'Do you mane that?' she saith--I mind it as if 'twas
yesterday--'Then I'll take 'ee to mun. 'Ere, look 'ee! I'll give 'ee
time to think about it, and if you mane to go sarch for mun, do you
meet me here with your clothes o' this day fortnight when the moon
rises.'
"And with that she went away and showed herself down Ashacombe ways
'most every day, to make folks think she was busy thereabouts--that
false and artful she was. But when the days was gone, and mortal long
days they was to me, she was waiting for me as she said, for I wasn't
agoing to change my mind; and then it was that she brought me to this
house and told me to mark the way well. We stayed here till night, and
then we started off walking across the moor, the both of us, until
morning, for she wasn't going to let a maid like me walk by myself, she
said. We took a bit of mate with us and flint and steel, and many was
the things that she taught to me on the road for a body to make herself
nighly as comfortable in the open air as in ever a house.
"We walked night-times only till we was fifty miles away from home, and
then we could keep the road middling well, though I kept my bonnet tied
across my face. And so we drew nigh to Gloucester town, and then the
old Betsy told me that Jan was there with his ridgment, and that I must
find he by myself. And she wished me good-bye, and then the poor soul
fell a-crying, for she said that there was no one left now to be kind
to her.
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