"What has happened to the mill?" said Paul, catching sight of the dismantled mass in the distance.
"Nowt since Saturday neet, as I've heard on," said Natt.
"Oh, nowt, nowt--I's warrant not," said Natt, with a gurgling titter.
Paul looked perplexed. Natt had been drinking, nothing surer.
"I'll not say but it is. We know all about that, we do!"
Paul glanced down again. Liquor got into the brains of some folk, but it had gone into Natt's face. With what an idiotic grin he was looking into one's eyes!
But Paul's heart was full of happiness. His bosom's lord sat lightly on its throne. Natt's face was excruciatingly ridiculous, and Paul laughed at the sight of it. Then Natt laughed, and they both laughed together, each at, neither with, the other. "I don't know nothing, I don't. Oh, no!" chuckled Natt, inwardly. Once he made the remark aloud.
When they came to the vicarage Paul drew up, threw the reins to Natt, and got down.
"Don't wait for me," he said; "drive home."
Natt drove as far homeward as the Flying Horse, and then turned in there for a crack, leaving the trap in the road. Before he left the inn, a discovery yet more astounding, if somewhat less amusing, was made by his swift and subtle intellect.
An itinerant mendicant preacher had walked through the valley that day, and when night fell in he had gravitated to the parson's door.
"Seeing the sun low," he said, "and knowing it a long way to Keswick, and I not being able to abide the night air, but sure to catch a cold, I came straight to your house."
Like other guests of high degree, the shoeless being made a virtue of accepting hospitality.
"Come in, brother, and welcome," said Parson Christian; and that night the wayfarer lodged at the vicarage. He was a poor, straggle-headed creature, with a broken brain as well as a broken purse, but he had the warm seat at the ingle.
Greta heard Paul's step on the path and ran to meet him.
"Paul, Paul! thank God you are here at last!"
Her manner was warm and impulsive to seriousness, but Paul was in no humor to make nice distinctions.
Parson Christian rose from his seat before the fire and shook hands with feeling and gravity.
"Right glad to see you, good lad," he said. "This is Brother Jolly," he added, "a fellow-soldier of the cross, who has suffered sore for neglecting Solomon's injunction against suretyship."