“’Tis a deed should be cut on the first bark as meets your eyes after the woman’s said ‘yes’ to ’e,” declared John.
Then, turning to the trunk where lichens painted pale silver patterns on the grey, he set to work, at the height of a man’s heart, and roughly fashioned the letters “S. B.” and “ J. A.” with a scroll around them and a knot beneath to indicate the nature of true love.
“Theer let it bide, sweetheart, for our childer’s childer to see when we’m sleepin’ down-along.”
Presently they moved onward to their homes.
“Braave news for my mother,” said the girl.
The sun had set and the twilight was in Sarah’s grey eyes as she lifted them to him. Together they passed upward, very slowly, with her head against his shoulder and his arm round her.
“’Tis a pleasant thing seemin’ly to have a huge gert man to love ’e.”
“Ess fay, my bird! You’ll live to knaw it, please God.”
From their lofty standpoint spread a wide scene of waning light on a fading world; and above the eastern horizon, through the last roses of the afterglow, imperceptibly stole a round shield of pale pearl. Aloft the sleeping wind-clouds lost their light and turned slate-grey as the misty phantom of the moon gathered brightness, and the western nimbus of sunset faded away.
Then John took his lips from his love’s and gave her the sheaf of gleaned corn and left her at her father’s door, while he tramped on up the hill.
His mother trembled before the long-anticipated truth and knew the first place in his heart was gone at last.
“As purty as a pictur in truth,” she said, “but something too taffety { 16} for the wife of a day labourer.”
“Not so,” answered the man. “She’m an angel out o’ heaven, an’ she’ll come to be the awnly wife worth namin’ on Dartymoor. For that matter she ban’t feared of a day’s work herself, an’ have awftentimes earned a fourpenny piece ’pon the land.”
Throughout the week Samson Belworthy, the father of Sarah, swung a sledge and followed a blacksmith’s calling at Postbridge; upon the day of rest his labours were of a more delicate sort, for he played the bass viol and pulled as good a bow as any musician around about the Moor. This man accepted John as a suitor to his daughter with certain reservations. He had no mind to dismiss Sally into poverty, and bargained for delay until Aggett had saved money, obtained regular occupation, instead of his present casual trade, and arrived at a worldly position in which he could command a cottage and thus offer his wife a home worthy of her.