"What should I mean? We knaw by this time, I reckon, what hes chanced. D’ye think snod Mistress Ratcliffe came an’ swopped herseln just out o’ love for Mistress Nell? Not she; ’twas for love o’ Maister hisseln, if I know owt." "Tha’rt bitter, Hiram," cried Martha. "An’ thee to hev fought for him nobbut a few hours gone by!" Hiram spoke in a tone which Martha had heard more than once before—a grave, troubled voice that had a certain dignity of its own. "I’m bitter, lass, an’ tha says right," he went on. "He shaped like a man, did th’ Maister, up at th’ weshing-pools, an’ I warmed to him. But what then? Nanny Witherlee telled me, just afore she gat her back to Marshcotes, that she’d crossed to th’ hall a while sin’, an’ fund th’ pair on ’em—nay, it fair roughens me to think on ’t." "Well, an’ let ’em do as they’ve a mind to, poor folk, says I," put in Martha. "She’s no Ratcliffe, isn’t Mistress Janet, not at th’ heart of her." "She carries th’ name, choose what, an’ that’s enough to mak most on us hod our nostrils tight. Well, he war born shameless, an’ shameless he’s like to dee." "I doan’t believe it!" cried shepherd Jose, striking his pewter on the table. "That’s an owd tale o’ thine an’ Nanny’s, Hiram, but I’m ower fond o’ th’ Maister myseln to think he’d do owt so shameless-crazy as wed a Ratcliffe. Ay, tha should bite thy tongue off for whispering sich a thing." Again Wayne lifted his head and looked straight in through the doorway, himself unseen across the moonlit strip of yard which stood between the garden and the kitchen. Hiram’s wryness was no more to him than the thistle-burrs which waited for him during any of his usual walks about the fields; but the shepherd’s plain kindliness toward him, the shepherd’s quiet assurance that there could be naught ’twixt Janet and himself, touched him to the quick. In vain he mocked himself for hearkening to what such folk as these could find to say of him; he stayed stone-still, his arms upon the rounded garden-wall, and heard them wear the matter threadbare with their talk. And there was not one—save Martha—who augured less than disaster from the match. "Good hap, my very dogs will turn next and look askance at me," muttered Wayne.