"Who was the man?" he asked suddenly.

She told him, and they drove on in silence.

Roger's tired brain felt as though it were struggling against a foamy sea of cobwebs, that closed upon him in stifling gossamer folds again and again as he forced his way through it. The sea was endless; yielding wave after yielding wave came flowing in on him as he pushed on through it to the unknown goal. He realized at length that he had known nothing of the undertaking to which he had put his hand-the mastery of this woman's nature. What had seemed the simplest attraction in the world, that of woman to man for the age-long purposes of nature, had revealed the infinite complexity of a soul that beats its way upward by some strange inward law, from the depths of evil. For it was struggle upward, as he recognized after the first sense of repulsion. Yet his chief sensation was irritation that the quiet of his life should have been broken up like this, that the world in her should have provoked the flesh in him; he began to think, seeing the two in juxtaposition, that the devil could not be far off.

Nor was he very wrong. For as they were nearing Uppacott, and Roger was beginning to think their night's adventure was to remain unknown, they turned a sharp corner, almost knocking down some one coming in the opposite direction. It was a thin, ferret-faced man, who peered curiously at both the occupants of the dogcart. With a tightening of his lips Roger recognized him at once as Nosworthy of Corndonford, whose farm was heavily mortgaged to the Hannafords.

On the return drive, the fellow was still loitering on the road, as Roger had somehow half expected him to do, for he could not believe that this night of vexations and scenes was ever coming to an end.

"A word with you, sir," said he, coming up to the trap

and half catching the reins. A dull anger was rising in Roger that made him grasp his whip handle tighter as he reined in the fellow's broken teeth and nose, and redrimmed, unwholesome eyes were an offence in the clearness of the dawn. "It's about the interest on that mortgage," he said, holding the reins, as if he feared the younger man would drive on.

"Well?"

"I'm behindhand, I know, but I want time. It'll all be paid, but I can't do it without I'm given the time. And I can't pay a stiver this quarter."

"That's my father's business, Nosworthy."

"Ay, but I think it's yours too, Master Roger. I think you'll have to make it your business, or

"Or what?"

"Or a certain young lady's name

"

But the sentence was never finished, for straight and clean between the eyes a blow from Roger's fist sent him spinning across the road.

The next instant, as he drove on, Roger felt his blood flow smoothly once more, the oppression of doubt was gone with the joy of straight acting. Repulsion and irritation had both vanished in the clearing of the brain that came with generous impulse. So if the slightest rumour against Wilmot was to spread, as it would now, thanks to his hastiness, the only way out of it was to take a bold front. Let the world talk; the more obstacles they put in his way, the clearer grew the road for him. There would be a nine days' wonder, and then peace. If need be, and if old Mr. Hannaford took things too much to heart, there were other places for Wilmot and himself besides this parish. In short, the world and the flesh were so disconcerting that the devil, in the shape of broken-nosed Sam Nosworthy, was hailed quite cheerfully.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LONELY HEIGHTS

""Tis day o' judgment-like, that's what it is, having dealings with the womenfolk in the courting way," said the moonfaced man in the corner. Four or five jersey-clad figures, each with a proboscis in the shape of a clay pipe, sat on a bench outside the Ring o' Bells at Challacombe. The inn, kept by Onesimus Bartlett, abuts on the quay, and is licensed to sell beer, ales, and tobacco, to be consumed on the premises.

The attention of the company being thus turned to the moon-faced man, he tried to look unconscious, but failed signally.

"So you've been trying it," said Onesimus from the doorway. "Did 'ee make much of it?”

"Her only ups and says, 'Get out, you girt Sammy,' said the victim, smiling beamingly.

"Ah, poor sonny," said Onesimus, a man all carbuncles as to face, with a white monkey-fringe round it, "it takes a man with a head to get the better of they trade, and Dick, he never had much of a headpiece."

"And there's three of 'em after me now," groaned William, Captain Penrice's factotum, "though not in the way of courting, thanks be, now that Kate's tied up to me. There's master's new missus and missus's echo, her maid Liza, and down home along there's Kate, my missus. But I could ha' bore up if 'twasn't for they beggaring varmints o' caterpillars."

"Caterpillars," said Prowse, the jobbing gardener, "'tis early for they."

"Early or late, there they be in every bit of green stuff I boil for the cap'n and Miss Penaluna, or rather Mrs. Penrice, to call her what she lawful is. There was Miss Pen's Liza was to do the housework, and I was to cook for 'em. Well, says I, that seems reasonable enough: man in the galley, maid upon deck. But they hadn't been back a week but what missus says I am poisoning of 'em. What's a caterpillar or two, I should like to know, in a boil of cabbage? They'm mostly cabbage theirselves. Why, the cap'n must ha' swallowed scores of 'em afore he took up with Miss Pen and never so much as winked."

William evidently put a low estimate on his own cooking methods.

"And when I get home after a day of it with missus, there's Kate waiting for me, all upon wires like an appledrane (wasp) in a bottle."

"Kate always was a vinegar-bottle," said Prowse, frankly.

"So her was," said William, mournfully; "but come to that, they'm all alike in their innerds. Scratch any of 'em and you come upon the same old woman underneath."

"Iss fay," said a mariner, looking seaward with a wink, "but they'm not all the same make outside."

Kate's beauty was not altogether to the taste of Challacombe, otherwise she would probably never have consented to become Mrs. William.

"But whatever made 'ee take to such a line o' life as messing round with saucepans and that trade?"

"Cook's mate," said William, tersely, "as boy; coffinship; swim for my life. That sort o' thing. Thought I'd had enough of the sea after that, so I took up with the cap'n when he wanted a man to do for 'en."

"But you've been a zany, I reckon, ever since theycarried 'ee up to church-vamp (front) and born to be put upon by the women," said Onesimus, whose line was frankness.

it?"

"Goo-o-o-d Lord," said Prowse, "however do 'ee bear

"How does a man in gineral bear all he's got to go through afore he's cold meat?" retorted William. "And there's summat to go through too, most times, whether 'tis maids or chillern or boats or tetties."

"And you never said a truer word than that, Willyum,” chanted the company, like a low-spirited Greek chorus.

"Old doctor's had a deal to go through," said Prowse. "And sarve 'en right too," said Onesimus; "here's my water-rate up double what 'twas afore he come."

"Ay, I thought the beer was a trifle weakish," said a would-be wit.

"Well, I dunno so much about that," said Prowse, "he's had hold of the wrong end of the stick down here, sure enough, but a well-meaning man in the main 'tis, too. I be sorry to see the last of 'en, I tell 'ee, souls."

"And so be I," said the chorus.

"His physic," said the moon-faced man, "isn't rousing enough, by what I hear tell. 'Tis weakish, mostly, but I dunno that it'll do 'ee any harm, as the rat said when he saw the cat eating the poison that was laid for him."

"And if an old bed-lier or two died sudden when doctor wasn't in the way, I'll warrant they had sent for him ten times before for a toe-ache and didn't die, when he was there. What's an old bed-lier or two to make a fuss about?" said Prowse, in a generous spirit.

"And now he's going downhill fast, they say-cards and whisky, and never about by daytime. 'Tis the women between 'em that's cooked his goose for him," said William, returning to the theme of Eve in the true Edenic fashion.