s highly displeased with the
way he had managed her flock since the shearing, but instead she only
said:

"Look!"

Over the eastern rim of the Marsh the moon had risen, a red, lightless
disk, while the sun, red and lightless too, hung in the west above Rye
Hill. The sun and the moon looked at each other across the marsh, and
midway between them, in the spell of their flushed, haunted glow, stood
Socknersh, big and stooping, like some lonely beast of the earth and
night.... A strange fear touched Joanna--she tottered, and his arm came
out to save her....

It was as if Marsh itself enfolded her, for his clothes and skin were
caked with the soil of it.... She opened her eyes, and looking up into
his, saw her own face, infinitely white and small, looking down at her
out of them. Joanna Godden looked at her out of Socknersh's eyes. She
stirred feebly, and she found that he had set her a little way from him,
still holding her by the shoulders, as if he feared she would fall.

"Do you feel better, missus?"

"I'm all right," she snapped.

"I beg your pardon if I took any liberty, missus. But I thought maybe
you'd turned fainty-like."

"You thought wrong"--her anger was mounting--"I trod on a mole-hill.
You've messed my nice alpaca body--if you can't help getting dirt all
over yourself you shouldn't ought to touch a lady even if she's in a
swound."

"I'm middling sorry, missus."

His voice was quite tranquil--it was like oil on the fire of Joanna's
wrath.

"Maybe you are, and so am I. You shouldn't ought to have cotched hold of
me like that. But it's all of a match with the rest of your doings, you
great stupid owl. You've lost me more'n a dozen prime sheep by not
mixing your dip proper--after having lost me the best of my ewes and
lambs with your ignorant notions--and now you go and put finger marks
over my new alpaca body, all because you won't think, or keep yourself
clean. You can take a month's notice."

Socknersh stared at her with eyes and mouth wide open.

"A month's notice," she repeated, "it's what I came here to give you.
You're the tale of all the parish with your ignorance. I'd meant to talk
to you about it and give you another chance, but now I see there'd be no
sense in that, and you can go at the end of your month."

"You'll give me a character, missus?"

"I'll give you a prime character as a drover or a ploughman or a carter
or a dairyman or a housemaid or a curate or anything you like except