“That you swear?” said the sailor to her.

“I do,” said she, after glancing at her husband’s face and seeing no repentance there.

“Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain’s complete,” said the trusser.  He took the sailor’s notes and deliberately folded them, and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of finality.

The sailor looked at the woman and smiled.  “Come along!” he said kindly.  “The little one too—­the more the merrier!” She paused for an instant, with a close glance at him.  Then dropping her eyes again, and saying nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made towards the door.  On reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her wedding-ring, flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser’s face.

“Mike,” she said, “I’ve lived with thee a couple of years, and had nothing but temper!  Now I’m no more to ’ee; I’ll try my luck elsewhere.  ’Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-Jane, both.  So good-bye!”

Seizing the sailor’s arm with her right hand, and mounting the little girl on her left, she went out of the tent sobbing bitterly.

A stolid look of concern filled the husband’s face, as if, after all, he had not quite anticipated this ending; and some of the guests laughed.

“Is she gone?” he said.

“Faith, ay! she’s gone clane enough,” said some rustics near the door.

He rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of one conscious of his alcoholic load.  Some others followed, and they stood looking into the twilight.  The difference between the peacefulness of inferior nature and the wilful hostilities of mankind was very apparent at this place.  In contrast with the harshness of the act just ended within the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks and rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience to be harnessed for the homeward journey.  Outside the fair, in the valleys and woods, all was quiet.  The sun had recently set, and the west heaven was hung with rosy cloud, which seemed permanent, yet slowly changed.  To watch it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a darkened auditorium.  In presence of this scene after the other there was a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an otherwise kindly universe; till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were intermittent, and that mankind might some night be innocently sleeping when these quiet objects were raging loud.

“Where do the sailor live?” asked a spectator, when they had vainly gazed around.

“God knows that,” replied the man who had seen high life.  “He’s without doubt a stranger here.”

“He came in about five minutes ago,” said the furmity woman, joining the rest with her hands on her hips.  “And then ’a stepped back, and then ’a looked in again.  I’m not a penny the better for him.”

“Serves the husband well be-right,” said the staylace vendor.  “A comely respectable body like her—­what can a man want more?  I glory in the woman’s sperrit.  I’d ha’ done it myself—­od send if I wouldn’t, if a husband had behaved so to me!  I’d go, and ’a might call, and call, till his keacorn was raw; but I’d never come back—­no, not till the great trumpet, would I!”