"How many spoke to you to-day?" he
asked roughly of his wife. "Did _he_ come and speak?"

"No, he didn't!" cried Mistress Deborah tartly. "And all the gentry went
by; only Mr. Bray stopped to say that everybody knew of your fight with
Mr. Bailey at the French ordinary, and that the Commissary had sent for
Bailey, and was going to suspend him. I wish to Heaven I knew why I
married you, to be looked down upon by every Jill, when I might have had
his Lordship's own man! Of all the fools"--

"You were not the only one," answered her husband grimly. "Well, let's
home; there's dinner yet. What is it, Audrey?" This in answer to an
inarticulate sound from the girl.

The schoolmaster answered for her: "Mr. Marmaduke Haward has not gone with
the coach. Perhaps he only waited until the other gentlefolk should be
gone. Here he comes."

The sward without the gates was bare of all whose presence mattered, and
Haward had indeed reentered the churchyard, and was walking toward them.
Darden went to meet him. "These be fine tales I hear of you, Mr. Darden,"
said his parishioner calmly. "I should judge you were near the end of your
rope. There's a vestry meeting Thursday. Shall I put in a good word for
your reverence? Egad, you need it!"

"I shall be your honor's most humble, most obliged servant," quoth the
minister. "The affair at the French ordinary was nothing. I mean to preach
next Sunday upon calumny,--calumny that spareth none, not even such as I.
You are for home, I see, and our road for a time is the same. Will you
ride with us?"

"Ay," said Haward briefly. "But you must send yonder fellow with the
scarred hands packing. I travel not with thieves."

He had not troubled to lower his voice, and as he and Darden were now
themselves within the shadow of the oak, the schoolmaster overheard him
and answered for himself. "Your honor need not fear my company," he said,
in his slow and lifeless tones. "I am walking, and I take the short cut
through the woods. Good-day, worthy Gideon. Madam Deborah and Audrey,
good-day."

He put his uncouth, shambling figure into motion, and, indifferent and
lifeless in manner as in voice, was gone, gliding like a long black
shadow through the churchyard and into the woods across the road. "I knew
him long ago in England," the minister explained to their new companion.
"He's a learned man, and, like myself, a calumniated one. The gentlemen of
these parts value him highly as an instructor of youth.