ck, and
many's the wife I've seen take the load off her husband's back and
carry it for him like a brave soul." He looked up at the woman and saw
her eyes glisten. "Ay," he said, "you've seen it too, maybe? Now, my
good mistress, just tell me what the serjeant did to your son here, or
what has happened to him to bring him to this state."

The woman hesitated long. "'Tis a long story," she said at last, "but
maybe it's time that it was told; for I'm thinking that before long
there may be none to tell it. You've been kind to my boy, the both of
'ee, and you've a promised to keep my secret. So if you have a mind to
hear, I'll tell 'ee."

So Colonel George stood in the doorway holding the horses, while Lady
Eleanor sat on the turfen table by the sick man; and the woman began
her story.

CHAPTER XIII

"Years agone, long afore you ever come this way, my Lady, my father
lived not above seven or eight mile herefrom, up to Loudacott; you must
surely have heard the name of the place. Well, there he lived with his
own bit of land, for he was a yeoman, he was, and the Clatworthys had
lived up to Loudacott hundreds of years, as he used to tell me. There
wasn't but the three of us, my father--Jeremiah Clatworthy was his
name--my mother and myself; for I was the only child they had a-living.
It's a lonely place, is Loudacott, and it wasn't many folks that we saw
there when I was a child; but when I growed up into a comely maid, and
men seed me now and again to market or fairing time, they began to come
a-courting; for 'twasn't me only that they would get, but forty acre of
land with me, if father liked mun well. There was more came than you'd
a think for, plenty enough to turn the head of a silly maid; and there
was one that father favoured particular, for he had land close nigh by
Loudacott, but I didn't like he--never could. There wasn't but one
that pleased me, and that was Jan Dart. You know his old mother that
lives to Ashacombe, or used to live, for they tell me that she's
a-dying. She couldn't never abide the name of me, Jan's mother
couldn't; and father, he couldn't abide Jan. For his father hadn't
been more than a servant with the old squire, nor his mother neither,
and Jan, he'd a been bound 'prentice to a shoemaker, and wasn't long
out of his time; while we was the Clatworthys to Loudacott.

"Well, the men come, and I was well enough pleased to keep mun dancing
round me, and poor Jan with the rest o