But of course such a state of things couldn’t last. There comed a terrible day when he turned back Mr. Matthew’s wife—Matthew being the miller to Widecombe an’ a churchwarden, an’ a man of high renown in general. Then us had a proper tantara, an’ Matthew he took the opinion of Lawyer Pearce, an’ Pearce he had a tell with young Yelland, an’ parson Courtenay of Postbridge, he also done what he could; which was nought. They might so well have talked to a fuzz-bush as Nicholas. He stuck out his chin—he was a underhung toad, like a bulldog—and he said that rights was rights an’ land was land; an’ he turned on parson, like an adder, and said: “If you’ll open a footpath through your vegetable garden an’ let all Postbridge walk up an’ down it when your gooseberries be ripe, then I’ll do the same with my meadow, an’ not sooner.” But parson, whose heart was in gooseberries, said the cases weren’t similar; an’ Nicholas held out they were. Matters was let sink for a bit after that, but the upshot made a story, an’ people laugh yet when you tell ’em about it. You must know that young Yelland was courting just then, an’ he’d got his hands so full with Mary Jane Arscott, the stone-breaker’s darter, that for lack of leisure—nought else—he didn’t watch his path-field so sharp as usual. The storm died down a bit, an’ by the time that the matter of Mary Jane had come to a head, things were fallen back into the old way. All the notice-boards was knocked down—most of ’em had floated along the river; an’ the people went to an’ fro on Yelland’s path, just as if his faither was still alive. He’d only made a lot of enemies by his foolish conduct, an’ that thought made him so grim as a ghost, an’ poor company for every living soul.