you but said the word! And that is a high tribute from him, I can assure you. We would give you a pleasant, carefree time, with no worries or cares, and you would be a companion to me when Mr. Bassat is away. Do you still fret after your home at Helford?'
Then Mary smiled and thanked her once again, but she could not put into words how much the memory of Helford meant to her.
They guessed that the strain of the past months still had its hand upon her, and in their kindness strove to make amends; but the Bassats kept open house at North Hill, and the neighbours for many miles around called, with, naturally enough, one topic of conversation on their lips. Fifty and a hundred times must Squire Bassat tell his tale, and the names of Altarnun and Jamaica became loathsome to Mary's ear, who would be rid of them for ever.
Here was another reason for departure: she had become too much an object of curiosity and discussion, and the Bassats, with a little show of pride, would point her as a heroine to their friends.
She strove in gratitude to do her best, but she was never at her ease amongst them. They were not her kind. They were another race, another class. She had respect for them, and liking, and good will, but she could not love them.
In the kindness of their hearts they would have her enter into conversation when company was present, and strove that she should not sit aside; while she longed the while for the silence of her own bedroom or the homely kitchen of Richards the groom, whose apple-cheeked wife would make her welcome.
And the squire, flogging his humour, would turn to her for advice, laughing heartily at every word he said. 'There'll be the living vacant at Altarnun. Will you turn parson, Mary? I warrant you'd make a better one than the last'; and she must smile at this for his sake, wondering that he should be so dull as not to guess the bitter memories his words aroused.
'Well, there'll be no more smuggling at Jamaica Inn,' he would say, 'and, if I could have my way, no drinking either. I'll sweep the place clean of all those cobwebs, and not a poacher nor a gypsy will dare show his face within the walls when I have done with it. I'll put an honest fellow there who's never smelt brandy in his life, and he shall wear an apron around his waist, and write the word 'Welcome' above the door. And do you know who shall call upon him first? Why, Mary, you and I.' And he would burst into a shout of laughter, slapping his thigh, while Mary forced a smile in answer, rather than his joke should fail.
She thought of these things as she walked alone on Twelve Men's Moor, and she knew she must go away from North Hill very soon, for these people were not her people, and only amongst the woods and streams of her own Helford valley would she know peace and contentment again.
There was a cart coming towards her from Kilmar, making tracks in the white frost like a hare. It was the one moving thing upon the silent plain. She watched it in suspicion, for there were no cottages on this moor except Trewartha, away in the valley by the Withy Brook, and Trewartha, she knew, stood empty. Nor had she seen its owner since he had fired at her on Rough Tor. 'He's an ungrateful rascal, like the rest of his breed,' said the squire. 'But for me he'd be in jail now, with a long sentence to serve to break his spirit. I forced his hand and he had to knuckle under. I grant he did well after that and was the means of tracing you, Mary, and that black-coated scoundrel; but he's never as much as thanked me for clearing his name in the business, and has taken himself to the world's end now, for all I know. There's never been a Merlyn yet that came to any good, and he'll go the way of the rest of them.' So Trewartha stood empty, and the horses were gone wild with their fellows and roamed free upon the moors, and their master had ridden away with a song on his lips, as she had known he would.
The cart came nearer to the slope of the hill, and Mary shielded her eyes from the sun to watch its progress. The horse bent to the strain, and she saw that it laboured beneath a strange load of pots and pans and mattresses and sticks. Someone was making for the country with his home upon his back. Even then she did not tumble to the truth, and it was not until the cart was below her and the driver, walking by the side, looked up to her and waved that she recognised him. She went down towards the cart with a fine show of indifference and turned at once to the horse to pat him and speak to him, while Jem kicked a stone under the wheel and wedged it there for safety.
'Are you better?' he called from behind the cart. 'I heard you were sick and had taken to your bed.'
'You must have heard wrong,' said Mary. 'I've been about the house there at North Hill and walking in the grounds; there's never been much the matter with me except a hatred for my neighbourhood.'
'There was a rumour you were to settle there and be companion to Mrs. Bassat. That's more like the truth, I suppose. Well, you'll lead a soft enough life with them, I daresay. No doubt they're kindly people when you know them.'
'They've been kinder to me than anyone else in Cornwall since my mother died; that's the only thing that matters to me. But I'm not staying at North Hill for all that.'
'Oh, you're not?'
'No; I'm going back home to Helford.'
'What will you do there?'
'I shall try and start the farm again, or at least work my way to it, for I haven't the money yet. But I've friends there, and friends in Helston too, that will help me at the beginning.'
'Where will you live?'
'There's not a cottage in the village I couldn't call home if I wanted to. We're neighbourly in the south, you know.'
'I've never had neighbours, so I cannot contradict you, but I've had the feeling always it would be like living in a box, to live in a village. You poke your nose over your gate into another man's garden, and if his potatoes are larger than your own there's a talking upon it, and argument; and you know if you cook a rabbit for your supper he'll have the sniff of it in his kitchen. Damn it, Mary, that's no life for anyone.' She laughed at him, for his nose was wrinkled in disgust, and then she ran her eye over his laden cart and the confusion he had there.
'What are you doing with that?' she asked him.
'I've got a hatred for my neighbourhood the same as you,' he said. 'I want to get away from the smell of peat and bog, and the sight of Kilmar yonder, with his ugly face frowning upon me from dusk till dawn. Here's my home, Mary, all I've ever had of it, here in the cart, and I'll take it with me and set it up wherever my fancy takes me. I've been a rover since a boy; never any ties, nor roots, nor fancies for a length of time; and I daresay I'll die a rover, too. It's the only life in the world for me.'
'There's no peace, Jem, in wandering, and no quiet. Heaven knows that existence itself is a long enough journey, without adding to the burden. There'll come a time when you'll want your own plot of ground, and your four walls, and your roof, and somewhere to lay your poor tired bones.'
'The whole country belongs to me, Mary, if it comes to that, with the sky for a roof and the earth for a bed. You don't understand. You're a woman, and your home is your kingdom, and all the little familiar things of day to day. I've never lived like that and never shall. I'll sleep on the hills one night, and in a city the next. I like to seek my fortune here and there and everywhere, with strangers for company and passers-by for friends. Today I meet a man upon the road and journey with him for an hour or for a year; and tomorrow he is gone again. We speak a different language, you and I.'
Mary went on with her patting of the horse, the good flesh warm and damp beneath her hand, and Jem watched her, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
'Which way will you go?' she said.
'Somewhere east of Tamar, it doesn't matter to me,' he said. 'I'll never come west again, not until I'm old and grey, and have forgotten a lot of things. I thought of striking north after Gunnislake and making for the midlands. They're rich up there and ahead of everyone; there'll be fortune there for a man who goes to find it. Perhaps I'll have money in my pockets one day and buy horses for pleasure instead of stealing them.'
'It's an ugly black country in the midlands,' said Mary.
'I don't bother about the colour of the soil,' he answered. 'Moorland peat is black, isn't it? And so's the rain when it falls into your pigsties down at Helford. What's the difference?'
'You just talk for argument, Jem; there's no sense in what you say.'
'How can I be sensible when you lean against my horse, with your wild daft hair entangled in his mane, and I know that in five or ten minutes time I shall be over the hill yonder without you, my face turned towards the Tamar and you walking back to North Hill to drink tea with Squire Bassat?'
'Delay your journey, then, and come to North Hill, too.'
'Don't be a damned fool, Mary. Can you see me drinking tea with the squire, and dancing his children on my
