to be
married--'twas a farmer told me--comes to me regular when he goes to
Exeter market. I always knew he came from near my old home. 'There's a
weddin' on Tuesday,' 'e says, 'I'd like to be the bridegroom at.
Prettiest, sunniest maid you ever saw'; an' he told me where she come
from, so I knew. He found me a bit funny that afternoon. But he don't
know who I am, though he used to go to school with me; I'd never tell,
not for worlds." She shook her head vehemently. "I don't know why I told
you; I'm not meself to-day, and that's a fact." At her half-suspicious,
half-appealing look, I said quickly:

"I don't know a soul about here. It's all right."

She sighed. "It was kind of you; and I feel to want to talk sometimes.
Well, after he was gone, I said to myself: 'I'll take a holiday and go
an' see my daughter married.'" She laughed--"I never had no pink and
white and blue little things myself. That was all done up for me that
night I had the moon in me blood. Ah! my father was a proper hard man.
'Twas bad enough before I had my baby; but after, when I couldn't get
the father to marry me, an' he cut an' run, proper life they led me, him
and stepmother. Cry! Didn' I cry--I was a soft-hearted thing--never went
to sleep with me eyes dry--never. 'Tis a cruel thing to make a young
girl cry."

I said quietly: "Did you run away, then?"

She nodded. "Bravest thing I ever did. Nearly broke my 'eart to leave my
baby; but 'twas that or drownin' myself. I was soft then. I went off
with a young fellow--bookmaker that used to come over to the sports
meetin', wild about me--but he never married me"--again she uttered her
hard laugh--"knew a thing worth tu o' that." Lifting her hand towards
the burning furze, she added: "I used to come up here an' help 'em
light that when I was a little girl." And suddenly she began to cry. It
was not so painful and alarming as her first distress, for it seemed
natural now.

At the side of the cart-track by the gate was an old boot thrown away,
and it served me for something to keep my eyes engaged. The dilapidated
black object among the stones and wild plants on that day of strange
mixed beauty was as incongruous as this unhappy woman herself revisiting
her youth. And there shot into my mind a vision of this spot as it might
have been that summer night when she had "the moon in her blood"--queer
phrase--and those two young creatures in the tall soft fern, in the
warmth and the darkened loneliness, h