MR. POTTER: (Drawing near and speaking in hushed voice) If you be ... set on a-doin’ of it ... very determined on ... the deed, sir, your best way is to—hist! A pistol ... no, a musket ... some good dark night. Hist—Potter’s mum! SIR JOHN: You don’t love him, I think? MR. POTTER: Love him? Well, there be things ’as ’appened ’ereabouts as no one can’t swear agin nobody, d’ye see, an’ yet ... old Pen knows more than she dare speak, I rackon, an’ Potter ain’t blind nor yet deaf. SIR JOHN: What kind of things? MR. POTTER: Well, theer was poor Dick Hobden as went a-walkin’ one evenin’ Windover way wi’ Lucy Price, a rare handsome lass. Poor Dick were found stone dead next day, but the lass vanished an’ nobody never seen her no more, nor never will, I reckon. SIR JOHN: Vanished? MR. POTTER: Ay, like Mary Beal as disappeared and came back and drownded of ’erself, pore lass. There was Ruth Wicks as likewise vanished an’ was found weeks arterwards singin’ in the dark atop o’ Windover ... died mad, she did. There was other lasses as disappeared from Wilmington an’ Litlin’ton an’ never come back. SIR JOHN: A hateful tale! MR. POTTER: It be, sir. SIR JOHN: And whom do you suspect? MR. POTTER: Mum for that, sir! But there be folk as Potter would be j’yful to ’ave the skinnin’ of—— SIR JOHN: You mean my Lord Sayle and Sturton—— MR. POTTER: Hist—sir! Speak soft! I don’t mean nothin’. Only what one bids t’other obeys.... And now Lord Sayle swears he’ll ruin all on us—every man an’ bye, ah, wumman, maid an’ babe, not forgettin’ wives an’ widders. SIR JOHN: How so? MR. POTTER: He’s took an oath to put down “the trade,” d’ye see. Potter be a inoffensive creater’ as never drawed steel in his life—except mebbe now and then—I prefers a short bat ... and never fired a shot in all my days—except p’r’aps once or twice an’ then only when com-pelled.... Ah, a peaceable man be Potter, but.... Here Mr. Potter laid finger to lip and looked slantwise at Sir John beneath lifted eyebrow. And then old Penelope called them; and, glancing round, Sir John was amazed to behold her clad in a sumptuous gown whose voluminous silken folds lent her a strangely arresting dignity, while upon her snowy hair was a mob cap marvellously belaced. “Aye, it be real silk, young man!” quoth she, with a little shake in her voice. “List to it rustle!” And sighing ecstatically, she spread out the rich folds with her gnarled old fingers. “There bean’t a grander dress nowhere.... Jarge give it me las’ Christmas. ’Tidn’t often I wears it, no ... but when I die, I’ll be buried in it—won’t I, Jarge?” “Aye, aye, Pen!” nodded Mr. Potter. “But, Lord—’oo’s a-talkin’ o’ dyin’! Be the kittle abilin’?”