Mrs. Lake was not susceptible to effects of scenery, and she was thinking of Jan. As she ran round the windmill, she struck her foot against what proved to be his body, and, stooping, saw that he was lying on his face. But when she snatched him up with a cry of terror, she found that he was not dead, nor even hurt, but only weeping pettishly. In the first revulsion of feeling from her fright, she was rather disposed to shake her recovered treasure, as a relief to her own excitement. But Abel, whose first sight of Jan was as the light of the mill-candle fell on his tear-stained face, said tenderly, “What be amiss, Janny?” “Jan can’t make un,” sobbed his foster-brother. “What can’t Janny make? Tell Abel, then,” said the nurse-boy. Jan stuck his fists into his eyes, which were drying fast, and replied, “Jan can’t make the moon and the clouds, Abel dear!” And Abel’s candle being at that moment blown out by a gust of wind, he could see Jan’s slate and pencil lying at some distance apart upon the short grass. On the dark ground of the slate he had made a round, white, full moon with his soft slate-pencil, and had tried hard to draw each cloud as it passed. But the rapid changes had baffled him, and the pencil-marks were gray compared with the whiteness of the clouds and the brightness of the moon, and the slate, though dark, was a mockery of the deep, deep depths of the night-sky. And in his despair he had flung the slate one way and the pencil another, and there they lay under the moonlight; and the sandy kitten, who could see more clearly on this occasion than any one else, was dancing a fandango upon poor Jan’s unfinished sketch. CHAPTER XII. THE WHITE HORSE.—COMROGUES.—MOERDYK.—GEORGE CONFIDES IN THE CHEAP JACK—WITH RESERVATION. WHEN the Cheap Jack’s horse came to the brow of the hill, it stopped, and with drooping neck stood still as before. The Cheap Jack was busy with George, and it was at no word from him that the poor beast paused. It knew at what point to wait, and it waited. There was little temptation to go on. The road down the hill had just been mended with flints; some of these were the size of an average turnip, and the hill was steep. So the old horse poked out his nose, and stood almost dozing, till the sound of the Cheap Jack’s shuffling footsteps caused him to prick his ears, and brace his muscles for a fresh start. The miller’s man came also, who was sulky, whilst the Cheap Jack was civil. He gave his horse a cut across the knees, to remind him to plant his feet carefully among the sharp boulders; and then, choosing a smooth bit by the side of the road, he and George went forward together. “You’ve took to picters, I see,” said George, nodding towards the cart. “So I have, my dear,” said the Cheap Jack; “any thing for a livelihood; an _honest_ livelihood, you know, George.” And he winked at the miller’s man, who relaxed his sulkiness for a guffaw.