ob that would keep him
out of her way, for a week perhaps, rather pleased her.

"I'll give you anything I've got to give if you bring my poor Nicky's
bones to light," she said. "But it's impossible after all this time."

Will Westaway's mind was in full working order by now.

"Nought's impossible to a man that loves a woman like what I love you," he
said. "How was the poor blade dressed the day he went to his death? Can
you call home what he'd got on?"

"Every stitch down to his socks," she answered. "He'd got his old
billycock hat and his moleskin trousers and a flannel shirt--dark
blue--and a red-wool muffler what I knitted him myself and made him wear
because it was a cruel cold afternoon. And his socks was ginger-coloured.
They was boughten socks from Mrs. Carslake's shop of all sorts. He was
cranky all that day and using awful crooked words to me. I believe he knew
he weren't coming back."

"By God, he shall come back--what's left of him," swore Will. "If it takes
me ten year, I'll go on till I find the skelington of your late husband or
enough to prove he's a dead 'un. He shall be found, if only to show you
what my love's worth, Jenny."

"Looking for the little man's bones in Dart would be like seeking a dead
mouse in a haystack," she said.

"Difficult, I grant, but nothing to the reward you've promised."

"Well," she told him, "you can have me, such as I am, if you find Nicky."

Then she left William, and he turned over what she'd said. He was cunning
and simple both, was Bill Westaway. He believed by now that Jenny really
did begin to care a lot for him, and was giving him a chance in her own
way to make good.

"An old billycock hat and a bit of red-wool muffler, the tail of a blue
shirt, a pair of ginger-coloured socks," he thought. "It don't sound
beyond the power of a witty man like me. But she'll want more than that.
Us must find a bone or two as a doctor could swear by."

Full of dark, devilish ideas, the young man went his way; and Jenny got
down the hill and walked in her aunt Maria Pardoe's wash-house as usual.

But she weren't herself by no means, and the first thing she done was to
tear some frill-de-dills belonging to the parson's wife. Then she had
another accident and so she went to Maria--the kindest woman on earth--and
told her aunt she weren't feeling very clever this morning and thought
she'd better go home. "'Tis just a year since Nicky was took, as we all
know," said Maria, "and n