"There’s not another girl that ever I heard about would have done it." "I know--and I ask myself if that’s to praise her or to blame her. To hear my mother--" "Better hear David. She didn’t do it for fun, I can tell you. Not to me--not to no woman--did she ever tell what she felt afterwards; but she did tell David; and he says that she didn’t know where she was for the first four rounds, and that once or twice after, when it looked like David being beat, that ’twas all she could do by sticking her nails into herself to keep herself from dashing out to help David against you." Bartley nodded admiringly. "I believe it," he said. "I saw it in her face." "And now I must get on," declared Madge. "Can’t waste no more time along with you to-day." "I’ll walk up over then and carry your basket," he answered. "When are you going to be married?" "Not till the house is ready. They’ve started. There’s a lot of the old building will work very suent into our new cottage." "Yes," he said. "I was over there watching ’em at it yesterday evening. And d’you know what I was wondering?--What I should give you and David for a wedding present." "No need, I’m sure." "Every need. You’m like your mother. You’d give your head away if you could; yet when people think to do you a turn, you always cry out against it. ’Twill be a joy to many more people than your humble thoughts will guess, to bring something to help you set up house." "It ’mazes me, the kindness of the world." "It might--if the world followed your example. ’Tis your due, and it oughtn’t to ’maze you. ’Twould be funny if anybody could be unkind to you." "’Tis all very hopeful and beautiful, I’m sure--yet here and there I feel a doubt. Wouldn’t name it to none but you; but mother don’t seem at all hopeful--" "Don’t let her fret you," urged Mr. Crocker. "I beg you won’t do that, Madge. There’s not a kinder, humbler-hearted woman on the Moor than Mrs. Stanbury; but she’s far too superstitious and given to the old stories--you know it." Margaret looked troubled. These folk belonged to a time when still a few fine spirits from the middle place between man and angel haunted Dartmoor. The pixies were yet whispered of as frequenting this farmer’s threshing-floor, or that housewife’s dairy; the witch hare leapt from her lonely form; herbs and simples in wise hands acted for potions of might; and the little heath hounds were well known to hunt the Evil One through the darkness of winter nights and along the pathway of the storm. The toad still held a secret in its head; the tarn, in its heart; rivers hungered for their annual banquet of human life; the corpse candle burned in lonely churchyards; charms were whispered over sick children and sick beasts; the evil eye still shone malignant; the murmur of the mine goblins was often heard by the workers underground.