"Then you're a fool for your pains. Haven't I eyes in my head, old chap? Didn't I watch you two the other night, and see the hide-and-seek in her eyes, and hear her cut you to ribbons with her little red tongue?" "What of that? I don't see that it helps me." "No, of course you don't see, because you know as much of women as you did the day you were born. It means just this--you can go in and win her. Only you won't; you're so damnably humble in the wrong places, and cock-a-whoop when soberness would fit you better." "Do you mean that, Griff? Do you think--nay, nay, it's too good; it can't be. She as much as tells me I'm a canting fool--and sometimes she almost makes me believe it," he added reflectively. "Do you good. What an ass you are, old fellow, somehow." The preacher bit his lip, and seemed minded to retort; but he thought better of it, and struck off into a fresh channel of talk. "There are changes in the countryside," he ventured presently. "The old mill is taken, Frender's Folly is taken, and now Wynyates----" "Frender's Folly let?" echoed Griff. "I thought it was past hope by this time. Who has taken it?" "Some sporting chap that has his pockets lined with gold." "Frender's pockets were lined with gold, too, when he set out to build the Folly. I wish to the deuce these foreigners would spend their money elsewhere, instead of building palaces in the middle of the moor; the moor doesn't want them." "_Foreigners_, Griff?" said the preacher, with a good, hearty laugh. "It's easy to tell that you come from hereabouts." "Well, so they are foreigners. What does a moor house want with a couple of ball-rooms, terraces and gardens and hot-houses? Thank goodness, it lies outside Marshcotes moor, at any rate; they must make the best of it on the Cranshaw side." "Captain Laverack--the man who's taken it--has a daughter, and they say she is pretty to look at," observed Gabriel, after another long pause. Griff laughed to himself; he could read very clearly what was in the preacher's mind--his clumsy attempt to divert his rival's attentions to other quarters. "Oh, has he? Does she ever stray as far as Ling Crag?" "Now and then she rides this way. There's something queer about the business--so folk say--for the lass goes about with a face as long as a fiddle, and now and then she rides her horse shamefully hard, as if the devil was in her. Month in and month out they live at Frender's Folly, the girl and her father, and never get away for a holiday, as great folk mostly do." "Gabriel, it does one good to hear you talking gossip! Man, you're changing in spite of yourself." "I was thinking," went on Gabriel, in his honest, stubborn way, "that perhaps she is not as happy as she might be, and--it's time you were settled in life, Griff."