"That is just what I am thinking of, my dear; it is five o'clock now, and I have not walked as much as I should like to-day. I will go towards the quarries and give your husband a straightforward piece of my mind. No, you need offer no excuses for him; when I make up my mind to a thing, I make it up, and there is an end of it." And with this the old lady marched out at the door, her back stiffened, her right hand flourishing the belligerent-looking stick which was her inseparable companion. Strangeways, crossing the dip in the moor this side the quarries, was aware of a bony figure, three inches his master in point of height, standing across his path. "Joe Strangeways, I want a word with you." Joe thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tried to assume an air of ease; but he did not feel at home with the situation. "Well, here I stand, my masterful lady; I'm hearkening." "You have a wife who is a hundred times too good for you; she falls ill through no cause whatever but your treatment of her, and then--you drink the wine which I brought to strengthen her." "It's a lie!" cried Joe, his face blackening. "Is it a lie, Joe Strangeways?" said the old lady, that merciless eye of hers driving his own under shelter. There was a pause; then, "Who telled ye?" he blurted out. "War it Kate?" "No, it was not Kate. You think me mad, you people hereabouts--oh yes, I know all about it--but, let me tell you, I can see as far as my neighbours into the heart of a stone wall. I am not a fool, my man, and I guessed well enough what would happen if a drunkard and a bottle came together." Joe's face grew blacker than ever. He half removed one hairy fist from his pocket. "An' who are ye, I'd like to know, to come telling a man he's a drunkard?" Mrs. Lomax straightened herself and grasped her stick by the middle. "I am a woman who can support her own opinions. Joe Strangeways, I'm in two minds whether to give you a sound thrashing or not." Strangeways became limp. His mind was not quick of movement, and this reversal of a natural law dazed his perceptions; the gaunt figure seemed to tower above him in a way that was uncanny--even terrifying. "I will let you go this time, for your wife's sake," went on the old lady, with grim pleasantry. "I will give you another chance; but, mark my words--if you touch the next bottle of port I bring, you will have to account to me for it." Away she strode through the heather with that, and left the man agape with wonder. "Begow," he muttered, "she's a limb of the devil, yon, an' proper." By the time he gained Peewit House he had realized fully that he had been beaten by a woman, and a consuming hatred took him by the throat. "I'll be even wi' her yet--by God, I will!" he cried, as he stamped into the kitchen. But he left all succeeding bottles of port severely alone.