The decision was bred from a curious condition of mind quite beyond his power to comprehend.  He certainly recoiled from exposure of Blanchard’s secret, yet coldly asked himself what unsuspected strand of character held him back.  It was not fear and it was not regard for his sweetheart’s brother; he did not know what it was.  He scoffed at the ideas of honour or conscience.  These abstractions had possessed weight in earlier years, but not now.  And yet, while he assured himself that no tie of temporal or eternal interest kept him silent, the temptation to tell seemed much less on this occasion than in the past when he took a swarm of John Grimbal’s bees.  Then, indeed, his mind was aflame with bitter provocation.  He affected a cynical attitude to the position and laughed without mirth at a theory that suddenly appeared in his mind.  Perchance this steadfastness of purpose resulted, after all, from that artificial thing, “conscience,” which men catch at the impressionable age when they have infantile ailments and pray at a mother’s knee.  If so, surely reason must banish such folly before another dawn and send him hot-foot at daybreak to the Red House.  He would wait and watch himself and see.

His reflections were here cut short, for a shrill voice broke in upon them, and Clement, now within a hundred yards of his own cottage door, saw Mr. Lezzard before him.

“At last I’ve found ‘e!  Been huntin’ this longful time, tu.  The Missis wants ’e—­your aunt I should say.”

“Wants me?”

“Ess.  ‘T is wan o’ her bad days, wi’ her liver an’ lights a bitin’ at her like savage creatures.  She’m set on seein’ you, an’ if I go home-along without ’e, she’ll awnly cuss.”

“What can she want me for?”

“She ’s sick ‘n’ taken a turn for the wuss, last few days.  Doctor Parsons doan’t reckon she can hold out much longer.  ’Tis the drink—­she’m soaked in it, like a sponge.”

“I’ll come,” said Hicks, and half an hour later he approached his aunt’s dwelling and entered it.

Mrs. Lezzard was now sunk into a condition of chronic crapulence which could only end in one way.  Her husband had been ordered again and again to keep all liquor from her, but, truth to tell, he made no very sustained effort to do so.  The old man was sufficiently oppressed by his own physical troubles, and as the only happiness earth now held for him must depend on the departure of his wife, he watched her drinking herself to death without concern and even smiled in secret at the possibility of some happy, quiet, and affluent years when she was gone.

Mrs. Lezzard lay on the sofa in her parlour, and a great peony-coloured face with coal-black eyes in it greeted Clement.  She gave him her hand and bid her husband be gone.  Then, when Gaffer had vanished, his wife turned to her nephew.