"You'd best to be careful, all the same," said Woodman. "The woman as you meets half-way, often makes you go t'other half afore you think you've started." "I won't hear no word against that female from you or any man," declared Thomas Putt, growing very red. "From me you certainly won't, seeing as I never heard tell of her afore this minute," replied Woodman calmly. "Only, as a married man, I say go slow. When a girl tells you such eyes as yourn be beautiful, she's getting to that state of mind when they put a home of their own afore truth and common sense an' everything." Putt was about to answer rather warmly when Richard Beer appeared. His beard blew about him; his eyes were sunk into his head, and dull care stared from them. "It's come!" he said. "I've held my peace these twenty-four hours; an' longer I will not. The ill luck have set in! There's no more doubt about it." "Have it hit you?" asked Putt, his anger vanishing; "because if so, us ban't safe neither." "Not directly. It strikes the farm. There's scores o' dozens o' moles in the meadow; and the rats have come to the pig-styes in an army." "They be natural things," declared Putt. "You might expect 'em. Where there's pigs there's rats." "Yes, but not like a plague. They've come up in a night, same as them frogs in Egypt." "You'm down-daunted about nought," answered Woodman. "Read what some of they Bible heroes had to suffer. There's nought like dipping into the prophet Job when you'm out of heart with your luck. 'Twill make you very contented. My gran'faither always read Job slap through after he'd had a row wi' the Duchy." "As for me, I shall bide wi' the man so long as he can pay wages," said Putt. They passed to their work; and elsewhere Maurice Malherb, not ignorant of the verminous inroad upon fields and styes, was debating whether he should sink his pride and summon Leaman Cloberry. But while time passed by and he hesitated, there came a post and tidings so momentous that the rats and moles were forgotten. Now, indeed, did trouble like an armed man break in on Fox Tor Farm; the light of the Malherbs vanished, and their hope set in lasting sorrow. Noel Malherb, serving under Sir Rowland Hill, with the right of Lord Wellington's army in the Peninsula, had fallen before Vittoria. Annabel and her daughter took this grief into secrecy, and were hidden from the world through many weeks; Malherb fought it down, and concealed his emotion from all eyes. He laughed not less seldom, he fell into anger more often than of yore. "Pharaoh cracked his heart when his first was took," said Woodman to Kekewich; "but this man----"