The parson chanced to pass as they were badgering this Mish for the secret of his breeding, and to hear Mish’s reply--something about “in and in and in.” He stopped abruptly before Murgatroyd.
“Yes,” he interposed; “and in again on top of that, Murgatroyd, till they’re wrong in their heads and afraid of nothing. Look----”
He pointed to a sackless lad who lolled his tongue over by the horse-trough. “Yes,” he muttered, half to himself, “there’s little doubt it’s your Slacks and Scouts and Ridges do it; you’ll not go courting far from your firesides in the winter ... maybe your metallic water is the cause of all this goître, too ... in and in and in....”
And though the winter that was drawing near proved afterwards to be a green and mild one, the parson seemed able to guess without knowing what these same Scouts and hills would be like when the snow lay thick on them, and the packmen went before the horses with spades, seeking for the black-topped guide-posts, and of each hamlet it became true that there was “one way in and none out.”
The first time there came to the parson’s ears, faintly over the hills, the clanging of hammers by night, he made an inquiry, and was told that the Forge on the moor, “where they shod the pack-horses,” was at work. On a later occasion, he put himself to the trouble to climb the precipitous Scout and to walk a mile or so along the Causeway in the direction of a low glow that seemed to come from a distant fold of the moor. Two figures, rising suddenly from the dark heather, stopped him and demanded his errand; and they conducted him back in silence by the way he had come. Then, about the middle of November, when the moors grew heavy with rain, the nightly clanging ceased, and the parson had other matters to occupy him. The winter set in, cold and raw and gusty; it was the winter of 1778; and the parson had time enough on his hands to speculate on breeding-in, physical geography, goître, or whatever else pleased him. Once only during that dead time, journeying on a December afternoon to Horwick, and meeting there one of the resident magistrates, John Emmason by name, did he speak of this noise of hammers; he was counselled to confine his attention to God’s law and to leave man’s alone. The Wadsworth looms knock-knocked lazily during the short days; the Horwick Thursday was thinly attended; now and then, but rarely, a Back o’ th’ Mooiner from Holdsworth or Brotherton or Booth would appear in Wadsworth with his dog, his staff, and his budget of cloth; and of any other staple of the district than that of the weaving of kerseys and shalloons the parson knew nothing.