The light took a golden tincture before dusk, and nature rested.  Mellow sunshine cast long shadows, interspersed with a tender radiance; the cottages and house-places were still; and peace brooded over hamlet and homestead, for the day’s work was done.

The 10th of July sank to lovely close, and through a blue dusk one window glimmered on the confines of the village.

Toward it walked a man, and in his pocket he carried a little parcel.  Once he hesitated, and seemed disposed to hurl his gift into the hedge and return whence he came.  But he held on, and presently reached the cottage door and knocked at it.

“Might I come in an’ have a tell, Mrs. Thorn?” he asked in a deep voice.

There was a moment of silence, then a fluttered uprising.

“Yes, if you’m in a mind to, Mr. Lethbridge.”
p. 187BENJAMIN’S MESS

p. 189When Farmer Yelland died, everybody in Postbridge village was sorry—for theirselves, but not for him, mind you.  Because if ever a good man went straight to glory ’twas Michael Yelland.  He’d had his ups an’ downs like the best an’ worst of us; but though the poor old gentleman weern’t overblessed in his life,—nor yet his only son for that matter,—yet ’twas made up to him in a manner of speaking, for never a farm in Dartymoor did better.  His things were always the first to be ready for market; his grass was always ready to cut a week ahead of his neighbours, an’ he always had fine weather to cut it in; while as for his corn an’ roots—why, at the Agricultural Show to Ashburton, it comed to be a joke all over the countryside, for first prize always went to Yelland as a regular thing.  The Lord looks after His own, you see, in His own partickler way.  An’ such a patient, large-hearted man as he was!  When Sarah Yelland, his wife, was took off, after clacking nonsense for fifty year, us all thanked God in our hearts for her good man.  For ’tweern’t a happy marriage, an’ he’d had more to put up with unbeknownst p. 190in his home circle than falls to the lot of many of us.  But not an unkind word did he ever say either afore or after she died.  Never would grumble about it, but kept his thoughts to hisself.  I mind I met him in the churchyard six months after he’d buried his wife, an’ he was smoking his old clay pipe an’ seeing about a granite gravestone for the tomb.

“So there her lies at peace,” I said in my civil way.

An’ farmer takes his pipe out of his mouth an’ spits ’pon the grave, but not with any rude meaning.

“Yes, John,” he says to me.  “There Sarah lies, poor old dear—at peace, I hope, I’m sure.  Anyway, if she’s so peaceful as I be since her’s gone, she’ll do very well.”

Two year after that he was in the pit beside her, an’ the space left ’pon the stone was filled up with his vartues.

Then Nicholas Yelland—his son—a lad five-an’-twenty years old an’ a bit cross in the grain—found hisself master of Cator Court, as the place was called.  We shook our heads, for he was known to us as a chap pretty near spoilt by over-educating.  Old Yelland had got his patience an’ sense from the land, an’ his wisdom an’ sweetness of disposition out of no other book than the Bible; but his p. 191missis had great notions for her one an’ only child, an’ she wanted more than the Bible could teach him; which, in my judgement, is to cry out for better bread than can be made of wheat.  Farmering weern’t a grand enough trade for him, she thought; so she kept nagging an’ nagging by day an’ night, till, in self-defence, the old man sent his lad to Tavistock Grammar School—a very great seat of larning in them days, by all accounts.  Yet what they didn’t teach him was worth knowing too, for manners he never larned, nor yet his duty to his neighbour.  He comed home at seventeen with some Latin, ’twas said, though ’twas only rumoured like, an’ a very pretty way of reading the lessons to church on Sundays; but when he returned, the first thing as he told his faither was, “I be a Radical in politics evermore, an’ I ban’t going to touch my hat again to nobody living.  One man’s so good as another.”

“So he be, Nick,” said his faither.  “An’ a darned sight better, too, for that matter.  The world will larn ’e that, if nothing else.  I’m sorry ever I sent ’e to school, if they’ve taught ’e such tomfoolery there.  But life will unlarn ’e, I hope.  To touch your hat to your betters ban’t no sign of weakness in you, but a sign of sense: Lord Luscombe hisself takes off his hat to the King, an’ the King takes off his’n to God A’mighty.  ’Tis the p. 192laws of Nature,” said farmer, “an’ if you break the laws o’ Nature, you’ll damn soon get broke yourself, as everybody finds out after they’m turned fifty, if not sooner.”

But Yelland died, as I tell ’e, an’ the young man comed to his own.  With all his airs an’ graces, he knowed when he was well off, an’ of course followed his faither’s footsteps an’ stuck to the land, despite his mother’s hopes, as planned an’ prayed with her last breath for him to be a lawyer.  Though why a lawyer should be a greater man than a farmer, you’d have to ax a lawyer to tell ’e.  An’ I won’t say that Nicholas was a bad farmer.  He’d got sense, though no broad-mindedness.  The difference between him an’ his faither was showed by a path-field as ran through Cator Court lands and was very much used by folks coming up from Widecombe to Postbridge and the farms round about, because it saved foot-passengers a good mile of walking, an’ it had been there time out of mind.  But there weren’t no right of way with it all the same, an’ farmer he always used to shut it up one day a year to make good his claim in the eye of the law.  He wouldn’t have turned back the leastest little one he’d found on the field-path, for ’twas his pride an’ pleasure always to make life easier for man, woman an’ child when the chance offered.  An’ the boys had the filbert nuts an’ the girls had the p. 193mushrooms; an’ he never minded, bless you; he liked ’em to be there.

Well, this here carmudgeon of a young Yelland—first thing he done, out of pure sourness of disposition, was to shut up the field-path an’ stick up a lot o’ scowling nonsense ’bout “trespassers would be prosecuted.”  So much for his radical ideas an’ everybody being equal!  But it’s always that sort who talk loudest about the rights of men, be the sharpest about the rights of property.  Belted Earls will throw open their beautiful parks, but you won’t catch common men doing it.  An’ the boys knocked young Yelland’s boards down with stones, an’ broke his hedges; an’ the Widecombe people, as didn’t care a snap of the finger for the man, took their even way as usual.  He spent half his time storming up an’ down the great meadow in the farm-bottom, where Webburn river goes clattering to meet Dart; but he only turned back women an’ children, for he was a little chap—thin an’ not overstrong—so men just told him to get out of their road, else they’d knock him upsy-edgeways into the hedge.

But of course such a state of things couldn’t last.  There comed a terrible day when he turned back Mr. Matthew’s wife—Matthew being the miller to Widecombe an’ a churchwarden, an’ a man of high renown in general.  Then us had a proper tantara, p. 194an’ Matthew he took the opinion of Lawyer Pearce, an’ Pearce he had a tell with young Yelland, an’ parson Courtenay of Postbridge, he also done what he could; which was nought.  They might so well have talked to a fuzz-bush as Nicholas.  He stuck out his chin—he was a underhung toad, like a bulldog—and he said that rights was rights an’ land was land; an’ he turned on parson, like an adder, and said: “If you’ll open a footpath through your vegetable garden an’ let all Postbridge walk up an’ down it when your gooseberries be ripe, then I’ll do the same with my meadow, an’ not sooner.”

But parson, whose heart was in gooseberries, said the cases weren’t similar; an’ Nicholas held out they were.

Matters was let sink for a bit after that, but the upshot made a story, an’ people laugh yet when you tell ’em about it.

You must know that young Yelland was courting just then, an’ he’d got his hands so full with Mary Jane Arscott, the stone-breaker’s darter, that for lack of leisure—nought else—he didn’t watch his path-field so sharp as usual.  The storm died down a bit, an’ by the time that the matter of Mary Jane had come to a head, things were fallen back into the old way.  All the notice-boards was knocked down—most of ’em had floated along the river; an’ the people went to an’ fro on p. 195Yelland’s path, just as if his faither was still alive.  He’d only made a lot of enemies by his foolish conduct, an’ that thought made him so grim as a ghost, an’ poor company for every living soul.

Well, this Mary Jane was a very fine woman—rather on the big side for a girl of twenty-two; but the small men always look for a large, helpful pattern of maiden, an’ Nicholas was as much in love with her as he could be with any mortal she, despite her humble circumstances.  Her liked him too, up to a certain point; but ’twas the sort of fondness a maiden naturally gets for any young man who be very well-to-do, an’ have a fine house an’ land an’ a prosperous business.  ’Tis hard to make up your mind about such a man, specially if he’m a trifle undersized an’ underhung, an’ not generally well liked by the neighbours.  But, for all that, Mary Jane Arscott kept his beautiful farm in her eye an’ seed her way pretty clear, if it hadn’t been for a young youth by the name of Benjamin Pearn.  But for him no doubt she’d have said “yes” long ago—perhaps afore Nicholas had had time to get out his proposal of marriage, for she comed of very pauper stock, an’ had never known comfort in her life.  But this here Ben Pearn chanced to have just what t’other man lacked—a comely countenance an’ a fine, manly frame to him.  A blue-eyed, sandy-headed man—hard as nails an’ fairly p. 196prosperous for a chap only turned four or five-an’-twenty.  He was a shepherd in springtime; an’ looked after the common lands; an’ he was verger of the church; an’ he kept bees; an’ he’d lend a hand at thatching or painting of sign-boards, or harvesting, or any mortal thing.  But his father had been a famous poacher, though of course I ban’t bringing that up against the man.  Yet, with all his cleverness, he was a fool when he failed in love, as a many afore him.  ’Twas love for Mary Jane found out the soft spot in him, an’ showed that he was a thought weak in his head, for all his business, and could do an underhand deed, like anybody else in the same fix.  For when we’m struck on a maid, if us can’t see how............