he stayed with her, they tell. She was all too grievious to listen to his promises. 'Ah! She should ha' made her bargain beforehand. I allus told my woman so!' Hobden cried. 'No. She loaned her sons for a pure loveloan, bein' as she sensed the Trouble on the Marshes, an' was simple good-willing to ease it.' Tom laughed softly. She done that. Yes, she done that! From Hithe to Bulverthithe, fretty man an' petty maid, ailin' woman an' wailin' child, they took the advantage of the change in the thin airs just about as soon as the Pharisees flitted. Folks come out fresh an' shining all over the Marsh like snails after wet. An' that while the Widow Whitgift sat grievin' on the Wall. She might have beleft us she might have trusted her sons would be sent back! She fussed, no bounds, when their boat come in after three days.' 'And, of course, the sons were both quite cured?' said Una. 'No-o. That would have been out o' Nature. She got 'em back as she sent 'em. The blind man he hadn't seen naught of anything, an' the dumb man nature-ally, he I couldn't say aught of what he'd seen. reckon that was why the Pharisees pitched on 'em for the ferrying job.' 'But what did you-what did Robin, promise the Widow?' said Dan. 'What did he promise, now?' Tom preWasn't your woman a tended to think. Whitgift, Ralph? Didn't she say?' 'She told me a passel o' no-sense stuff when he was born.' Hobden pointed at his son. "There was always to be one of 'em that could see further into a millstone than most.' 'Me! That's me!' said the Bee Boy so suddenly that they all laughed. 'I've got it now!' cried Tom, slapping his knee. 'So long as Whitgift blood lasted, Robin promised there would allers be one o' her stock that-that no Trouble 'ud lie on, no Maid 'ud sigh on, no Night could frighten, no Fright could harm, no Harm could make sin, an' no Woman could make a fool.' 'Well, ain't that just me?' said the Bee Boy, where he sat in the silver square of the great September moon that was staring into the oast-house door. 'They was the exact words she told me when we first found he wasn't like others. But it beats me how you known 'em,' said Hobden. 'Aha! There's more under my hat besides hair!' Tom laughed and stretched himself. 'When I've seen these two young folk home, we'll make a night of old days, Ralph, with passin' old tales-eh? An' where might you live?' he said, gravely, to Dan. 'An' do you think your Pa 'ud give me a drink for takin' you there, Missy?' They giggled so at this that they had to run out. Tom picked them both up, set one on each broad shoulder, and tramped across the ferny pasture where the cows puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight. 'Oh, Puck! Puck! I guessed you right from when you talked about the salt. How could you ever do it?' Una cried, swinging along delighted. 'Do what?' he said, and climbed the stile by the pollard oak. 'Pretend to be Tom Shoesmith,' said Dan, and they ducked to avoid the two little ashes that grow by the bridge over the brook. Tom was almost running. 'Yes. That's my name, Mus' Dan,' he said, hurrying over the silent shining lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big white-thorn near the croquet ground. 'Here you be.' He strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as Ellen came to ask questions. 'I'm helping in Mus' Spray's oast-house,' he said to her. 'No, I'm no foreigner. I knowed this country 'fore your Mother was born; an'-yes it's dry work oasting, Miss. Thank you.' Ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in magicked once more by Oak, Ash, and Thorn! A THREE-PART SONG I'm just in love with all these three, The Weald and the Marsh and the Down countrie Nor I don't know which I love the most, The Weald or the Marsh or the white chalk coast! I've buried my heart in a ferny hill, I've loosed my mind for to out and run, I've given my soul to the Southdown grass, |