ld have picked the violin up, but the
old man stopped him. Later, from my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come
out and stand looking at the violin. He raised his foot as if to stamp
on it. At last he picked it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....

My room is next to hers. I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if she
were dragging things about the room. Then I fell asleep, but woke with
a start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air. Such a black,
breathless night! Nothing to be seen but the twisted, blacker branches;
not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but muffled grunting from the
cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh. I had the queerest feeling
of unrest and fear, the last thing to expect on such a night. There is
something here that's disturbing; a sort of suppressed struggle. I've
never in my life seen anything so irresponsible as this girl, or so
uncompromising as the old man; I keep thinking of the way he wiped that
violin. It's just as if a spark would set everything in a blaze. There's
a menace of tragedy--or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of
Mother Hopgood's crame....

II

"Tuesday.

.... I've made a new acquaintance. I was lying in the orchard, and
presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with
a singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather
peak pushed up on the forehead. Face long and narrow, bronzed with a
kind of pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead. A brown moustache,
beard rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not visible,
but from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should judge sensuous.
Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward look, not exactly
frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down each cheek, one
from the inner corner of the eye, one from the nostril; age perhaps
thirty-five. About the face, attitude, movements, something immensely
vital, adaptable, daring, and unprincipled.

He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in this
galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire man;
certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could only have
been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in this county. He
whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-coloured dress, looking
like some