She lent him her shoulder across the room and strove by the dumb show of her love to give him what comfort she might, what sympathy. But tears choked her, and she thought with anguish that he was conquered. The unbreakable old man was broken. Shame and not the loss of his money had broken him. It would not have surprised her had he kept his bed next day. But either there was still some spring of youth in him, or old age had hardened him, for he rose as usual, though the effort was apparent. He ate his breakfast in gloomy silence, and about an hour before noon he declared it his will to go out. Josina doubted if he was fit for it, but whatever the Squire willed his womenfolk accepted, and she offered to go with him. He would not have her, he would have Calamy—perhaps because Calamy knew nothing. “Take me to the stable,” he said. And Josina thought “He is going to see the old mare—to bid her farewell.” It certainly was to his old favorite that he went, and he stood for some minutes in her box, feeling her ears and passing his hand between her forelegs to learn if she were properly cleaned; while the grey smelled delicately about his head, and nuzzled with her lips in his pockets. “Ay,” said Calamy after a while, “she were a trig thing in her time, but it’s past. And what are the legs of a horse when it’s a race wi’ ruin?” “What’s that?” The Squire let his stick fall to the ground. “What do you mean?” he asked, and straightened himself, resting his hand on the mare’s withers. “They be all trotting and cantering,” Calamy continued with zest, as he picked up the stick, “trotting and cantering into town since morning, them as arn’t galloping. They be covering all the roads wi’ the splatter and sound of them. But I’m thinking they’ll lose the race.” “What do you mean?” the Squire growled. Something of his old asperity had come back to him. “Mean, master? Why, that Ovington’s got the shutters up, or as good. Their notes is no better than last year’s leaves, I’m told. And all the country riding and spurring in on the chance of getting change for ’em before it’s too late! Such-like fools I never see—as if the townsfolk will have left anything for them! Watkins o’ the Griffin, he’s three fi-pun notes of theirs, and he was away before it was light, and Blick the pig-killer and the overseer with him, in his tax-cart. And parson he’s gone on his nag—trust Parson for ever thinking o’ the moth and rust except o’ Sunday! They’ve tithe money of his. And the old maid as live genteel in the villa at the far end o’ the street, she’ve hired farmer Harris’s cart—white as a sheet she was, I’m told! Wouldn’t even stay to have the mud wiped off, and she so particular! And there’s three more of ’em started to walk it. I’m told the road is black with them—weavers from the Valleys and their missuses, every sort of ’em with a note in his fist! There was two of them came here, wanted to see Mr. Arthur—thought he could do something for ’em.”