“What’s the matter with Ned Bowden. When did you see him last?” His shrewd light eyes noted her lips quivering, and the stain on her cheeks. “It’s--it’s a month now.” “Is it--is it?” was all Steer said. But he flicked the mare sharply with his whip, thinking: ‘What’s this? Didn’t like that fellow’s face--was he makin’ game of us?’ Steer was an abstemious man; a tot of sloe gin before he embarked for home was the extent of his usual potations at ‘The Drake.’ But that day he took two tots because of the grin on the face of Bowden, who would sit an hour and more after he had gone, absorbing gin and cider. Was that grin meant for him and for his niece? A discreet man, too, he let a fortnight pass while he watched out. Ned Bowden did not come to church, nor was he seen at Steer’s. Molly looked pale and peaky. And something deep stirred in Steer. ‘If he don’t mean to keep his word to her,’ he thought, ‘I’ll have the law of him, young pup!’ People talked no more freely to Steer than he to them; and another week had passed before he had fresh evidence. It came after a parish meeting from the schoolmistress, a grey-haired, single lady, much respected. “I don’t like Molly looking so pale and daverdy, Mr. Steer. I’m grieved about Ned Bowden, I thought he was a steady boy.” “What about him?” “That girl at Bowden’s.” Steer flopped into the depths of consciousness. So everybody round had known, maybe for weeks, that his niece was being jilted for that cross-bred slut; known, and been grinning up their sleeves, had they? And that evening he announced: “I’m goin’ round to Bowden’s, Molly.” She coloured, then went pale. “They shan’t put it up on you,” he said, “I’ll see to that. Give me that ring of his--I may want it.” Molly Winch silently slipped off her amethyst engagement ring, and gave it him. Steer put on his best hat, breeches and gaiters, took a thin stick, and set out. Corn harvest was coming near, and he crossed a field of his own wheat into a field of Bowden’s oats. Steer was the only farmer round about who grew wheat. Wheat! In Bowden’s view it was all his politics! But Steer was thinking: ‘My wheat’s lookin’ well--don’t think much of these oats’ (another of his ‘foreign expressions’; oats were ‘corn’ to Bowden). ‘He’ll have no straw.’ He had not been in Bowden’s yard since the day he executed the yellow whippet dog, and his calf twitched--the brute had given it a shrewd nip. The girl Pansy opened the door to him. And, seeing the flush rise into her pale cheeks, he thought: ‘If I were to lay my stick across your back you’d know it, my girl.’ Bowden had just finished his supper of bacon, beans and cider, and was smoking his pipe before the embers of a wood fire. He did not get up, and there seemed to Steer something studied and insulting in the way he nodded to a chair. He sat down with his stick across his knees, while the girl went quickly out. “Butiful evenin’,” said Bowden. “Fine weather for the corn. Drink o’ cider?”