It was decided that the girl should come early on Sunday morning for her tabby peacemaker, and meantime Mr. Oldreive and his son were to be acquainted with the plot. As for Amos, he was an easy man, and had not slain his neighbour’s poaching cat excepting under grave provocation. Ever since the deed he had regretted it, but he had never confessed to the actual crime excepting in the ears of Milly and Ted. Nobody had officially announced the death of his cat to Mr. Sage. Therefore, Milly hoped he would accept the stranger as his own, and suffer peace to return amongst them. The Oldreives, much cowed by Noah’s attitude and frightened by his illness, gladly promised to do all they might for his daughter, and when Sunday came, she started for Princetown after an early breakfast and left her father behind her. He was in better health again, and she noticed, as an unusual circumstance, that he appeared very full of his own affairs upon that morning, and clearly desired her room more than her company. With a heavy basket she set off homeward by nine o’clock. Inside the wickerwork a new ‘Corban,’ after protesting once or twice at the narrowness of its quarters, curled round nose to tail, abandoned itself to the freaks of chance and digested an ample breakfast. But midway between Princetown and Postbridge, where the road traversed the high Moor and stretched like a white thread between granite hills and glimmering marsh-lands, from whence the breeding plover called, Milly nearly dropped her basket. For along the way, in a borrowed market-cart behind his own brown pony, came her father. “Why, where on airth be you drivin’ to, my auld dear?” she asked; and Mr. Sage, puffing and growing very red, made answer:— “I be gwaine up-long to Princetown to holy worship.” Now this was an action absolutely unparalleled. “To church! What for?” “If you must knaw, ’tis that I may forbid your banns wi’ Ted Oldreive. No use to fret nor cry. I be firm as a rock ’pon it; an’ I be gwaine to deny them banns afore the face of the Lord an’ the people.” “Why ever should ’e do such a cruel thing, dear faither?” “Because no blood o’ mine be gwaine to mix wi’ that murdering villain’s.” “He never told you he shot ‘Corban.’” “D’you doubt it? Don’t the whole of Dartmoor know it?” “Let me get up in the cart an’ sit beside you,” said Milly. “I want for you to look in this here basket.” She leapt from the step to the driving-seat beside her father; then opened the basket. Grateful for this sudden light and air, her burden gazed out, yawned, showed perfect teeth, black lips, and a pink mouth; then jumping boldly on to Mr. Sage’s scanty lap, rubbed against him and purred deeply, while its upright tail brushed his chin. “God’s goodness!” cried the old man, and nearly fell out into the road.