CHAPTER IIITHE DIPPING-POOLAGROUPof men, sitting round a blazing fire, some on heavy wooden chairs, some on a long settle, looked up as he entered. All were smoking. Those on the chairs gave them a deferential push back when they saw the new-comer.“Very damp night outside,” observed Rhys, nodding to the company.“Indeed, so it be, sir. Come you in here near to the warm-ship, Master Walters,” said a jolly-looking individual who sat closest to the chimney-corner, pointing invitingly to his next neighbour’s chair. His next neighbour, an undersized man with a goat’s beard, called Johnny Watkins, jumped up obediently.“Thanks, thanks, don’t disturb yourself,” said Rhys politely, seating himself in the corner of the settle, “this will do very well for me.”The fire-place round which they were gathered was the broad kitchen range of the Dipping-Pool Inn, in which modest establishment bar and kitchen were one and the same place. Being situated in such an out-of-the-way spot, it was too little frequented by any but the few travellers over the mountain to make any addition profitable, Hosea Evans, the landlord, whose sign hung outside, entertaining his guests comfortably in the kitchen. He was assisted in his business by one Mary Vaughan, who stood in what would have been the character of barmaid in a larger hostelry, and brought to the company such drinks as were called for from the inner room in which she sat.Within the memory of a few old people, the dried-up bed of the brook, which made a rough path to the house, had been a swift stream running into a pool before the door. This had been used for sheep-washing at one time, and Hosea, when he took the little inn, had not troubled himself to invent a new name for it; so, though its appropriateness was not apparent, the “Dipping-Pool” it remained.It was an unpretending, whitewashed house, squatting in the green creek as though ashamed to be seen within range of the public eye. Many people thought that it had reason to be so, as its present proprietor had borne an indifferent character for honesty in certain small ways, and had left Llangarth, where he had formerly lived, on account of the inconvenient attitude of local opinion. He was a thick-set, smiling man, of florid complexion, round whose broad face the red hair, beard, and whiskers formed such a perfect halo, that now, as he entered the kitchen and his head appeared over a wooden screen standing at the door, it produced something of the effect of a sunrise.“Well, Mr. Walters,” he began, when he had shut the door of the inner room carefully and sat down cumbrously beside Rhys, “and how be you minded to do?”The company took its pipe out of its mouth and turned its gaze upon the young man. There was a pause. “There’s a good deal against it,” said Rhys, returning the stare, “but let’s have a drop of something hot before we sit down to the matter. How about the kettle, Hosea, and a bottle of spirits?”“Wal, I don’t have no objection, not I,” hazarded Charley Turnbull, the man by the chimney-corner, drawing a large hand across his mouth, and reflecting that Rhys would pay for it.A call from Hosea brought in Mary Vaughan. She stood waiting while he gave the order with her eyes fixed upon Rhys, who was studiously contemplating his muddy boots; he never so much as looked up to bid her good-evening.“When you’ve brought the liquor, don’t be settin’ up, girl,”said the landlord. “Go you up-stairs and leave we to our bysiness. I’ll mind the hearth.”Mary’s look wandered over the assembly, lighting for a moment upon Rhys Walters; her eyes were large and brilliant, and shone out of her serious face like flames; there seemed to be a slow fire behind them. She made no reply, but brought what was wanted, leaving the room with an indistinct good-night.“If her did get to know, it would not do for we—indeed that it would not,” remarked Johnny Watkins, shaking his head.“Lawk! no; her would soon tell the old man,” answered Turnbull. “Be the door fast behind her, Hosea?”“Yes, sure.”“But put you the key well into the hole,” continued Charley, “that there be no sound to go through.”“Be her a wag-tongued wench?” asked a man who had not yet spoken, and who, having come from a distance, was a stranger to some of those present.“No, no,” replied Hosea, “but her father do keep the toll-gate down below Pig Lane.”“Ah, well, to be sure.”The company again sat silent while the kettle was put on to boil and the fire stirred up; a shower of sparks flew out as Hosea punched and turned the logs with a plebeian-looking poker.“Master Rhys—beg pardon, Mr. Walters, sir—no offence. Us have knowed ye since ye was no more nor a little lump of a boy,” began Charley, who regarded himself as spokesman, with the every-day result that he was quietly accepted as such. “If you be to come along of us at the time we know of, us have thought, and indeed we all do say”—here he looked round upon the men for corroboration—“that Rebecca bein’ a Bible person and a leading woman of power and glory in this job, we will be proud if you be she.”The orator stopped and replaced his pipe in his mouth as a kind of full-stop to the sentence.Rhys Walters had never before considered himself in the light of a “Bible person,” and he smiled slightly. “Is that your wish?” he inquired, scanning the faces in the firelight.“Yes, surely,” said Johnny Watkins, his squeaky voice audible above the murmur of assent. “Stevens and I were sayin’”—here he pointed to a man, who, finding himself brought under popular notice, wriggled in his chair with mingled anguish and enjoyment—“just before you come in, sir, what a beautiful female you would be.”Rhys, who had about as much resemblance to a woman as a pointer has to a lap-dog, laughed, and the others, at this, laughed too, while Johnny Watkins began to perceive in himself a wit of the highest order.“It’s very well I’m a clean-shaved man,” said Walters, stroking his lean jaw. “It wouldn’t have done for your style of looks, Hosea.”The company, being one to which a personality never failed to appeal, again roared with laughter, and Watkins saw with dismay that a greater than he had arisen; he made one mighty effort.“Yes,” he remarked, at the pitch of his penetrating voice, “yes. An a’ might have set fire to the toll-gate with a’s whiskers!”Hosea turned upon him an awful glare, for his red hair had long been a weapon in the hands of his foes. He had no sprightliness of retort, but he was determined that Johnny’s pleasantries should not continue for want of a solid, knock-down blow.“If I had a beard like a billy-goat waggin’ about under an ass’s face,” he said solemnly, “I’d keep it out o’ the sight o’ folks, for fear it might be made a mock of—that I would.”Johnny Watkins gave a gasp which made his beard wag more vehemently than ever, and retired abashed into silence.Rhys had not come through the fog at that hour of the evening to listen to profitless disputes. The matter in hand, which was a projected attack upon a toll-gate not far from Llangarth,interested him more now that he had become the prominent person in it, for he had arrived at the inn uncertain whether or no he would lend active support to the affair, it being more of a piece of out-of-the-way amusement to him than anything affecting his opinions.At this time a wave of wrath which had a considerable foundation of justice was surging over South Wales. By a general Highway Act, a new principle of road-government had been brought in, under which the trustees of turnpike roads might raise money through tolls, sufficient to pay the interest of the debts and keep the highways in repair. For this reason the gates were withdrawn from the operation of the Highway Laws, the tolls increased in amount, and every means used by those in authority to uphold the revenues of their trusts. The gates had, in some cases, been taken by professional toll-renters, men who came from a distance, and who were consequently regarded with suspicion by the intensely conservative population of the rural districts. These people, having higher rents to make up, had refused to give credit to farmers, or to allow them to compound for tolls on easy terms as had been formerly their custom.The effect of all this had been to rouse the public to a state of fury, which had resulted, in many places, in serious riots. In carrying out the provisions of their respective Acts, the trustees were under little or no control; they erected fresh gates, interpreted the laws as they thought fit, and there was no appeal from their decisions. Added to these difficulties, a succession of wet harvests, and the fall in price of live stock had reduced the farmers’ capital, and they and their dependents resented, as well they might, the new devices for raising money out of their emptying pockets.The first riot had broken out at Carmarthen, and was the signal for a series of like disturbances all over the country. Although it had taken place in May, and now, as Rhys Walters and his companions sat by the Dipping-Pool fire, the year had almost reached its end, the reign of terror created was stillgoing on, though it had not, so far, begun in Breconshire. The Carmarthen rioters had banded themselves together about three hundred strong, under a person whom the law never succeeded in identifying, and who, assuming the name of “Rebecca,” appeared dressed as a woman and mounted upon a black horse. “Rebecca and her children,” as they were called by the terrified neighbourhood, marched upon one of the gates in the town armed with every conceivable kind of weapon, pitchforks, pistols, hay-knives—to say nothing of the crowbars and the mallets which they carried with them and with which they intended to destroy the bar. “Rebecca” had been chosen as a name for their captain in reference to an Old Testament text, which tells how Rebecca, bride of Isaac, on leaving her father’s house, was blessed by Laban in these words: “Let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.”About two o’clock in the morning the strange tribe, some mounted and some on foot, had appeared near the toll and placed sentinels in the surrounding streets; and, before the astonished inhabitants, roused from their beds by the noise and the loud orders of Rebecca, could realize what was happening, the work of destruction was going bravely forward, the rioters using their implements like demons, not only upon the toll-bar, but upon all who tried to hinder them.The toll-keeper came to his door remonstrating with the mob, but his appearance provoked a shower of stones, and he fled back into shelter pursued by shouts and jeers. His wife, a brave woman and a much better man than her husband, then came out and stood quietly in the middle of the road, and, in the lull of surprise which her action provoked, entreated the leader to spare the house, as her child lay dangerously ill within. One or two of the more ruffianly flung stones at the woman, but Rebecca turned upon them, dealing one of them a blow which sent him staggering, and announcing her intention of going to find out the truth.Then, in the grey early light, the extraordinary figure, gigantic in its female dress, dismounted and stalked after the distractedmother into the toll-house. When it emerged, the order was given to retreat, and the cavalcade dashed through the wrecked gate and disappeared in various directions into the country, just as the local police, according to time-honoured custom, were arriving half-an-hour too late. One or two dismounted stragglers were caught and punished, but the ringleader and most of the offenders escaped, though every effort was made to trace them; but it was whispered with bated breath that Rebecca rode abroad in distinguished company, and that many of the younger farmers, and even the gentry, were not above suspicion.After this matters grew worse and worse. The success at Carmarthen encouraged the lawlessness that broke out on every side, and in some districts there was hardly a toll-bar remaining intact. Seeing this, the magistrates took decided action, the military were called out and special police enrolled, with the result that when the opposing forces met, each encounter was more serious and bloody than the last.The panic spread on all sides. People told each other lying tales of cruelties practised by the devastating hordes, with details which made the hair of the respectable stand upright, while children who had read of Rebecca in their Bible lessons and now gathered from their elders that she was actually going about, fancied that Old Testament days had come back. They were prepared at any moment to meet any sort of Sunday character, from Joseph in his coat of many colours to Satan himself, horned, tailed, black, and pitchforked, and without a stitch of clothes upon his unhallowed person.“I think I shall have to come with you, neighbours,” said Rhys, “and we had better be stirring and settle our doings. We should be ready for the first week of the year, for we don’t want the moon rising on us too early. She ought to be up about eleven; that would do well enough. We’d be done and home by then.”“And how about horses?” inquired Hosea. “Them knowin’old badgers in Llangarth will soon see who’s movin’. An’ ye can’t dress up a beast as ye can a man.”“Trew enough,” observed Charley Turnbull solemnly. He was beginning to wonder how he could get hold of a horse of some one else’s.“As to that, I shall ride a young mare I haven’t had above a week. She’s never been seen in the valley, and a lick of white paint down the faces of some o’ your nags, and a white stocking here and there makes a wonderful difference. Those who have white-footed ones can use the blacking brush. And you must risk something,” added Rhys, looking hard at Turnbull, and guessing his thoughts exactly.“Woman’s clothing be a fine protection,” remarked Stevens; and Turnbull wished he had not been so reckless in giving away the part of Rebecca.“Be you to ride all o’ one side like the wenches do?” inquired the man who came from a distance, “or will ye put your leg across the saddle like a Christian?”“Oh, I’ll ride astride,” said Rhys, “or I shan’t be able to lay about me so well if need be.”“Petticoats an’ all?”“I suppose so.”Here a roar of laughter went up at the thought of his appearance, which Mary could hear plainly in the room overhead.Had poor old Eli been in his son’s place, the whimsicalities of his own costume would have given him hours of study and enjoyment. But it was not so with Rhys; humour was not predominant in him. He did not live sufficiently outside himself for that.“I must look round for some sort of clothes,” he said, rather stiffly. “It would be well for everybody to have something to hide their faces. I’ll get Nannie Davis up at the farm to lend me an old sun-bonnet.”“An’ I’ll give ye a brown bit of a gown my sister Susan left here when her was over for Crishowell feast September last,”volunteered Hosea. “It’s been hangin’ behind the door ever since.”“An’ I’ll find ye a cloak more fit for a skeercrow than for any other person,” said a man called Jones. “Will ye have it?”“Oh, yes, it’ll do,” replied Rhys.“G’arge! an’ you’ll be a right hussy! Fit to skeer the old limb without any o’ we.”Here there was another laugh.“When ye spoke o’ skeercrows,” observed Johnny Watkins, who had been silent much longer than he liked, “it minds me o’ a crewel turn one o’ they figgers served my poor mother. Father could never abide the sight o’ one since.”Rhys looked encouragingly at Johnny. He was nothing loth to change the subject. “What was that?” he asked.“It were when old Hitchcock were parson down at Crishowell. He and his lady had a great notion o’ each other, an’ when each fifth of August come round—bein’ their marriage-day—any one as did go to the Vicarage with a ‘good luck to ye, sir and madam,’ or ‘many happy returns o’ the day,’ got a bottle o’ beer from Madam Hitchcock to take home an’ drink their good health in. My mother, though she were a bit hard o’ seein’, did use to go, an’ never missed a weddin’-day from the time her come to the parish to the day her was taken up on high. One year, as her went, her peered over the garden wall an’ dropped a bob to the parson as he was in the midst o’ the onion-bed standing quiet an’ lookin’ at the fruit. At the house, the missis were at the window an’ her bobbed again. ‘Wish you luck o’ this day, ma’am,’ says she. ‘Thank you, Betty,’ says madam, smilin’ sweet. ‘And good luck to the Reverend Hitchcock that’s standin’ among the onions outside. Never did I see the reverend parson look so well an’ handsome,’ says mother, smilin’ an’ laughin’ more than was needful, her bein’ a bit bashful. The lady give a look at her so as poor mother were fairly dazed, an’ down come the window wi’ a bang an’ madam was gone. Mother waited there three-quartersof an hour full, until a lad were sent out to tell her to go home an’ no ale. One day as her an’ father was passin’, her said to father, says mother, ‘Hitchcock be a wonderful man for flowers. Never a day do I go by but he’s there squintin’ at them.’“‘Lawk, you poor foondy1woman,’ says father, ‘do parson have straw round a’s legs? ’Tis the skeercrow.’ An’ when he found how the dummy had cheated him out o’ his beer, never could he look one i’ the face again. ’Twas crewel, that it was.”1Foolish.
AGROUPof men, sitting round a blazing fire, some on heavy wooden chairs, some on a long settle, looked up as he entered. All were smoking. Those on the chairs gave them a deferential push back when they saw the new-comer.
“Very damp night outside,” observed Rhys, nodding to the company.
“Indeed, so it be, sir. Come you in here near to the warm-ship, Master Walters,” said a jolly-looking individual who sat closest to the chimney-corner, pointing invitingly to his next neighbour’s chair. His next neighbour, an undersized man with a goat’s beard, called Johnny Watkins, jumped up obediently.
“Thanks, thanks, don’t disturb yourself,” said Rhys politely, seating himself in the corner of the settle, “this will do very well for me.”
The fire-place round which they were gathered was the broad kitchen range of the Dipping-Pool Inn, in which modest establishment bar and kitchen were one and the same place. Being situated in such an out-of-the-way spot, it was too little frequented by any but the few travellers over the mountain to make any addition profitable, Hosea Evans, the landlord, whose sign hung outside, entertaining his guests comfortably in the kitchen. He was assisted in his business by one Mary Vaughan, who stood in what would have been the character of barmaid in a larger hostelry, and brought to the company such drinks as were called for from the inner room in which she sat.Within the memory of a few old people, the dried-up bed of the brook, which made a rough path to the house, had been a swift stream running into a pool before the door. This had been used for sheep-washing at one time, and Hosea, when he took the little inn, had not troubled himself to invent a new name for it; so, though its appropriateness was not apparent, the “Dipping-Pool” it remained.
It was an unpretending, whitewashed house, squatting in the green creek as though ashamed to be seen within range of the public eye. Many people thought that it had reason to be so, as its present proprietor had borne an indifferent character for honesty in certain small ways, and had left Llangarth, where he had formerly lived, on account of the inconvenient attitude of local opinion. He was a thick-set, smiling man, of florid complexion, round whose broad face the red hair, beard, and whiskers formed such a perfect halo, that now, as he entered the kitchen and his head appeared over a wooden screen standing at the door, it produced something of the effect of a sunrise.
“Well, Mr. Walters,” he began, when he had shut the door of the inner room carefully and sat down cumbrously beside Rhys, “and how be you minded to do?”
The company took its pipe out of its mouth and turned its gaze upon the young man. There was a pause. “There’s a good deal against it,” said Rhys, returning the stare, “but let’s have a drop of something hot before we sit down to the matter. How about the kettle, Hosea, and a bottle of spirits?”
“Wal, I don’t have no objection, not I,” hazarded Charley Turnbull, the man by the chimney-corner, drawing a large hand across his mouth, and reflecting that Rhys would pay for it.
A call from Hosea brought in Mary Vaughan. She stood waiting while he gave the order with her eyes fixed upon Rhys, who was studiously contemplating his muddy boots; he never so much as looked up to bid her good-evening.
“When you’ve brought the liquor, don’t be settin’ up, girl,”said the landlord. “Go you up-stairs and leave we to our bysiness. I’ll mind the hearth.”
Mary’s look wandered over the assembly, lighting for a moment upon Rhys Walters; her eyes were large and brilliant, and shone out of her serious face like flames; there seemed to be a slow fire behind them. She made no reply, but brought what was wanted, leaving the room with an indistinct good-night.
“If her did get to know, it would not do for we—indeed that it would not,” remarked Johnny Watkins, shaking his head.
“Lawk! no; her would soon tell the old man,” answered Turnbull. “Be the door fast behind her, Hosea?”
“Yes, sure.”
“But put you the key well into the hole,” continued Charley, “that there be no sound to go through.”
“Be her a wag-tongued wench?” asked a man who had not yet spoken, and who, having come from a distance, was a stranger to some of those present.
“No, no,” replied Hosea, “but her father do keep the toll-gate down below Pig Lane.”
“Ah, well, to be sure.”
The company again sat silent while the kettle was put on to boil and the fire stirred up; a shower of sparks flew out as Hosea punched and turned the logs with a plebeian-looking poker.
“Master Rhys—beg pardon, Mr. Walters, sir—no offence. Us have knowed ye since ye was no more nor a little lump of a boy,” began Charley, who regarded himself as spokesman, with the every-day result that he was quietly accepted as such. “If you be to come along of us at the time we know of, us have thought, and indeed we all do say”—here he looked round upon the men for corroboration—“that Rebecca bein’ a Bible person and a leading woman of power and glory in this job, we will be proud if you be she.”
The orator stopped and replaced his pipe in his mouth as a kind of full-stop to the sentence.
Rhys Walters had never before considered himself in the light of a “Bible person,” and he smiled slightly. “Is that your wish?” he inquired, scanning the faces in the firelight.
“Yes, surely,” said Johnny Watkins, his squeaky voice audible above the murmur of assent. “Stevens and I were sayin’”—here he pointed to a man, who, finding himself brought under popular notice, wriggled in his chair with mingled anguish and enjoyment—“just before you come in, sir, what a beautiful female you would be.”
Rhys, who had about as much resemblance to a woman as a pointer has to a lap-dog, laughed, and the others, at this, laughed too, while Johnny Watkins began to perceive in himself a wit of the highest order.
“It’s very well I’m a clean-shaved man,” said Walters, stroking his lean jaw. “It wouldn’t have done for your style of looks, Hosea.”
The company, being one to which a personality never failed to appeal, again roared with laughter, and Watkins saw with dismay that a greater than he had arisen; he made one mighty effort.
“Yes,” he remarked, at the pitch of his penetrating voice, “yes. An a’ might have set fire to the toll-gate with a’s whiskers!”
Hosea turned upon him an awful glare, for his red hair had long been a weapon in the hands of his foes. He had no sprightliness of retort, but he was determined that Johnny’s pleasantries should not continue for want of a solid, knock-down blow.
“If I had a beard like a billy-goat waggin’ about under an ass’s face,” he said solemnly, “I’d keep it out o’ the sight o’ folks, for fear it might be made a mock of—that I would.”
Johnny Watkins gave a gasp which made his beard wag more vehemently than ever, and retired abashed into silence.
Rhys had not come through the fog at that hour of the evening to listen to profitless disputes. The matter in hand, which was a projected attack upon a toll-gate not far from Llangarth,interested him more now that he had become the prominent person in it, for he had arrived at the inn uncertain whether or no he would lend active support to the affair, it being more of a piece of out-of-the-way amusement to him than anything affecting his opinions.
At this time a wave of wrath which had a considerable foundation of justice was surging over South Wales. By a general Highway Act, a new principle of road-government had been brought in, under which the trustees of turnpike roads might raise money through tolls, sufficient to pay the interest of the debts and keep the highways in repair. For this reason the gates were withdrawn from the operation of the Highway Laws, the tolls increased in amount, and every means used by those in authority to uphold the revenues of their trusts. The gates had, in some cases, been taken by professional toll-renters, men who came from a distance, and who were consequently regarded with suspicion by the intensely conservative population of the rural districts. These people, having higher rents to make up, had refused to give credit to farmers, or to allow them to compound for tolls on easy terms as had been formerly their custom.
The effect of all this had been to rouse the public to a state of fury, which had resulted, in many places, in serious riots. In carrying out the provisions of their respective Acts, the trustees were under little or no control; they erected fresh gates, interpreted the laws as they thought fit, and there was no appeal from their decisions. Added to these difficulties, a succession of wet harvests, and the fall in price of live stock had reduced the farmers’ capital, and they and their dependents resented, as well they might, the new devices for raising money out of their emptying pockets.
The first riot had broken out at Carmarthen, and was the signal for a series of like disturbances all over the country. Although it had taken place in May, and now, as Rhys Walters and his companions sat by the Dipping-Pool fire, the year had almost reached its end, the reign of terror created was stillgoing on, though it had not, so far, begun in Breconshire. The Carmarthen rioters had banded themselves together about three hundred strong, under a person whom the law never succeeded in identifying, and who, assuming the name of “Rebecca,” appeared dressed as a woman and mounted upon a black horse. “Rebecca and her children,” as they were called by the terrified neighbourhood, marched upon one of the gates in the town armed with every conceivable kind of weapon, pitchforks, pistols, hay-knives—to say nothing of the crowbars and the mallets which they carried with them and with which they intended to destroy the bar. “Rebecca” had been chosen as a name for their captain in reference to an Old Testament text, which tells how Rebecca, bride of Isaac, on leaving her father’s house, was blessed by Laban in these words: “Let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.”
About two o’clock in the morning the strange tribe, some mounted and some on foot, had appeared near the toll and placed sentinels in the surrounding streets; and, before the astonished inhabitants, roused from their beds by the noise and the loud orders of Rebecca, could realize what was happening, the work of destruction was going bravely forward, the rioters using their implements like demons, not only upon the toll-bar, but upon all who tried to hinder them.
The toll-keeper came to his door remonstrating with the mob, but his appearance provoked a shower of stones, and he fled back into shelter pursued by shouts and jeers. His wife, a brave woman and a much better man than her husband, then came out and stood quietly in the middle of the road, and, in the lull of surprise which her action provoked, entreated the leader to spare the house, as her child lay dangerously ill within. One or two of the more ruffianly flung stones at the woman, but Rebecca turned upon them, dealing one of them a blow which sent him staggering, and announcing her intention of going to find out the truth.
Then, in the grey early light, the extraordinary figure, gigantic in its female dress, dismounted and stalked after the distractedmother into the toll-house. When it emerged, the order was given to retreat, and the cavalcade dashed through the wrecked gate and disappeared in various directions into the country, just as the local police, according to time-honoured custom, were arriving half-an-hour too late. One or two dismounted stragglers were caught and punished, but the ringleader and most of the offenders escaped, though every effort was made to trace them; but it was whispered with bated breath that Rebecca rode abroad in distinguished company, and that many of the younger farmers, and even the gentry, were not above suspicion.
After this matters grew worse and worse. The success at Carmarthen encouraged the lawlessness that broke out on every side, and in some districts there was hardly a toll-bar remaining intact. Seeing this, the magistrates took decided action, the military were called out and special police enrolled, with the result that when the opposing forces met, each encounter was more serious and bloody than the last.
The panic spread on all sides. People told each other lying tales of cruelties practised by the devastating hordes, with details which made the hair of the respectable stand upright, while children who had read of Rebecca in their Bible lessons and now gathered from their elders that she was actually going about, fancied that Old Testament days had come back. They were prepared at any moment to meet any sort of Sunday character, from Joseph in his coat of many colours to Satan himself, horned, tailed, black, and pitchforked, and without a stitch of clothes upon his unhallowed person.
“I think I shall have to come with you, neighbours,” said Rhys, “and we had better be stirring and settle our doings. We should be ready for the first week of the year, for we don’t want the moon rising on us too early. She ought to be up about eleven; that would do well enough. We’d be done and home by then.”
“And how about horses?” inquired Hosea. “Them knowin’old badgers in Llangarth will soon see who’s movin’. An’ ye can’t dress up a beast as ye can a man.”
“Trew enough,” observed Charley Turnbull solemnly. He was beginning to wonder how he could get hold of a horse of some one else’s.
“As to that, I shall ride a young mare I haven’t had above a week. She’s never been seen in the valley, and a lick of white paint down the faces of some o’ your nags, and a white stocking here and there makes a wonderful difference. Those who have white-footed ones can use the blacking brush. And you must risk something,” added Rhys, looking hard at Turnbull, and guessing his thoughts exactly.
“Woman’s clothing be a fine protection,” remarked Stevens; and Turnbull wished he had not been so reckless in giving away the part of Rebecca.
“Be you to ride all o’ one side like the wenches do?” inquired the man who came from a distance, “or will ye put your leg across the saddle like a Christian?”
“Oh, I’ll ride astride,” said Rhys, “or I shan’t be able to lay about me so well if need be.”
“Petticoats an’ all?”
“I suppose so.”
Here a roar of laughter went up at the thought of his appearance, which Mary could hear plainly in the room overhead.
Had poor old Eli been in his son’s place, the whimsicalities of his own costume would have given him hours of study and enjoyment. But it was not so with Rhys; humour was not predominant in him. He did not live sufficiently outside himself for that.
“I must look round for some sort of clothes,” he said, rather stiffly. “It would be well for everybody to have something to hide their faces. I’ll get Nannie Davis up at the farm to lend me an old sun-bonnet.”
“An’ I’ll give ye a brown bit of a gown my sister Susan left here when her was over for Crishowell feast September last,”volunteered Hosea. “It’s been hangin’ behind the door ever since.”
“An’ I’ll find ye a cloak more fit for a skeercrow than for any other person,” said a man called Jones. “Will ye have it?”
“Oh, yes, it’ll do,” replied Rhys.
“G’arge! an’ you’ll be a right hussy! Fit to skeer the old limb without any o’ we.”
Here there was another laugh.
“When ye spoke o’ skeercrows,” observed Johnny Watkins, who had been silent much longer than he liked, “it minds me o’ a crewel turn one o’ they figgers served my poor mother. Father could never abide the sight o’ one since.”
Rhys looked encouragingly at Johnny. He was nothing loth to change the subject. “What was that?” he asked.
“It were when old Hitchcock were parson down at Crishowell. He and his lady had a great notion o’ each other, an’ when each fifth of August come round—bein’ their marriage-day—any one as did go to the Vicarage with a ‘good luck to ye, sir and madam,’ or ‘many happy returns o’ the day,’ got a bottle o’ beer from Madam Hitchcock to take home an’ drink their good health in. My mother, though she were a bit hard o’ seein’, did use to go, an’ never missed a weddin’-day from the time her come to the parish to the day her was taken up on high. One year, as her went, her peered over the garden wall an’ dropped a bob to the parson as he was in the midst o’ the onion-bed standing quiet an’ lookin’ at the fruit. At the house, the missis were at the window an’ her bobbed again. ‘Wish you luck o’ this day, ma’am,’ says she. ‘Thank you, Betty,’ says madam, smilin’ sweet. ‘And good luck to the Reverend Hitchcock that’s standin’ among the onions outside. Never did I see the reverend parson look so well an’ handsome,’ says mother, smilin’ an’ laughin’ more than was needful, her bein’ a bit bashful. The lady give a look at her so as poor mother were fairly dazed, an’ down come the window wi’ a bang an’ madam was gone. Mother waited there three-quartersof an hour full, until a lad were sent out to tell her to go home an’ no ale. One day as her an’ father was passin’, her said to father, says mother, ‘Hitchcock be a wonderful man for flowers. Never a day do I go by but he’s there squintin’ at them.’
“‘Lawk, you poor foondy1woman,’ says father, ‘do parson have straw round a’s legs? ’Tis the skeercrow.’ An’ when he found how the dummy had cheated him out o’ his beer, never could he look one i’ the face again. ’Twas crewel, that it was.”
1Foolish.