But Will’s letter could not be posted—for many reasons. He possessed neither an envelope to vie with Jinny’s, nor one that was closed with outside devices, nor any sealing-wax to make his letter its own envelope; he could only fold it into a cocked-hat and deliver it himself. Apart from these material reasons, he could not well let Bundock carry an answer, when he had denied there would be any, and he shrank from conducting his affairs under that official inquisition: moreover, haste was imperative if he was to save the girl from that difficult and dangerous journey, for “superscribe” conveyed to him a sense of precipitation, and he saw her cart almost stampeding to Chelmsford. At any moment she might set out in quest of the Great Horn. That was why he abandoned the idea of toiling to Chipstone to emulate her refined writing materials. He must hie to Blackwater Hall that very afternoon and play postman. He would not, of course, enter the house, but would find a way of slipping the letter in.

The surreptitious deed he meditated gave him almost a skulking air as he neared the Common, and he shrank from the observation of all he met, though with the exception of Uncle Lilliwhyte in a corduroy sleeved waistcoat, driving cows with a weed-hook, and an old crone who stopped and muttered with twisted head, he saw only frightened partridges whirring above or rabbits and field-mice scurrying at his feet. Near Blackwater Hall he encountered two of Jinny’s milch-goats tethered, pasturing on the hedgerows, and their bleat had a cynical ring. The Common itself seemed almost to meet the sky, for clouds had gathered as suddenly as the crowd by the Silverlane Pump. He was feeling dispirited as he stole towards the house, but as he caught sight of the stables and barn at the rear, it seemed a happy idea to plant his note in some obtrusive coign. His heart beat like a raw burglar’s as he stood surveying from afar the primitive sheds whose roofs were thatch, whose gates palings, whose sides faggots, and in one of which he could see Methusalem’s head in a trough of oats. The stable-shed would be the surest place, he thought, or perhaps he could pin the note on to the harness he saw hanging in an adjoining shed from nails in the beams. Coming nearer to peer at Methusalem’s manger, he was startled by the sight of a brown smock-frocked figure crouched on the littered, dungy floor and belatedly brushing Methusalem’s fetlocks. Before he could escape he saw the wizened, snow-bearded, horn-spectacled face turned up at him, and heard himself recognized in a weakened but unmistakable voice.

“Why, bless my soul! Ef that bain’t little Willie Flynt!”

Daniel Quarles rose and straightened himself to his full height, but nothing in Little Bradmarsh had seemed to Will so pitifully shrunken. “Little” Willie Flynt indeed towered over the patriarch who had once seemed Herculean to him. Yet if the robustiousness that the old carrier had preserved in his eighties had vanished at last, there was still fire in his eye and a fang or two in his mouth.

“Hope you are well, Mr. Quarles,” said Will, recovering from the double shock of discovering and being discovered.

“No, you don’t, my lad,” piped the Gaffer. “Did, you’d a come sooner, seein’ as Time is gettin’ away from me.”

“Did Jin—did your granddaughter tell you I was back?”

“She ain’t scarcely told me nawthen else.”

Will’s cheeks burned.

“You ain’t come back improved, says she.”

Will’s flush grew redder.

“But Oi don’t agree with her—you’ve growed like a prize marrow. Come into the house and she shall make you a dish o’ tay—Oi don’t drink it myself, bein’ as Oi promised John Wesley.”

“No, thank you—I’d rather talk where we are.”

“Well, Oi can’t inwoite you in here—’tis too mucky.” He gave Methusalem’s tail a final flick with the brush. “And it’s blowin’ up for rine. We’ll goo into the barn.” And he led the way imperiously round by a great and ramifying apple-tree that hid a little black door secured by a padlock and infinite knots of string.

“One has to be witty,” he commented, patiently undoing the complications, “with so many thieves about to steal my dole hay.”

Will had not heard of these thieves, and thought Little Bradmarsh must be changed indeed, but he waited silently, wondering what to do with his note. And as he stood thus, there came from the cottage the sound of a girl’s singing. Fortunately it was not satirical, so Will could hear it with pleasure:

“Always jolly, my little mavis,” said the patriarch, fumbling on, and, unable to resist the infection, his sepulchral bass voice took up the Carters’ Chorus:

“Oi wouldn’t unlock the barn,” he broke off to explain as the door swung open, “ef Oi hadn’t such good company.” He stood peering suspiciously into the tall raftered and beamed glooms; redolent of old hay and punctuated with a few cobwebbed and rusty instruments amid the endless litter. Will’s eye was fascinated by an old wine-barrel flanked by a chaff-cutter and a turnip-cutter and covered with boards and weights. He divined it held corn and was thus closed against rats, and a whiff of aniseed came up in memory, and in a flash he saw the faces of Tony Flip and the Deacon—and himself flying after a carrier’s cart.

“They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer.

“Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will.

“Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.”

“Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously.

“There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer.

“But he sent me an adder——” he began.

“Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an adder, you come to me.”

“Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised.

“Oi be an adder!”

“What do you mean?”

His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.”

Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy old barn he began to feel a bit nervous.

“I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to her?”

The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly. “But it’s for me!”

Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a conjuncture he had not foreseen.

The fire in the old eye leapt up at the contradiction, shot through the spectacles. “Plain as a pikestaff—Mr. Daniel Quarles! And then you has the imperence to say there ain’t no thieves. But ye can’t bamboozle me. Oi could read afore you could woipe your nose with a muckinger, ay, and my feyther afore me. Carriers ha’ we been for over a hundred year, and my big brother Sidrach he had his own pack-horses loaded up with waluable stuff and writ me a piece ten year ago come haysel, sayin’ as he hoped Oi should jarney to see him, and please God Oi will, he gittin’ old.”

“But where is he?” asked Will, glad that the Gaffer’s monologue had drifted from its angry beginning.

“In Babylon!”

“Babylon?” gasped Will, whose recent theological excursions had made him almost at home in that purpureal city.

“That’s my nickname for Che’msford, chuck-full o’ lewdness and Church-folk. But Oi’ve been meanin’ to goo and look Sidrach up and hear all about his travels, he bein’ a rare one for adwentures, but somehow what with my carryin’ work and one thing and the tother my days fly by—like the Book says—swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Happen lucky, though, Oi’ll git over there to-year.”

“I hope so,” murmured Will vaguely.

“No you don’t, drat you!” said the veteran with sudden viciousness. “Tain’t your care whether Oi ever clap eyes on my beloved brother agen. A ’nation cowld day it was he had to goo away—the Brad all ice and they should be tellin’ of the Che’msford coach as come in without the driver, and he fallen down on the road, frozen stiff as a sparrow.”

“What year was that?” asked Will, to keep the conversation on this more agreeable level.

“It was the year my brother Sidrach went away,” said Daniel Quarles simply. “’Nation cowld. We heerd that in Lunnon the river was as froze as ourn, and flue-full o’ sports—booths and turnabouts and pigs roasted whole, and great crowds to see a young bear baited. But feyther’s cart went to and fro Chipstone just the same, and brought the news as how a woman was burned at Newgate for coinin’—it dedn’t seem wery dreadful in that weather. Waterloo year that was another cowld winter—all the marsh ditches was solid ice, and all the eels was found dead and frozen. Couldn’t eat ’em neither, not after the first day, they stank so. That numb was my fingers Oi could scarce howld the reins, and you’d ha’ thought by my breath Oi was a wicked smoker. But ’twas wunnerful times, and we heaped up a deadly great pile o’ fagots and bushes for the beacon, top o’ yonder rise where ye see Beacon Hill Farm.”

“Ah, the bonfire to celebrate the victory!” said Will, rejoiced to find irascibility cooled into reminiscence.

“Wictory! That was the name o’ Nelson’s ship as that silly old Dap should say he sarved in. Nay, this was but a bonfire to be lit when Bony landed. All along Blackwater we was ready for the inwasion, and when the beacon was fired, that was to be the signal. The soldiers was to goo to the coast and the ciwilians inland. But Bony never come, and ’twas a great waste. And Sidrach never come neither. ’Nation cowld the day he went away—Oi moind me gooin’ through a foot o’ snow across Chipstone poor-piece to the Church to see the Knight Templar what was dug up in the north aisle, pickled inside three coffins, but they’d put him back in the outer lead time Oi arrived. They should say it was a sort o’ mushroom ketchup as kept him together for the Resurrection Day—a bit blackish, but wellnigh as sound and good-lookin’ as you.”

It was a compliment that made the young man shudder again.

“Ah, there is the rain!” he exclaimed, with relief at the hearty patter on the apple-tree.

But the old man would not be fobbed off so enjoyable a topic. “Three coffins—lead, ellum, and a shell—’twas a witty way agin them body-snatchers—you ain’t safe agin thieves even in your tomb. And when you’re above ground they tries to steal your wery letters.” He pulled open the note.

“It’s merely addressed to you as head of the business,” Will explained.

“Ay, that Oi be, though the youngest. He that is last shall be fust, says the Book, ay, and the Law too, though ’twasn’t fair to Sidrach to my thinkin’, bein’ agin nature. And next time a letter comes for me, do ye don’t bring it and play your tricks, but let it come natural through Bundock’s grandson. What’s this? ‘Mr. William Flynt thanks Miss Quarles for her esteemed epistle.’ And who is Miss Quarles, and what’s she been writin’ to you?”

“About—about business,” said Will.

“There ain’t no Miss Quarles in the business,” said the old man testily. “That be my business, and Oi lets Jinny amuse herself jauntin’ to and fro, pore gal, she bein’ that lonely on the Common and afeared o’ dangerous charriters. Rare mistakes, she makes, bein’ onny a gal, and costs me a pritty penny. But it ’ud cost me more ef Oi dedn’t stop at home and guard the house from thieves. And now she wastes more o’ my hard-earned dubs writin’ to you as is a neighbour—drat the child, ain’t that got a tongue? ‘A suitable horn?’ Dash my buttons! What do you be wantin’ with a horn—you bain’t a guard or a postman, be you?”

“No, but——!” he stammered. The explanation was not simple.

“‘Oi beseech you, however, not to superscroibe to Che’msford’ ... ‘the righteous man regardeth his beast.’ Dang your imperence! Why shouldn’t Oi goo to Che’msford? Oi ain’t seen him these sixty year, and do ye don’t come interferin’ ’twixt brothers. Sidrach writ me a piece ten years agoo come haysel, arxin’ me to superscroibe to Che’msford, and Oi’ll not be put off by the likes o’ you. You look here, my lad, ef you’re come home to meddle or make, the sooner you goos furrin agen, the better.”

“But it’s not you—it’s Miss Quarles I don’t like journeying to Chelmsford. Look at the P.S.”

It was imprudent counsel, for, as the Gaffer followed it, his face became a black cloud, the fire in his eye was lightning, the odd fangs in his mouth showed like tigers’ tusks, and his beard seemed like a tempestuous besom sweeping all before it.

“‘Lewdness and abominations.’ You call my Jinny a Jezebel! Git out o’ my house!”

“I’m only in your barn,” Will reminded him, “and it’s raining, and you just said yourself that Chelmsford is a Babylon chock-full of abominations. And you’d let a young girl superscribe there all alone!”

“Jinny shall superscroibe where she pleases!” roared the Gaffer. “For over a hundred year the Quarleses have superscroibed in foul weather or foine, with none to say ’em nay, and it ain’t for a looker’s son to come here dictatin’.”

“I didn’t dictate,” said Will, with a fleeting schoolboy memory. “I wrote it with my own hand. Look here, Mr. Quarles,” he went on, trying another tack, “you’re a sensible old gent with great experience of the world, and it makes me frightened to see that grandchild of yours gadding about so far from home, and sometimes not getting back here till dark.”

“That ain’t timorsome—onny when she’s alone here,” he added cunningly.

“Maybe, but with such a pretty girl——!”

“Ay, she’s like a little bird with her little fitten—and allus singin’ like one too—all the day that goos about singin’, ‘Fol de rol——’”

“Yes, yes,” said Will, wincing.

“And Oi’d best tear up your letter—she don’t want to read about lewdness and abomination except in the Howly Book. And Oi count she has enough o’ that on Sunday with you Peculiars.”

“It is better she should read about it than scutter about seeing it. A cart ain’t a suitable place for a girl.”

“A cart’s as suitable for Jinny as a horn for you,” retorted the old man, bridling up again. “Oi suspicion you’re plottin’ to steal her away from me.”

“What!” Will’s cheeks burned with indignation.

“And Oi count you’ve got your eye on the cart too, like you bolted off to Harwich with your feyther’s wagon. There won’t be naught left for me but the poorhouse. But Oi’d die sooner.” He was almost blubbering now with self-pity.

“Oi saved a mort o’ money once,” he said, “though it took a deadly time scrapin’ the dubs together, what with the expense o’ dinner at “The Black Sheep” and the hoss’s feed—fower parcels or fowerty, Oi never stinted him o’ his peck o’ chaff, and three and a half pound o’ oats and the same o’ ground beans, and there’s folks as grumble to pay accordin’ to the soize and compass o’ the parcel, though there’s nights your hoss goos so lame and you’re that pierced with wind and snow you got to knock up a farm and borry a hoss to git home with, and them days it was the barges took away custom. Old Bidlake used to goo along canals and cricks as ain’t there no longer, thank the Lord, bein’ as they sea-walls have made a many willages high and droy. But Oi had to pay all my savin’s away to keep our name from disgrace, so as Emma should howd up her head in Kingdom Come. He hadn’t the bed he died in, for all his traipsin’ around in Tommy Devils; but time Oi went down to git Jinny, Oi made inquirations among the tradespeople and paid ’em to the last farden, aldoe soon as my back was turned, my own sister plots with her one-eyed little ship’s monkey to pay for a stone, as ef Oi’d neglected my own darter, and all spiled with wicked words—did you ever see such words in a Christian churchyard?”

“No, of course not,” soothingly murmured Will, to whom the long rigmarole conveyed nothing except: a sense of pathetic and loquacious senility.

“Ha!” said the Gaffer with satisfaction. “Oi says to Dap, says Oi, ‘A Churchman like you may not see the blarsphemy, but think what John Wesley would ha’ said to it.’ ‘Sir,’ Oi says to the old gentleman, ‘you jump into my cart,’ says Oi, ‘and not a sowl here shall harm a hair o’ your wig’; and with that Oi wheeled round my whip, and bein’ then an able-bodied young man (’twas the wery fust year arter feyther died), them as was throwin’ stones and cryin’ ‘Knock his brines out’ slunk away like blackbeadles, which was a pity, seein’ as they missed the be-yutiful words he preached from my cart. From Chipstone to Che’msford Oi carried him—a dogged piece out o’ my way, bein’ as he wanted to preach there and his own hoss had gone lame—’twas the wile o’ that great old murderer, Satan, says he, but the Almoighty sent you to confound his knavish tricks. That was a man of God, my lad, never out of heart, roighteous and bold as a lion, would preach even in front of a gin-shop where ’twas writ up: ‘Drunk a penny, dead-drunk twopence, clean straw for nawthen.’ Pounded glass mixed with mud the sons of Bellal threw in his face, but his eye-soight was not dimmed, nor his nat’ral force abated. Used to preach as much as foive times a day, gittin’ up at fower o’ the clock, and travellin’ a bigger round than me, but wunnerful healthy, slept like a baby in my cart, and that saintly he said all his life he’d never done naught as ’ud bear lookin’ at. He made me sing a hume with him and we was singin’ it as we come into Babylon:

As the sepulchral bass quavered out the tune, Jinny’s fresh voice could be heard from the back door calling “Gran’fer! Gran’fer! Where are you?”

“She thinks Oi’m out in the rine,” chuckled the old man, “but let her come and find me. His blessin’ he gave me at partin’, did John Wesley, and do ye don’t never smoke nor drink that pison stuff, tay, says he. ‘Oi’ll promise ye tay and gin too,’ says Oi, bein’ as Oi liked beer best. ‘But to give up baccy, that’s main hard,’ Oi says. ‘There’s harder,’ says he, lightning-like. ‘Promise me as ye won’t be friends with a woman as is younger than your wife, for there’s unhowly sperrits about,’ says he, ‘as brings gales and earthquakes and tempitations, and the best o’ men may git capsoized same as the Royal George, our best ship, t’other year.’ Lord, that fair capsoized me, for how could this furrin ole gen’leman in his eighties know about Annie, as wasn’t seventeen yet for all her wunnerful fine buzzom, and the missus older than me, in looks Oi mean, bein’ as she was two years younger the fust time that worritin’ census paper come along.”

“When was that?”

“That would be the year Oi put new thatch on this wery barn for the new century.”

“And what year did you meet John Wesley?”

“Ye’d best git Jinny to work that out. But it couldn’t be many year afore the Jew Mendoza boxed Dick Humphreys for the Championship, for Oi wouldn’t goo, ne yet bet on it, bein’ as my sowl was saved, and when Oi lifted up my woice at the camp-meetin’s and chapels in praise and repentance and shouted ‘Glory! Glory!’ dancin’-like, with the tears for my sins runnin’ down my cheeks, that was more joy to me than Annie and the prize-ring and cock-foightin’ rolled into one. And Oi ain’t never backslided, praise the Lord, bein’ as Annie married a sedan-chair man and was hiked away to Cowchester, and Oi hope for your immortal sowl’s sake, my lad, you bain’t like what Oi was at your age.”

“I hope so,” said Will, not without uneasiness.

The patriarch shook his head. “There’s the old Adam in you, plain to discern. Ye won’t be safe till ye’re married. But do ye don’t marry an old gander of a widow like that potboy they should be tellin’ of,”—he began to cackle—“that’ll onny lead to wuss mischief. Wait till you happen on a clean little lass, rosy and untapped.”

“A girl like your granddaughter, you mean?” Will heard himself saying.

The cackle ceased abruptly and the grin was replaced by a glare. “That ain’t gooin’ to be married! That’s got to goo out with my cart, whenever Oi’m too busy workin’. Ef a rich man like Farmer Gale as drives her to chapel Sundays should be wantin’ her all the week, Oi don’t say Oi wouldn’t goo with her to the big house, but that ain’t likely, and she can’t have nawthen to say to a rollin’ stone as mebbe left a pack o’ wives among they Mormons.”

Will was nettled. “And who asked for your granddaughter?” he retorted. “Besides, you’re quite right. I married dozens of wives in America—all widows too!”

The veteran chuckled afresh. “Dash my buttons! How you do mind me o’ your feyther when he was your age—always had his little joke. Not that Oi count him growed up yet, he havin’ never cut his wisdom teeth, but gooin’ off as skittish as a colt arter peculiar doctrines and seducin’ sperrits.”

“Oh, there you are, Gran’fer!” And pat as to a cue a most “seducin’ sperrit” flashed, like a shaft of sunshine, through the half-open door into the gloomy old barn. But she was aproned and bare-armed to the elbow, and rain-spotted, and a ringlet of hair was blown almost across her mouth, and the instant she perceived Will, she drew back in confusion, patting her hair tidy.

“Sorry, Gran’fer. I didn’t know you had visitors.”

But Will, to whom the sense she conveyed of brooms and dusters was sweetly reassuring of a still unsubmerged femininity, cried out as hastily:

“No, I was just going. You’ll get drowned.”

And he tried to pass her.

But the old man dramatically extended the uncocked hat.

“Howd hard, sonny.”

Will, disconcerted, found his feet sticking to the floor.

“He’s writ me a letter, imperent little Willie, and brought it hisself.” Then a flash of amusement toned down the asperity. “Aldoe he had his tongue with him!” And the old man chuckled.

“Shall I read it?” murmured Jinny, putting forth her hand.

“Nay, nay!” He snatched the note back and tore it into careful pieces. “Ain’t fit to be seen.”

“No more am I,” said Jinny with an uneasy laugh, and again she essayed to escape.

“Stop!” commanded the ancient, kindled afresh. “Willie’s got to tell you what’s in they scraps.”

Will was silent.

“Don’t stand gawmin’. Out with the abomination.”

But no sound issued from the young man’s lips. It was not merely that this new housemaidenly figure seemed safe enough even in Chelmsford, wrapped in its own sweet domesticity, and that adjurations designed for the minx bade fair to blunt themselves against this sober angelhood; but that the girl’s radiance against the littered gloom within and the rainfall without, robbed him literally of breath.

“Speak out, Willie!” said the Gaffer, softened to contempt by his obvious confusion.

“Perhaps he hasn’t brought his tongue,” suggested Jinny, recovering herself.

“Then Oi’ll lend him mine. You ain’t to goo to Che’msford, he says.”

“But I don’t want to go to Chelmsford, Gran’fer. Why should I go to Chelmsford?”

“To get his horn, you baggage. And he don’t be wantin’ it.”

“Oh, but he ordered it—it’s too late now.”

“Ay,” said Daniel Quarles, “and goo you shall to git it ef the adder has to bite Methusalem’s heels.”

“But I don’t have to go to Chelmsford for it!”

“You said you’d go to Chelmsford,” burst out Will at last.

“Nothing of the sort.”

“But I’ve got your letter!” He pulled it out, and again that awkward glove fell out. “Ah, there’s your glove I’ve found on the road,” he said, crimsoning furiously.

“Thank you!” She took both letter and glove placidly. “Now I shall have two pairs! But where do I say anything about going to Chelmsford?”

Thus invited, he came and looked down at the paper she held, and gripped an end of it himself, very conscious of her near fingers, and her bared arm, and her bending head. He was about to cry: “Why, there!” when a horrible doubt lest “superscribe” did not mean dashing away, or stampeding, or scurrying, or driving, or even going, checked the exclamation.

“I must ha’ misread it,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”

“Spoken like a Christian!” said the Gaffer. “And Oi count John Wesley ’ud a said let bygones be bygones. Sow bring out the beer, Jinny.”

“Thank you—I’m afraid I can’t stay,” said Will. He had a sullen sense of defeat, which the loss of the glove seemed to accentuate and symbolize. “My folks’ll expect me home to tea.”

“Your Mormon wives? Ay, Jinny, you may well blush,” the Gaffer chuckled. “Willie’s been and married a pack o’ widows in America.”

“And left them there!” said Will, permitting himself a faint smile.

“Left all those widows!” laughed Jinny. “How deadly dead you must be!”

But despite the merriment in which the episode had so unexpectedly ended, and despite the rain which had now grown torrential, he tore himself obstinately away, even refusing the “umberella” which the old man suggested and Jinny offered to fetch; though as he stepped under the plashing apple-boughs, he felt himself doubly foolish to refuse what would have been a literal handle for a return visit. And now that he had caught a glimpse of what he told himself was the real Jinny, not the Tuesday and Friday swashbuckler, but the Saturday-cleaning-up-for-Sunday house-angel, he did not despair of inducing her to shed these husks of bravado. But he had said “no,” and “no” to his great annoyance it must be.

“When do you propose to superscribe?” he asked with crafty lightness, as he raised his hat.

“Oh, but I have superscribed,” said Jinny. “But of course if it doesn’t come soon, I shall write over to Chelmsford again.”