"Bide quiet," he answered. "I'll tell 'e, but not on the public road.
Not but he'll take gude care every ear has it presently. Shut your mouth
now an' come up to our chamber arter breakfast an' I'll tell 'e the
rights of it. An' that dog knawed an' could keep it close all these
years!"

"He's dangerous, an' terrible, an' strong. I see it in your faace,
Will."

"So he is, then; ban't no foxin' you 'bout it now. 'T is an awful power
of waitin' he've got; an' he haven't bided his time these years an'
years for nothin'. A feast to him, I lay. He've licked his damned lips
many a score o' times to think of the food he'd fat his vengeance with
bimebye."

"Can he taake you from me? If not I'll bear it."

"Ess fay, I'm done for; credit, fortune, all gone. It might have been
death if us had been to war at the time."

She clung to him and her head swam.

"Death! God's mercy! you've never killed nobody, Will?"

"Not as I knaws on, but p'r'aps ban't tu late to mend it. It freezes
me--it freezes my blood to think what his thoughts have been. No, no,
ban't death or anything like that. But 't is prison for sure if--"

He broke off and his face was very dark.

"What, Will? If what? Oh, comfort me, comfort me, Will, for God's sake!
An' another li'l wan comin'!"

"Doan't take on," he said. "Ban't my way to squeal till I'm hurt. Let it
bide, an' be bright an' cheery come eating, for mother 's down in the
mouth at losin' Chris, though she doan't shaw it."

Mrs. Blanchard, with little Timothy, joined the breakfast party at Monks
Barton, and a certain gloom hanging over the party, Mr. Blee commented
upon it in his usual critical spirit.

"This here givin' in marriage do allus make a looker-on down in the
mouth if he 's a sober-minded sort o' man. 'T is the contrast between
the courageousness of the two poor sawls jumpin' into the state, an' the
solid fact of bein' a man's wife or a woman's husband for all time. The
vows they swear! An' that Martin's voice so strong an' cheerful! A
teeming cause o' broken oaths the marriage sarvice; yet each new pair
comes along like sheep to the slaughter."

"You talk like a bachelor man," said Damaris.

"Not so, Mrs. Blanchard, I assure 'e! Lookers-on see most of the game.
Ban't the mite as lives in a cheese what can tell e' 'bout the flavour
of un. Look at a married man at a weddin'--all broadcloth an'
cheerfulness, like the fox as have lost his tail an' girns to see
another chap in th