FORE:In another minute half the young men of the Fair were sitting on him, and everyone else was crowding round Backfield, thanking him, praising him, and shaking him by the hand. The women could hardly speak for gratitudehe became a hero in their eyes, a knight at arms.... "To think as how when all them young tellers up at the Fair wur no use, he[Pg 431] shud risk his life to save ushe's a pr?aper valiant man."
FORE:He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods.She began to laughshe became gay and mettlesome. Her whole nature seemed changed, and he found it hard to think of her as the beautiful yet rather lumpish girl who had sat in the silence of a good appetite at the Cheat Land supper-table. Behind them the ruin of the old cottage sent out bitter-sweet scents of decayits crumbling plaster and rotting lath perfumed the night. Fragrances strove in the airthe scent of Rose's clothes,[Pg 249] and of her big curls tumbling on his shoulder, the scent of still water, of dew-drenched leaves, and damp, teeming soilsweet vagabond scents of bluebells, puffed on sudden breezes....
FORE:Holgrave started. "Hailes church-yard!" he repeated, bending nearer to the speaker.
THREE:"Be brief, Sir Blacksmith," replied the Baron, surprised at the abrupt question, "be brief with whatever you have to say."
THREE:"Mary Byles," he began, "I have one more question to ask you. How many drops of that fatal potion was it that Edith Holgrave told you to give my lord's infant?"
