"Listen to me! As I hold 'ee now, so I take your fate in my hands.
Naomi Bricknell, you've got to be my wife, so make up your mind to
that."

She cowered a little under his grasp; put out a hand to push him off;
drew it back; and broke into helpless sobbing. But this time she did
not command him to go away.

Fifteen minutes later William Geake left Vellan's Rents with joy on
his face and a broken table under his arm.

And two days later Naomi's face wore a look of demure happiness when
Long Oliver stopped her on the staircase and asked,

"Is it true, what I hear?"

"It is true," she answered.

"An' when be the banns called?"

"There ain't goin' to be no banns."

"Hey?"

"There ain't goin' to be no banns; leastways, there ain't goin' to be
none called. We'm goin' to the Registry Office. You look all struck of
a heap. Was you hopin' to be best man?"

"Well, I reckoned I'd take a hand in the responses," he answered; and
seemed about to say more, but turned on his heel and went back to his
room, shutting the door behind him.

III.

We pass to a Saturday morning, two years later, and to William Geake's
cottage at the western end of Gantick village.

Naomi had plucked three fowls and trussed them, and wrapping each in a
white napkin, had packed them in her basket with a dozen and a half of
eggs, a few pats of butter, and a nosegay or two of
garden-flowers--Sweet Williams, marigolds, and heart's-ease: for it was
market-day at Tregarrick. Then she put on boots and shawl, tied her
bonnet, and slung a second pair of boots across her arm: for the roads
were heavy and she would leave the muddy pair with a friend who lived at
the entrance of the town, not choosing to appear untidy as she walked up
the Fore Street. These arrangements made, she went to seek her husband,
who was busy planing a coffin-lid in the workshop behind the cottage,
and ruminating upon to-morrow's sermon.

"You'll be about startin'," he said, lifting his head and pushing his
spectacles up over his eye-brows.

Naomi set her basket down on his work-table, and drew her breath back
between her teeth--which is the Cornish mode of saying "Yes." "I want
you to make me a couple of skivers," she said. "Aun' Hambly sent over
word she'd a brace o' chicken for me to sell, an' I was to call for
'em: an' I'd be ashamed to sell a fowl the way she skivers it."

William set down his plane, picked up an odd scrap of wood and cut out
the skewers with his p