the invalid. Nip trotted behind her, and the trees and bushes cast black trunks and masses across her path, almost like solid stumbling-blocks. The bare elms and poplars rose in rigid beauty in the cold starry evening. Death was far from her thoughts till she reached the hut and saw the sunken cheeks in their tangle of hair illumined weirdly from the stove, which lay so close to the patriarch’s hand he could replenish it from his bed of sacks.

“Just in time, Jinny!” he said joyfully. “Oi was afeared you wouldn’t be.” His excitement set him coughing and, frightened, she knelt and put her jug of tea to his lips.

“There! Don’t talk nonsense!” she said, as a faint colour returned to his face.

He shook his head. “’Tis the tarn of the worms at last.”

“Not for twenty years. Look at Gran’fer.”

“Oi can’t grudge ’em,” he persisted. “Oi’ve took many a fish with ’em, and Oi’ve been about the woods from a buoy-oy, master of beast and bird and snake, and Oi know’d Oi’d be catched myself one day. And that’s onny fair, ain’t it?”

“Don’t talk like that—it’s horrible.”

“Ye’re too softy-hearted, Jinny, or ye wouldn’t be here fussin’ over the poor ole man in the trap. And ef ye’d been more of a sport, ye’d ha’ understood it’s all a grand ole game. Catch-me-ef-you-can, Oi calls it.”

“It’s dreadful, I think—the hawks and weasels eating the little birds.”

“Then why do the little birds sing so? Tell me that! It’s all fun, Oi tell ye, and they’re havin’ it theirselves with the flies and the worms. Take your Nip now. [Nip, hearing his name, wagged his tail.] Oi’ve seen that animal, what looks so peaceful squattin’ there by the fire, stand a-roarin’ like when you shuts the flap o’ the stove time he tries to git at a rat-hole. Ten men couldn’t howd him.”

“He’s never got a rat anyhow,” said Jinny with satisfaction.

“More shame to his breed. Oi count he’s frighted away my fox all the same. There’s one what comes and looks in at me every evenin’ just like Nip there, onny wild about the eyes like. Oi reckoned he’d be squattin’ there to-night for a warm, too, friendly-like, but he’ll find both on us cowld soon, the fire and me.” And a racking spasm of coughing accented his prognostic.

“You mustn’t talk like that. You mustn’t talk at all. I’ll send Dr. Mint to-morrow.”

He raised himself convulsively on his sacking, throwing off the rags and tags that covered him, and revealing the grimy shirt and trousers that formed his bed-costume. His grey hair streamed wildly, almost reaching the bolster. “Ef ye send me a doctor,” he threatened, “Oi’ll die afore he gits here!”

“Do lie down.” She pressed him towards his bolster.

“Oi won’t take no doctors’ stuff,” he gurgled, as his head sank back.

“But why?” she said, covering him up with his fusty bedclothes. “You’re not one of us, surely!”

“A Peculiar? Noa, thank the Lord. Oi told ye Oi don’t believe nawthen of all they religions. Git over me, the whole thing.”

“But if you won’t have medicine, you must pray, like we do.”

“Ye don’t catch me doin’ the one ne yet the tother. Oi count Oi can git along without ’em as much as the other critters in the wood. They don’t have neither.”

“Yes, they do—at least Nip and Methusalem have medicine when they’re sick. I give it ’em myself.”

“Oi reckon that’s what makes ’em sick—relyin’ on Skindles and sech. Oi never seen a stoat nor a squirrel take physic, and ye don’t want nawthen livelier, and Oi never seen a animal goo down on his knees, unless ’twas a hoss what slipped. He, he, he!”

When the cough into which his gaggle passed was quieted, Jinny reminded him sternly that men were not animals, that he had an immortal soul, and she asked whether he would see Mr. Fallow or one of the various chapel ministers. That proved the most agitating question of all.

He sat up again, his face working in terror. “None o’ that, Oi tell ye. Oi ain’t afeared o’ the old black ’un. He’ll end all my pains, though Oi ain’t tired o’ life even with ’em—no, not by a hundred year. But do ye don’t come scarin’ me with your heavens and hells, for Oi don’t want to believe in ’em.”

“But I remember your saying once, we’ve got to have one or the other.”

“And Oi told ye Oi mislikes ’em both.”

“Not really? You wouldn’t really dislike heaven.”

He shuddered. “Lord save me from it! Oi’ve thought a mort lately about that Charley Mott—Oi used to see him drunk with his mates—and ef he’s in heaven among they parsons and angels, Oi warrant he’s the most miserable soul alive.”

“Lie down! I oughtn’t to have let you talk!” she said, so shocked that she charitably supposed his wits were going. This apprehension was enhanced when, just as her hand had pressed his relaxing form back to his bolster, she felt him grow rigid again with an impulse so violent that she was jerked backwards.

“Where’s my wits?” he exclaimed in odd congruity with her thought. “Oi’ve nigh forgot the teapot!”

She hastened to offer again the half-sipped jug, which she had stood by the stove. He waved it away.

“Not that! Gimme the spade!”

“The spade?”

“Ay, it stands in the corner—Oi ain’t used it since my old lurcher died. D’ye think he’s in heaven—Rover—and all they rats we digged up together?”

“You’re not going to dig up a rat?” she said in horror.

“No fear. But Oi won’t have nobody else ferret it out.” And from his bed he tried to shovel away the earth near the stove. But his strength failed. She took his spade. “I’ll do it. What is it?”

“’Tis in the earth,” he panted, “like Oi’ll be. And Oi reckon Oi’d as soon be buried here as anywheres.”

She turned faint. Did he mean her to dig his grave?

“This isn’t consecrated ground,” she said feebly.

“Oi count it’s got as lovely a smell as the churchyard earth,” he said. “But let ’em bury me where they will, so long as Oi don’t wake up. Ye ain’t diggin’, Jinny.”

Mystified and trembling, and wishing she had not come without Will, she stuck the spade in deeper and threw up the clods. Set her teeth as she might, she could not shake off the thought that she was digging his grave, and they began to chatter despite the warmth from the stove. The lurid glow streaming from it seemed sinister in the darkness of the windowless hut, and she paused to let in a streak of moonlight through a gap in the door. But the night outside in its vastness and under its blue glamour seemed even more frightening, and the cold blast that blew in made the ancient cough again. She reclosed the door, and with trembling spade resumed her strange task. Suddenly her blade struck a metallic object.

“That’s it!” he cried gleefully. “And ye wanted to put boards over it!”

More mystified than ever, she drew up a heavy old teapot of Britannia metal—never had she handled such a weighty pot.

“Pour it out! Pour it out!” he chuckled.

She held the spout over her jug, which made him laugh till he nearly died. But by thumping his shoulders she got his breath back. She understood now what moved his mirth, for though nothing had issued from the spout, the lid had burst open and a rain of gold pieces had come spinning and rolling all over the hut. It seemed like the stories the old people told of the treasures of gnomes and pixies. There seemed hundreds of them, glittering and twirling.

“All for you, Jinny,” he panted with his recovered breath. “All for you.”

“Why, wherever did you get all this?” she replied, dropping on her knees to gather the shimmering spilth.

“That’s all honest, Jinny, don’t be scat. ’Tis the pennies Oi’ve put together, man and buo-oy this sixty year and more.”

“But what for?” she gasped.

“For you. And fowrpence or fi’pence a day tots up.”

“No, I mean why did you do it?” Her brain refused to take in the idea that all this fabulous wealth was hers. “Why didn’t you live more comfortable—why didn’t you get another cottage?”

“Oi ain’t never been so happy as since Farmer tarned me out. To lay on the earth, that’s what Oi wanted all my life—onny Oi dedn’t know it.”

“Then what was the good of the money?”

A crafty look came into the hollow eyes and overspread the wan features. “They’d have had me, they guardians, ef Oi dedn’t have money. Oi wasn’t a-gooin’ to die in the poorhouse like my feyther, time they sold him up. Ef ye got the brads, they can’t touch ye. Do, the Master ’ould git into trouble. They put mother and me sep’rit from feyther, and when Oi seen her cryin’ Oi swore in my liddle heart Oi’d die sooner than stay there or tarn ’prentice. Oi dropped through a window the night o’ feyther’s funeral—for the Master had thrashed me—but Oi’d promised mother Oi’d come back for her, and ’twarn’t many year afore she was livin’ with me upright in the cottage. Happen you seen her, though she never seen you.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jinny softly. “She was blind.”

“Cried her eyes out, to my thinkin’. But Oi says to her marnin’ and night, ‘Cheer up, mother,’ Oi says, ‘so long as we’ve got the dubs, they can’t touch us, and ef they parish gents tries to lay hands on me, they’ll git such a clumsy thump with the teapot they’ll know better next time.’ She never seen the teapot, mother dedn’t, but she used to waggle her fingers about in it and laugh like billy-o.”

Jinny felt nearer weeping as she culled these spoils of a lifetime. Many of the coins were curious; mintage of an earlier reign. She was peering in a cobwebbed corner when the barking of Nip as well as a familiar footstep in the clearing announced a welcome arrival. How glad she was Will had not been able to keep away! And then suddenly—at last—came the realization of her riches, of the solution of her financial problem!

“Quick! Quick!” whispered the old man hoarsely, and signed to her to hide the teapot. To soothe him she put it swiftly in her basket.

“You’re sure there’s nobody else ought to have it?” she asked anxiously.

“Oi ain’t got no friend ’cept you and the fox. And ye don’t catch him in the poorhouse. But Oi’ll die happy, knowin’ as Oi’ve saved you from it. Don’t let ’em come in!” he gasped, as a tapping began.

“It’s only young Mr. Flynt.”

“Willie, d’ye mean?”

She blushed in the friendly obscurity. “He’s come to see me home.”

“He mustn’t come in!”

“I’ll tell him.”

She set down the basket and went out into the blue night. It was no longer terrifying. Will with his ash stick seemed a match for all the powers of darkness. But she drew back from his kiss. Death was too near. In whispers she explained the situation, forgetting even to mention the gold. “I oughtn’t to leave him—he oughtn’t to die alone.”

“Nonsense, sweetheart. You can’t stay all night with a dirty old lunatic!”

“Don’t talk so unchristianly, Will. You don’t deserve——!” But she shut her lips. She could not go now into the happiness the “dirty old lunatic” was bringing them.

“Make him up a good fire and say you’ll be back first thing in the morning. I’ll come and take you. There!”

“Couldn’t—couldn’t you stay with him, Will?”

“Me? You said he wouldn’t have me! And I haven’t got enough baccy on me.”

She went back tentatively. She found Uncle Lilliwhyte lying on his back on his sacks with closed eyes, and there was blood on the bolster. The earth had been shovelled in again and the soil flattened tidily with the back of the spade. The superfluous precaution—automatic effect of lifelong habit—had evidently cost him dear.

“He can come in now,” he said feebly.

“But he doesn’t want anything,” she explained. “You lie still.”

“Oi’d like him to come.” She went softly to the door and called.

“Here I am, uncle!” cried Will cheerily.

“’Tain’t you Oi want. But happen ef your mother ’ud come and talk things over——”

“My mother?” said Will, startled. Martha, he knew, would have the same repugnance as he to this feckless, grimy, impossible creature: an aversion which even the wasted features could not counteract.

“It don’t seem to git over she,” he explained, “but Oi never could hear proper, bein’ at the keyhole in a manner o’ speakin’. But ef she’d come and explain——!”

“Yes, she will,” said Jinny. “She must, Will.”

“I’ll tell her,” he murmured.

“He’ll bring her in the morning,” she promised emphatically. “You take a little more tea now and get to sleep.” She covered him up carefully and stuck a great log in the stove.

“Do ye take that fowlin’-piece, young Flynt,” he said, opening his eyes. “And be careful—it’s loaded.”

“Thanks, I’ll take it in the morning.”

“And there’s the coppers and silver, Jinny. That’s at the bottom o’ the sack Oi’m on. And old tradesmen’s tokens too.”

“In the morning—you go to sleep now,” she said tenderly. But she still lingered, reluctant to leave him, and was very relieved when Ravens (now become a woodman with an adze) looked in to see the old man, and, unembittered by the sight of the lovers, consented to pass the night in the hut he had mended.