“The one’s your thumbscrew,” said Will, “and the other’s a hollow iron case where they set your leg and build a fire beneath.” Joan turned her face toward the cottage. Her old acquaintance walked beside her. It was afternoon and there was over everything a tender, flickering, charming light. It made the new grass emerald, of the misting trees veil on veil of soft, smiling magic. Primroses and violets bloomed as though dropped from immortal hands. The blue vault of air rose height on height and so serene and kind.... Joan spoke in a smothered voice. “I would believe in a good God.” The young countryman beside her had gone on in mind with the tinker and his talk. “What did you say, Joan?” “I said naught,” said Joan. CHAPTER XIII HAWTHORN CHURCH TOWN and village and all the country roundabout were growing clean of the plague. Day by day the evil lessened, the sickness stole away. It left its graves, and among those whose loss was personal its mood of grief. At large there was still a kind of sullen fear, a tension of the nerves, a readiness to attend to any cry of “Wolf!” The wolf might come no more in the guise of the plague, but there were other damages and terrors. All Hawthorn region was in a mood to discover them. It came Sunday. The danger, at least, of congregating together seemed to have rolled away. Comfort remained, comfort of the crowd, of feeling people warm about you, gloomy comfort of “Eh, sirs!” and shakings of the head. Hawthorn, village and neighbourhood, flocked to church. Going, the people drew into clusters. The North-End Farm folk had a large cluster, and there the shaking of the head was over the possessed boy. But the widow whose cow was dead and the waggoner whose horses were lamed had their groups, too, and the largest group of all came compactly from the lower end of the village, past the green and the pond and the stocks and the Sabbath-closed ale-house, with the tinker from Scotland talking in the midst of it.