She turned, and followed the road that he pointed out. Then she put fresh water in a jam-pot, and arranged the columbines upon a little mound of sickly turf. Hard by his scythe began its measured rhythm in the heart of the green grass. CHAPTER V The light took a golden tincture before dusk, and nature rested. Mellow sunshine cast long shadows, interspersed with a tender radiance; the cottages and house-places were still; and peace brooded over hamlet and homestead, for the day’s work was done. The 10th of July sank to lovely close, and through a blue dusk one window glimmered on the confines of the village. Toward it walked a man, and in his pocket he carried a little parcel. Once he hesitated, and seemed disposed to hurl his gift into the hedge and return whence he came. But he held on, and presently reached the cottage door and knocked at it. “Might I come in an’ have a tell, Mrs. Thorn?” he asked in a deep voice. There was a moment of silence, then a fluttered uprising. “Yes, if you’m in a mind to, Mr. Lethbridge.” BENJAMIN’S MESS When Farmer Yelland died, everybody in Postbridge village was sorry—for theirselves, but not for him, mind you. Because if ever a good man went straight to glory ’twas Michael Yelland. He’d had his ups an’ downs like the best an’ worst of us; but though the poor old gentleman weern’t overblessed in his life,—nor yet his only son for that matter,—yet ’twas made up to him in a manner of speaking, for never a farm in Dartymoor did better. His things were always the first to be ready for market; his grass was always ready to cut a week ahead of his neighbours, an’ he always had fine weather to cut it in; while as for his corn an’ roots—why, at the Agricultural Show to Ashburton, it comed to be a joke all over the countryside, for first prize always went to Yelland as a regular thing. The Lord looks after His own, you see, in His own partickler way. An’ such a patient, large-hearted man as he was! When Sarah Yelland, his wife, was took off, after clacking nonsense for fifty year, us all thanked God in our hearts for her good man. For ’tweern’t a happy marriage, an’ he’d had more to put up with unbeknownst in his home circle than falls to the lot of many of us. But not an unkind word did he ever say either afore or after she died. Never would grumble about it, but kept his thoughts to hisself. I mind I met him in the churchyard six months after he’d buried his wife, an’ he was smoking his old clay pipe an’ seeing about a granite gravestone for the tomb. “So there her lies at peace,” I said in my civil way. An’ farmer takes his pipe out of his mouth an’ spits ’pon the grave, but not with any rude meaning. “Yes, John,” he says to me. “There Sarah lies, poor old dear—at peace, I hope, I’m sure. Anyway, if she’s so peaceful as I be since her’s gone, she’ll do very well.” Two year after that he was in the pit beside her, an’ the space left ’pon the stone was filled up with his vartues.