Ashurst, who was leaning against the gate, lighting his pipe, left his curved hands before his face for long after the flame of the match had gone out.

“Yes?” he said, and to himself his voice sounded hoarse and queer.

“She was one in an ’underd, poor maid!  I putts a flower ’ere every time I passes.  Pretty maid an’ gude maid she was, though they wouldn’t burry ‘er up to th’ church, nor where she wanted to be burried neither.”  The old labourer paused, and put his hairy, twisted hand flat down on the turf beside the bluebells.

“Yes?” said Ashurst.

“In a manner of speakin’,” the old man went on, “I think as ’twas a love-story—­though there’s no one never knu for zartin.  Yu can’t tell what’s in a maid’s ’ead but that’s wot I think about it.”  He drew his hand along the turf.  “I was fond o’ that maid—­don’ know as there was anyone as wasn’ fond of ’er.  But she was to lovin’-’earted—­that’s where ’twas, I think.”  He looked up.  And Ashurst, whose lips were trembling in the cover of his beard, murmured again:  “Yes?”

“’Twas in the spring, ’bout now as ’t might be, or a little later—­blossom time—­an’ we ‘ad one o’ they young college gentlemen stayin’ at the farm-nice feller tu, with ’is ’ead in the air.  I liked ’e very well, an’ I never see nothin’ between ’em, but to my thinkin’ ’e turned the maid’s fancy.”  The old man took the pipe out of his mouth, spat, and went on: 

“Yu see, ‘e went away sudden one day, an’ never come back.  They got ’is knapsack and bits o’ things down there still.  That’s what stuck in my mind—­’is never sendin’ for ’em.  ‘Is name was Ashes, or somethen’ like that.”

“Yes?” said Ashurst once more.

The old man licked his lips.

“‘Er never said nothin’, but from that day ‘er went kind of dazed lukin’; didn’seem rightly therr at all.  I never knu a’uman creature so changed in me life—­never.  There was another young feller at the farm—­Joe Biddaford ‘is name wer’, that was praaperly sweet on ’er, tu; I guess ’e used to plague ’er wi ’is attentions.  She got to luke quite wild.  I’d zee her sometimes of an avenin’ when I was bringin’ up the calves; ther’ she’d stand in th’ orchard, under the big apple tree, lukin’ straight before ’er.  ‘Well,’ I used t’think, ’I dunno what ’tes that’s the matter wi’ yu, but yu’m lukin’ pittiful, that yu be!’”

The old man refit his pipe, and sucked at it reflectively.

“Yes?” said Ashurst.

“I remembers one day I said to ’er:  ’What’s the matter, Megan?’—­’er name was Megan David, she come from Wales same as ‘er aunt, ol’ Missis Narracombe.  ‘Yu’m frettin’ about somethin’.  I says.  ‘No, Jim,’ she says, ‘I’m not frettin’.’  ‘Yes, yu be!’ I says.  ‘No,’ she says, and to tears cam’ rollin’ out.  ‘Yu’m cryin’—­what’s that, then?’ I says.  She putts ’er ’and over ’er ’eart:  ’It ‘urts me,’ she says; ’but ’twill sune be better,’