in the bank.'

'That was true, too, then? I heard something in a scadderin'
word-o'-mouth way,' said Jabez.

'I'll answer for the house property, because Jim he requested my signed
name at the foot o' some papers concernin' it. Regardin' the money in
the bank, he nature-ally wouldn't like such things talked about all
round the parish, so he took strangers for witnesses.'

'Then 'twill make Mary worth seekin' after?'

'She'll need it. Her Maker ain't done much for her outside nor yet in.'

'That ain't no odds.' Jabez shook his head till the water showered off
his hat-brim. 'If Mary has money, she'll be wed before any likely pore
maid. She's cause to be grateful to Jim.'

'She hides it middlin' close, then,' said Jesse. 'It don't sometimes
look to me as if Mary has her natural rightful feelin's. She don't put
on an apron o' Mondays 'thout being druv to it--in the kitchen _or_ the
hen-house. She's studyin' to be a school-teacher. She'll make a beauty!
I never knowed her show any sort o' kindness to nobody--not even when
Jim's mother was took dumb. No! 'Twadn't no stroke. It stifled the old
lady in the throat here. First she couldn't shape her words no shape;
then she clucked, like, an' lastly she couldn't more than suck down
spoon-meat an' hold her peace. Jim took her to Doctor Harding, an'
Harding he bundled her off to Brighton Hospital on a ticket, but they
couldn't make no stay to her afflictions there; and she was bundled off
to Lunnon, an' they lit a great old lamp inside her, and Jim told me
they couldn't make out nothing in no sort there; and, along o' one thing
an' another, an' all their spyin's and pryin's, she come back a hem
sight worse than when she started. Jim said he'd have no more
hospitalizin', so he give her a slate, which she tied to her
waist-string, and what she was minded to say she writ on it.'

'Now, I never knowed that! But they're valley-folk,' Jabez repeated.

''Twadn't particular noticeable, for she wasn't a talkin' woman any time
o' her days. Mary had all three's tongue.... Well, then, two years this
summer, come what I'm tellin' you. Mary's Lunnon father, which they'd
put clean out o' their minds, arrived down from Lunnon with the law on
his side, sayin' he'd take his daughter back to Lunnon, after all. I was
working for Mus' Dockett at Pounds Farm that summer, but I was obligin'
Jim that evenin' muckin' out his pig-pen. I seed a stranger come
traipsin' over the bridge agin' Wickenden'