She eyed him while she smoothed the sorrel’s mane with her riding-switch. “They did it to me three years ago, when I was six. Grandfather called it ‘entering’ me.” Taffy kept his eyes sullenly on the ground. Finding that he would not answer, she turned her horse again and rode slowly after the others. Taffy heard the soft footfalls die away, and when he looked up she had vanished. He picked up his boots and started in the direction to which she had pointed. Every now and then a sob shook him. By-and-by the chimneys of the house hove in sight among the ridges, and he ran toward it. But within a gunshot of the white garden-wall his breast swelled suddenly and he flung himself on the ground and let the big tears run. They made little pits in the moving sand; and more sand drifted up and covered them. “Taffy! Taffy! Whatever has become of the child?” His mother was standing by the gate in her print frock. He scrambled up and ran toward her. She cried out at the sight of him, but he hid his blood-smeared face against her skirts. [1] Mattock. CHAPTER V. TAFFY RINGS THE CHURCH BELL. They were in the church--Squire Moyle, Mr. Raymond, and Taffy close behind. The two men were discussing the holes in the roof and other dilapidations. “One, two, three,” the Squire counted. “I’ll send a couple of men with tarpaulin and rick-ropes. That’ll tide us over next Sunday, unless it blows hard.” They passed up three steps under the belfry arch. Here a big bell rested on the flooring. Its rim was cracked, but not badly. A long ladder reached up into the gloom. “What’s the beam like?” the Squire called up to someone aloft. “Sound as a bell,” answered a voice. “I said so. We’ll have en hoisted by Sunday, I’ll send a waggon over to Wheel Gooniver for a tackle and winch. Damme, up there! Don’t keep sheddin’ such a muck o’ dust on your betters!” “I can’t help no other, Squire!” said the voice overhead; “such a cauch o’ pilm an’ twigs, an’ birds’ droppins’! If I sneeze I’m a lost man.” Taffy, staring up as well as he could for the falling rubbish, could just spy a white smock above the beam, and a glint of daylight on the toe-scutes of two dangling boots. “I’ll dam soon make you help it. _Is_ the beam sound?” “Ha’n’t I told ’ee so?” said the voice querulously. “Then come down off the ladder, you son of a--” “Gently, Squire!” put in Mr. Raymond. The Squire groaned. “There I go again--an’ in the House of God itself! Oh! ’tis a case with me! I’ve a heart o’ stone--a heart o’ stone.” He turned and brushed his rusty hat with his coat-cuff. Suddenly he faced round again. “Here, Bill Udy,” he said to the old labourer who had just come down the ladder, “catch hold of my hat an’ carry en fore to porch. I keep forgettin’ I’m in church, an’ then on he goes.”