f mun, for you may depend that I
wasn't going to let he go. I'd a-been a bit spoiled, for my mother had
had a boy and another maid besides me, and fine children too, as I've
been told; but she'd a-lost the both of them o' smallpox, so that there
wasn't but me left. So I couldn't tell what to do, for I know'd but
one thing for sartain, that the man that father wanted for me wasn't
the man that I wanted for myself. But there was a wise woman--Betsy
Lavacombe her name was, I mind well, but what use to tell you
that?--that I used to see; and terrible afeared of her the folks was.
It was she that built this house, and no one knew where she lived
except myself, nor knoweth till this day. But I wasn't afeared of her,
for I had a-helped her more than once, and used to put out a bit of
mate for her now and again when I could; and she would always carry any
message from me to Jan or from Jan to me. And I asked her many times
which of mun I should marry, but she wouldn't never tell me more than
that I should cross the sea and come back with gold. 'That's enough
for 'ee,' she would say, 'don't ask no more. You shall cross the sea
and there will be lords and gentlemen with 'ee, and your bed shall be
so good as theirs, and you shall come back with gold.'

"So time went on and Jan kept courting o' me and I kept a playing with
Jan, as foolish maids will, till at last one day, I forget what it was
I said to mun, but he flinged away like a mazed man. 'I'll never come
nigh 'ee again,' he said, 'you'll have to find me if you want to see me
more; and till you find me you won't never find a man as loves you so
well as I do.' And I laughed so as he could hear as he walked away,
for I made no doubt but he'd come again so soon as I called mun. And I
mind well then that the old Betsy comed out of a hedge soon
afterward--she'd a been listening, I reckon--and saith she, 'Shall I
call mun back to 'ee now? Best lose no time,' she saith. But I let
mun go, for I depended that he'd come back, though I don't deny that I
wasn't easy.

"And it wasn't above a week afterward that the old Betsy cometh back
and saith, 'You'd best have let me call mun back when I told 'ee'; and
then she told me that a serjeant was come to Ashacombe and that Jan was
listed for a sojer and was agone. It was evening then and I heard
mother calling, so I went into house like a dumb thing, for I couldn't
think what I should do without Jan; and I minded the words that