All eyes were on the speaker, no one noticed the tall man with the olive-skinned child on his shoulder. He himself, with thumping pulses, never ceased to watch the figures and movements in the second wagon. He saw Miss Henderson sit down and another woman also in tunic and knickers take her place. He watched her applauding the speaker, or talking with the clergyman behind her, or the lady with the lace parasol. And when the speech was over, amid a hurricane of enthusiasm, when the resolution had been put and carried, and the bells in the old church-tower began to ring out a deafening joy-peal above the dispersing crowd, he saw the American officer jump down from the speaker's wagon and return to Miss Henderson. Steps were brought, and Captain Ellesborough handed out the ladies. Then he and Rachel Henderson went away side by side, laughing and talking, towards the porch of the church, where Delane lost them from sight. The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the field where the competitions had been held in the morning, and some of the crowd with them. Another portion streamed into the church, and soon only a few scattered groups were left. The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing, which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before. When it was over, he noticed a group of elderly labourers. They had come late into the meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before they entered it Delane went up to one of them. "I'm a stranger here," he said carelessly. "Can you tell me who all these people were in the wagons?" The man addressed--who was old Halsey--gave the speaker a reconnoitring look. "Well, I dunno neither," he said cautiously, "leastways, many of 'em. There was my old missus, in the first one. She didn't want to go, dressed up in them sunbonnets. But they made such a fuss of her, she had to. There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an' I don't know nobody else." "Well, but the second wagon?" said Delane impatiently. "Oh, the second wagon. Why, that was Miss Henderson. Don't ye know 'er? I works for 'er?" "Is she on the land?" The old man laughed. "That she be! She's a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an' she frames pretty fair. She don't know much yet, but what she don't know Hastings tells, her." "Who's Hastings?" "Why, her bailiff, to be sure. You do be a stranger, not knowin' Muster Hastings?" "I'm just here for a few weeks. It's a rum business, isn't it, this of women taking farms?" Halsey nodded reflectively. "Aye, it's a queer business. But they do be cleverer at it than ye'd think. Miss Henderson's a good head-piece of her own." "And some money, I suppose?" "Well, that's not my look out, is it, so long as I gits my wages? I dessay Colonel Shepherd, ee sees to that. Well, good-day to you. I'm goin' in to get summat to drink. It's a dryin' wind to-day, and a good bit walk from Ipscombe." "Is that where you live?"