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"But where are the sheep?" she asked. "I left them in the field at the beckfoot," he answered with a touch of awkwardness. "We can bring them down afterwards; I remembered I wanted something at Allerby." Grace turned her head to hide a smile. It was obvious that he had remembered he wanted to go to Allerby when he saw her. "Oh, well," she said, "I am going part of the way.
And Struthers, when I challenged that statement, promptly announced that the lady in question was no more in search of health than a tom-cat's in search of water and no more interested in ranching than an ox is interested in astronomy, seeing as she'd 'a' been co-respondent in the Allerby and Crewe-Buller divorce case if she'd stayed where the law could have laid a hand on her, and standing more shamed than ever when Baron Crewe-Buller shut himself up in his shooting-lodge and blew his brains out three weeks before her ladyship had sailed for America, and the papers that full of the scandal it made it unpleasant for a self-respecting lady's maid to meet her friends of a morning in Finsbury Park.
Kit stopped when he got near Allerby, where the dale widens and a cluster of low white houses stands among old trees. The village glimmered in the moonlight and beyond it rolling country, dotted by dark woods, ran back to the sea. A beck plunged down the hillside with a muffled roar, and a building, half in light and half in shadow, occupied the hollow of the ghyll.
The land was poor at the dale head, but there was better below, where the hills dropped down to the flat country, and, with the exception of Ashness farm, all was Osborn's, from Force Crag, where the beck plunged from the moor, to the rich bottoms round Allerby mill. Unfortunately, the estate was encumbered when he inherited it, and he had paid off one mortgage by raising another.
Kit set off as fast as he could walk and, stopping for a minute at Ashness, sent his men. Then he went on to Allerby and at first found the farmers unwilling to move, but after some argument they went with him to the mill. "We'll hear what miller has to say," one remarked. "He kens maist aboot the job, sin' he had t' mend t' lade when Hayes refused.
Dowthwaite made himself unpleasant about his broken wall, the Askews turned the grouse back, and then I found the Allerby cottage children, ransacking Redmire Wood when the pheasants were going to roost." Grace, who stood close by with Thorn, indicated the smooth gravel and the low, wide-topped wall on which red geraniums grew. "This," she said, "is a great improvement on the old grass bank.
"But you well know the wages laborers get in the dale, and there are old folks and some sick at Allerby who need a good fire. The winter's hard and some of the cottages are very damp." "The farmers pay the wages." "None of them make much money. They pay what their rent allows." "I don't force up the rents. They're fixed by the terms new tenants are willing to offer when a lease runs out."
The fellow was greedy, and was getting a rather dangerous control; he had already a lease of the limekilns and Allerby mill. But his rents were regularly paid, and it was an advantage to deal with one prosperous tenant instead of several who had not his punctuality and capital. "The trailer would be useful if you decided to make the new terrace you thought about," Hayes suggested.
I think you'll find he has a contract for all the coal that comes down the line." They pondered this and another remarked, "Peat's terrible messy stuff and bad to dry at back end o' year." "It can be dried," said an old man. "I mind the time when iver a load o' coals went past Allerby. Aw t' folk clubbed togedder to cut and haul t' peat from Malton.
"Then I missed him at the cross-roads," said Grace. "I was going to Allerby, and my father asked me to give him a note when he stopped at Lawson's." She hesitated, and then resumed impulsively: "Perhaps I oughtn't to have come on; but I wanted to do so." They knew what she meant, but nobody answered, and Grace sat down on a bench by the table. "Will you give the note to Mr. Hayes?
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