a public right o' way then. 'Twas just a bit o' lathy old plank which Jim had throwed acrost the brook for his own conveniences. The man wasn't drunk--only a little concerned in liquor, like--an' his back was a mask where he'd slipped in the muck comin' along. He went up the bricks past Jim's mother, which was feedin' the ducks, an' set himself down at the table inside--Jim was just changin' his socks--an' the man let Jim know all his rights and aims regardin' Mary. Then there just about _was_ a hurly-bulloo? Jim's fust mind was to pitch him forth, but he'd done that once in his young days, and got six months up to Lewes jail along o' the man fallin' on his head. So he swallowed his spittle an' let him talk. The law about Mary _was_ on the man's side from fust to last, for he showed us all the papers. Then Mary come downstairs--she'd been studyin' for an examination--an' the man tells her who he was, an' she says he had ought to have took proper care of his own flesh and blood while he had it by him, an' not to think he could ree-claim it when it suited. He says somethin' or other, but she looks him up an' down, front an' backwent, an' she just tongues him scadderin' out o' doors, and he went away stuffin' all the papers back into his hat, talkin' most abusefully. Then she come back an' freed her mind against Jim an' his mother for not havin' warned her of her upbringin's, which it come out she hadn't ever been told. They didn't say naun to her. They never did. _I'd_ ha' packed her off with any man that would ha' took her--an' God's pity on him!' 'Umm!' said Jabez, and sucked his pipe. 'So then, that was the beginnin.' The man come back again next week or so, an' he catched Jim alone, 'thout his mother this time, an' he fair beazled him with his papers an' his talk--for the law _was_ on his side--till Jim went down into his money-purse an' give him ten shillings hush-money--he told me--to withdraw away for a bit an' leave Mary with 'em.' 'But that's no way to get rid o' man or woman,' Jabez said. 'No more 'tis. I told Jim so. "What can I do?" Jim says. "The law's _with_ the man. I walk about daytimes thinkin' o' it till I sweats my underclothes wringin', an' I lie abed nights thinkin' o' it till I sweats my sheets all of a sop. 'Tisn't as if I was a young man," he says, "nor yet as if I was a pore man. Maybe he'll drink hisself to death." I e'en a'most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin' into, but he knowed it--he knowed it--because he said next time the man come 'twould be fifteen shillin's. An' next time 'twas. Just fifteen shillin's!' 'An' _was_ the man her father?' asked Jabez. 'He had the proofs an' the papers. Jim showed me what that Lunnon Childern's Society had answered when Mary writ up to 'em an' taxed 'em with it. I lay she hadn't been proper polite in her letters to 'em, for they answered middlin' short. They said the matter was out o' their hands, but--let's see if I remember--oh, yes,--they ree-gretted there had been an oversight. I reckon they had sent Mary out in the candle-box as a orphan instead o' havin' a father. Terrible awkward! Then, when he'd drinked up the money, the man come again--in his usuals--an' he kept hammerin' on and hammerin' on about his duty to his pore dear wife, an' what he'd do for his dear daughter in Lunnon, till the tears runned down his two dirty cheeks an' he come away with more money. Jim used to slip it into his hand behind the door; but his mother she heard the chink. She didn't hold with hush-money. She'd write out all her feelin's on the slate, an' Jim 'ud be settin' up half the night answerin' back an' showing that the man had the law with him.' 'Hadn't that man no trade nor business, then?' 'He told me he was a printer. I reckon, though, he lived on the rates like the rest of 'em up there in Lunnon.' 'An' how did Mary take it?' 'She said she'd sooner go into service than go with the man. I reckon a mistress 'ud be middlin' put to it for a maid 'fore she put Mary into cap an' gown. She was studyin' to be a schoo-ool-teacher. A beauty she'll make!... Well, that was how things went that fall. Mary's Lunnon father kep' comin' an' comin' 'carden as he'd drinked out the money Jim gave him; an' each time he'd put-up his price for not takin' Mary away. Jim's mother, she didn't like partin' with no money, an' bein' obliged to write her feelin's on the slate instead o' givin' 'em vent by mouth, she was just about mad. Just about she _was_ mad! 'Come November, I lodged with Jim in the outside room over 'gainst his hen-house. I paid _her_ my rent. I was workin' for Dockett at Pounds--gettin' chestnut-bats out o' Perry Shaw. Just such weather as this be--rain atop o' rain after a wet October. (An' I remember it ended in dry frostes right away up to Christmas.) Dockett he'd sent up to Perry Shaw for me--no, he comes puffin' up to me himself--because a big corner-piece o' the bank had slipped into the brook where she makes that elber at the bottom o' the Seventeen Acre, an' all the rubbishy alders an' sallies which he ought to have cut out when he took the farm, they'd slipped with the slip, an' the brook was comin' rooshin' down atop of 'em, an' they'd just about back an' spill the waters over his winter wheat. The water was lyin' in the flats already. "Gor a-mighty, Jesse!" he bellers out at me, "get that rubbish away all manners you can. Don't stop for no fagottin', but give the brook play or my wheat's past salvation. I can't lend you no help," he says, "but work an' I'll pay ye."' 'You had him there,' Jabez chuckled. 'Yes. I reckon I had ought to have drove my bargain, but the brook was. . . . . . .