towel-horse, on
which my coat was stretched, between it and the wood fire, which (as
she held) the sunshine would put out.

"It's uncommonly kind of you, Mrs. Bolverson," said I, as she turned
one sleeve of the coat towards the heat. "To be sure, if the women in
these parts would speak out, some of them have done more than that for
the men with an old coat."

She dropped the sleeve, faced round, and eyed me.

"What do you know of that?" she asked slowly, and as if her chest
tightened over the words. She was a woman of fifty and more, of fine
figure but a worn face. Her chief surviving beauty was a pile of light
golden hair, still lustrous as a girl's. But her blue eyes--though now
they narrowed on me suspiciously--must have looked out magnificently
in their day.

"I fancy," said I, meeting them frankly enough, "that what you know
and I don't on that matter would make a good deal."

She laughed harshly, almost savagely.

"You'd better ask Sarah Gedye, across the coombe. She buried a man's
clothes one time, and--it might be worth your while to ask her what
came o't."

If you can imagine a glint of moonlight running up the blade of
a rapier, you may know the chill flame of spite and despite that
flickered in her eyes then as she spoke.

"I take my oath," I muttered to myself, "I'll act on the invitation."

The woman stood straight upright, with her hands clasped behind her,
before the deal table. She gazed, under lowered brows, straight out of
window; and following that gaze, I saw across the coombe a mean
mud hut, with a wall around it, that looked on Sheba Farm with the
obtrusive humility of a poor relation.

"Does she--does Sarah Gedye--live down yonder?"

"What is that to you?" she enquired fiercely, and then was silent for
a moment, and added, with another short laugh--

"I reckon I'd like the question put to her: but I doubt you've got the
pluck."

"You shall see," said I; and taking my coat off the towel-horse, I
slipped it on.

She did not turn, did not even move her head, when I thanked her for
the shelter and walked out of the house.

I could feel those steel-blue eyes working like gimlets into my back
as I strode down the hill and passed the wooden plank that lay across
the stream at its foot. A climb of less than a minute brought me to
the green gate in the wall of Sarah Gedye's garden patch; and here I
took a look backwards and upwards at Sheba. The sun lay warm on its
white walls, and th