Tibby enjoyed to serve in the bar, as a change from the kitchen; and at such times, when her mistress was not by, she would discourse, mete praise and blame, waken hope here, here chasten a mind grown too confident. “Be it true, Aaron French, as you told a chap to Moreton that you knawed how the cat would jump?” she asked, on a night when the bar was full. Aaron, a sand-coloured and a sanguine man, grew hot and laughed. “Why,” he said, “a chap may put wan an’ wan together without any harm.” “No harm except to hisself. The wan an’ wan you’m putting together in your foolish head—well, her may have named your name thoughtful-like now an’ again, but not these many days now. In fact, you’d best to say nought about her to anybody, for you’m awnly like to look a fule come presently if you do. That man at your elbow might explain if he would.” Aaron French turned upon the labourer whom Tibby indicated, and sudden anger shook his high-pitched voice into a squeak. “This be your work, then, Elias Bassett,” he said, furiously. “You to dare! You—the most penniless chap ’pon Dartymoor!” The young man addressed regarded Aaron without emotion. Elias stood a head taller than his rival, was ten years younger, and very much poorer; but he had a handsome face, a sturdy body, and a stout right arm. “You’m a silly poult,” he said contemptuously. “As if a sandy-headed little monkey like you would take any maiden onless he wanted her money. An’ Mistress Merle have got two pounds for every one of yours. As for me, I doan’t care a cuss for the stuff, and wish to God ’twas all drownded in Dart. All men know that I kept company with her afore her uncle died, never knowin’ as she was gwaine to have his ill-got money; an’ I wish her never had got it; for then her might have looked at me very like. But when it comed out her was up to her neck in gold, so to say, I knowed it must stand between us, and that a gamekeeper weren’t no husband for her.” “You seed yourself as others seed you—an’ that’s a very rare thing,” said another man. “All the same, you’re a zany for your pains,” declared the old woman, who had learned what she desired to learn. “You kept company with missus—you say so. Then ’twas her place, not yours, to say what was to be done after she was lifted up in the land. I doan’t mean for a moment that she’d look at a velveteen coat, so you needn’t fox yourself as you’ve got any chance at all with her—yet her did, careless-like, name your name to me among other chaps as didn’t ’pear to have learnt any manners in their bearin’ toward women.” A strong pulse stirred Elias Bassett’s slow nature and made him stare at the withered old woman.