Later in the evening the farmer of Coombow, coming home from a cattle fair, heard the moans and wailing in the wood, and was greatly scared by the injured horse, which had thrust itself into the hedge. So sincerely alarmed was he, and so thoroughly did his account of what he had heard and seen frighten his household, that not one of his sons—no, not all of them in phalanx, armed with pitchforks and lighted by lanthorns, would venture that night into the high road to ascertain the cause of the alarm. With morning, however, courage came, and early, when the day began to break, nearly the entire household, male and female, went out to see whether there was any natural explanation to be found for those things that had, in the darkness, so scared Farmer Facey. The horse was found. ’Why! I’m blessed if this bain’t Squire Hamlyn’s roan,’ said the farmer. ’I ought to know ’n becos I reared ’n. Now this be reg’lar curious.’ Joyce had been unable to retire with her burden far into the wood. The hillside was steep, and she could not carry the unconscious load far up. She had attempted to do so, fearing lest she should be seen, but when she raised him he moaned with pain. She was like a cat playing with a dead bird, putting it down, then lifting it and carrying it away, then putting it down again. It was not long before she was discovered and surrounded. ’Who is he? How comes he here? How did this happen? Why didn’t you bring him to the farm?’ Questions were poured upon her. She looked about her angrily, suspiciously, as a cat would look when surrounded with those who, she thinks, will deprive her of her bird, or at least dispute her sole possession of it. ’He be mine. I found ’n. I saved ’n. Capt’n Sampson Tramplara would ha’ killed ’n, but I pervented ’n.’ ’But who is he?’ ’He be the maister. He mended me when I were gone scatt. Nobody shan’t so much as touch ’n. I’ve got ’n fast, and I’ll care for ’n, that I will. There—you can go, and leave us alone here. What be you a bothering here for? I didn’t call’y.’ ’Nonsense. He must be taken into a house, and put to bed,’ said Mrs. Facey. ’Poor soul! Dear alive!’ ’He shan’t go under no house. If he goes anywhere, he shall go home.’ ’Where is his home?’ ’Where should it be but West Wyke?’ ’What! West Wyke in South Tawton?’ ’Sure-ly. Where else should it be? It don’t jump about, now here, now there, I reckon.’ After much difficulty with Joyce, who was unreasonable in her jealousy and suspicion, it was decided that the farmer should send a waggon well bedded with straw, and that Joyce should be conveyed in this, with the still insensible man in her arms, to West Wyke. There was no medical man nearer than Okehampton, and West Wyke was not as distant from Okehampton as Coombow, the place where they were. ’I arn’t got no money,’ said Joyce, ’but I’ll pay you for the waggon, sure enough.’