"Nature don't go down; 'tis us that do," replied Beer; "an' if the storm haven't taught him that, nothing won't. 'Tis no sense your telling that sort o' rummage, Kek, an' very well you know it." "Not but the gentleman have his black moments," continued Woodman. "I've seed him pass by me many a time wi' a cloud on's face, an' a puzzled look in his eyes, as if he was trying to read in a book an' couldn't catch the meaning. Essterday he stood in the opeway an' stared out afore him so grim as a ghost, as if he might have been waiting a message from the sky." "He'll get a message as he won't like the taste of afore long," foretold Beer. "He don't go about the right way to larn, I'm sure--to say it without offence," added Woodman. "He won't larn nought from you dumpheads, that's sartain," said Kekewich. "But he'm far off a fool, an' his heart's got eyes if his head haven't. When all's said, 'tis for his lady an' his darter he thinks an' plans. He lies waking o' nights for the honour an' glory of the family. Things will fall out right yet, an us shall live to see it." "'Tis very well, though you'm the first to holler 'ruin' yourself most days," retorted Beer, rather indignant that Kekewich should thus take up a position so unusual. "Us all knows the man do mean well as an angel, yet it looks a very unhandsome thing to thrust his maiden into matrimony with a chap she hates like sin." "So it do," assented Woodman. "You'm right, Richard. He'll take his stand behind his darter's welfare an' put a husband she hates upon her. Wise it may be; Christian it ban't. But everything's cut and dried now, and Mordecai Cockey, the journeyman tailor, be coming in six weeks to make the clothes, so my wife tells me." "The maiden's Malherb, faither or no faither," said Beer, "and Dinah, as understands such affairs, have marked by many a foretoken that she won't wed out of her heart--not for fifty faithers." "Matters be coming to a climax then," declared Harvey Woodman solemnly. "My wife dreamed o' blood t'other night; an' for my part I've seen Childe's tomb in my dreams, wi' Childe hisself rising up like a ragged foreign bear. I do hate for things to come in a heap this way. Ban't natural we should be called upon to suffer more ills than one to a time. There's the whole Book of Lamentations bearing down on Fox Tor Farm in my opinion, an' I'd so soon be away as not." "He've got money, however," argued Beer. "Money will stem a good few mortal ills, let them as haven't got none say what they please."