"Come along," they again urged, all three; saying, "thou art right welcome, and we will treat thee well." "No, not now," replied he, "but I don't doubt your welcome, though, as my master used to say, 'It is often good manners to ask, but not always to take.' Besides," continued he, "I am longing to get home quickly and see my wife and cheeld." Each party proceeded their separate ways. When Tom had passed a place called the Crean, and was within half a mile of his dwelling, he sat down on a bank and lingered there till dusk, that he might get home about dark, and have a chance to look round unperceived, and thus find out if his wife had attended to her duty. Tom had learned but little about his family from the merchants. They merely told him that his wife had often been to Treen with yarn to sell, and, as she was a good spinster, they supposed the weavers gave her plenty of work. They knew nothing of either his wife or his daughter. When it was all but dark Tom again went on slowly, and quickened his pace in going up the Bottom, till he approached within a stone's-cast of his dwelling. Here he paused a moment, on hearing a man's voice inside. Then he went softly on to a little glass window—the only one glazed in his house—and peeped in. On the chimney-stool he espied, by the fire-light, a man and a woman, hugging, kissing, and seeming very fond of each other. "Oh! but this is double damnation," groaned Tom to himself, "that I should ever come home, after working for years far away, to be greeted with such a sight. Where can the cheeld be? 'Tis enough to make one mad to see her faggot of a mother there, showing more love for that black-looking fellow than she did for me, except in our courting times and a week or so after marriage. I'll kill the villain, and drive the old huzzey to doors, that I will." Whilst such thoughts of vengeance passed through Tom's mind, he recollected his last two pounds' worth of wit, and hesitated a minute at the door; but he was sure of what he saw; and now, hearing them laughing and couranting (romping) in their loving play, that aggravated him all the more. He grasped[89] his stick and looked again to be certain, when a voice close behind him called out to him in tones like his wife's, "Halloo, eaves-dropper! Who art thou, and what dost thee want there spying and listening? Thee west hear no good of thyself, I'll be bound!" Tom looking round, saw his wife close by, with a 'burn' of ferns on her back. "That can never be thee, wife," said he, "unless thee art a witch; for this instant thou wert sitting on the chimney-stool with a strange man, and behaving in a way that don't become thee."