"I'm much feared nought we can do will change him. That girl be everything to him. A terrible pity, too, for after you, I never knowed a man so greedy of work. 'Sundays! There are too many Sundays,' he said to Ned in my hearing not long since. 'What do a healthy man want to waste every seventh day for?' It might have been you talking." "Not at all," answered her husband. "Very far from it. That's Jack Head's impious opinion. Who be we to question the Lord's ordaining? The seventh's the Lord's, and I don't think no better of Rupert for saying that, hard though it may sometimes be to keep your hands in your pockets, especially at hay harvest." "Well, if you ban't going to budge, he'll go." "Then let him go--and he can tell the people that he haven't got no father no more, for that's how 'twill be if he does go." "Don't you say that, master." "Why for not? Truth's truth. And now us will go to sleep, if you please." Soon his mighty snore thundered through the darkness; but Mrs. Baskerville was well seasoned to the sound; and thoughts of her son, not the noisy repose of her husband, banished sleep. Others had debated these vexed questions of late, and the dark, short days were made darker for certain sympathetic people by the troubles of Mark and the anxieties of his cousin, Rupert. Nathan Baskerville discussed the situation with Mrs. Lintern a week before the great production of 'St. George.' Matters had now advanced and the situation was developed. "That old fool, Gollop!" he said. "He goeth now as if the eye of the world was on him. You'd think Shaugh Prior was the hub of the universe, as the Yankees say, and that Thomas was the lynch-pin of the wheel!" "He's found time to see which way the cat's jumping, all the same," answered Mrs. Lintern. "Full of Ned Baskerville and our Cora now! Says that 'tis a case and everybody knows it." Nathan shrugged his shoulders. "Yes--well, these things can't be arranged for them. The young must go their own road. A splendid couple they make without a doubt. They'll look magnificent in their finery at the revel. But I wish nephew Ned wasn't quite so vain of his good parts." Cora herself entered at this moment, and had that to say which awoke no small interest in her mother. "I've fallen in with Mark," she said; "and I was passing, but he spoke and 'tis all well, I believe. He was very quiet and you might almost say cheerful." "Thank the Lord he's got over it then," answered Nathan; but Mrs. Lintern doubted. "Don't feel too sure of that. He ban't one to wear his heart on his sleeve, anyway." "He's took it surprising well, everybody says," said Cora, in a voice that made the innkeeper laugh. "Poor Mark!--but I see Cora here isn't too pleased that he's weathered the storm so easily. She'd have liked him to be a bit more down in the mouth."