Chapter 43 - Page 2

meeting at last the well-known Captain Anerley! My dear sir, I can not help commending your prudence in guarding the entrance to your manor; but not in this employment of a bill-hook. From all that I hear, it is a Paradise indeed. What a haven in such weather as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus, every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop them. Captain, you are too hospitable."

Farmer Anerley gazed with wonder at this man, who could talk so fast for the first time of seeing a body. Then feeling as if his hospitality were challenged, and desiring more leisure for reflection, "You better come down the lane, sir," he said.

"Am I to understand that you invite me to your house, or only to the gate where the dogs come out? Excuse me: I always am a most plain-spoken man."

"Our dogs never bite nobody but rogues."

"In that case, Captain Anerley, I may trust their moral estimate. I knew a farmer once who was a thorough thief in hay; a man who farmed his own land, and trimmed his own hedges; a thoroughly respectable and solid agriculturist. But his trusses of hay were always six pounds short, and if ever anybody brought a sample truss to steelyard, he had got a little dog, just seven pounds weight, who slipped into the core of it, being just a good hay-color. He always delivered his hay in the twilight, and when it swung the beam, he used to say, 'Come, now, I must charge you for overweight.' Now, captain, have you got such an honest dog as that?"

"I would have claimed him, that I would, if such a clever dog were weighed to me. But, sir, you have got the better of me. What a man for stories you be, for sure! Come in to our fire-place." Farmer Anerley was conquered by this tale, which he told fifty times every year he lived thereafter, never failing to finish with, "What rogues they be, up York way!"

Master Mordacks was delighted with this piece of luck on his side. Many times he had been longing to get in at Anerley, not only from the reputation of good cheer there, but also from kind curiosity to see the charming Mary, who was now becoming an important element of business. Since Robin had given him the slip so sadly--a thing it was impossible to guard against--the best chance of hearing what became of him would be to get into the good graces of his sweetheart.

"We have been very sadly for a long time now," said the farmer, as he knocked at his own porch door with the handle of his bill-hook. "There used to be one as was always welcome here; and a pleasure it was to see him make himself so pleasant, sir. But ever since the Lord took him home from his family, without a good-by, as a man might say, my wife hath