A good deal under the weather and terrible sorry for herself, Jenny set out to fetch over to Okehampton and see if her husband was alive or not.  And if he was, it looked harder than ever to understand why for he’d left her.  There weren’t but one explanation as she could see, and that didn’t make her feel no brighter.  He’d done a thing only a madman would have done, which being so, he must be mad.  She shed a good many tears on her way to find the man when she reached that conclusion; but Nicky mad was better than no Nicky at all in her opinion, and such was her faithful love for the ugly little monkey that she held on and prayed to God in the train all the way from Tavistock to Okehampton that Nicky might yet be saved alive and be brought back to his right mind.  Because Jenny knew folk went mad and then recovered.  So she was pretty cheerful again afore she alighted off the train at Okehampton; and then she hired a trap down to the ‘White Hart’ hotel, and drove out to Meldon Quarry with a fine trust in her Maker.  She left the trap in the vale and climbed over a fence and began to look about her.

’Twas a great big place with scores of men to work nigh a mighty railway bridge of steel that be thrown over the river valley and looks no more than a thread seen up in the sky from below.  And then, just when she began to feel it was a pretty big task to find her husband among that dollop of navvies and quarrymen, if she didn’t run right on top of him!  He was the first man of the lot she saw, and the shock took her in the breathing parts and very near dropped her.  But she soon found that she’d have to keep all her wits if she wanted to get Nicky back, and the line she took from the first showed her a fierce battle of wills lay afore ’em.

It was going round a corner into the mouth of the quarries that she ran upon Spider wheeling a barrow; and she saw he was but little changed, save that he looked a good bit dirtier and wilder than of old.  His hair was longer than ever and his eyes shone so black as sloes; and to Jenny’s mind there was a touch of stark madness in ’em without doubt.  He was strong and agile seemingly, and he began to gibber and cuss and chatter like an ape the moment he catched sight of her.  He dropped the barrow and stared, and his jaw dropped and then closed up again.  He drew up to his full height, which weren’t above five foot, five inches, and he screamed with rage and began his talk with several words I ban’t going to write down for anybody.  Then he axed her how in the devil’s name she dared to find him out and stand afore him.

“What do you mean, you vile woman?” he screamed.  “Who told you I was here?  I’ll tear his heart out when I know who ’twas—­and yours also—­you hateful hell-cat!”

“Alive!  Alive, thank God!  They told me true,” she cried.  “Oh, Nicky!”

“Not alive to you,” he answered.  “I’m dead to you for evermore, so you can be gone again, so soon as you mind to.  I know all about you and your goings on, and I ordain to strike at my appointed time and no sooner.  And them as told you I was here shall suffer in their bones for it!  So you clear out, or I’ll pitch you over the quarry with these hands.”