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"Did ye see him since?" asked Mother Carke, returning. The girl was still embarrassed; and now she spoke in a lower tone, and seemed subdued. "I thought I sid him as I came here, walkin' beside me among the trees; but I consait it was only the trees themsels that lukt like rinnin' one behind another, as I walked on."
Now as I went, by some chance there recurred to me the words of an old song I had read somewhere, years ago, words written in the glorious, brutal, knightly days of Edward the First, of warlike memory; and the words ran thus: "For her love I carke, and care, For her love I droop, and dare, For her love my bliss is bare. And I wax wan!"
Not far from the birches and hazels that straggle about the rude wall of the little enclosure, on the contrary, they say, you may discover the broom and the rag-wort, in which witches mysteriously delight. But this is perhaps a scandal. Mall Carke was for many a year the sage femme of this wild domain.
And, as he rode beneath the leafy arches of the wood, he lifted up his voice, and sang, and the song was mournful, and of a plaintive seeming, and rang loud behind his visor-bars; therefore, as I sat beside the freshet, I hearkened to his song: "For her love I carke, and care, For her love I droop, and dare, For her love my bliss is bare. And I wax wan!"
The hideous being who was her mate continued in the same odd fluctuations of fury, grief, and merriment; and whenever she uttered a groan, he parodied it with another, as Mother Carke thought, in saturnine derision. At length he strode into another room, and banged the door after him. In due time the poor woman's pains were over, and a daughter was born.
"Hoity-toity, why not?" "Keep at heyame after nightfall, and don't ye be walking by yersel' by daylight or any light lang lonesome ways, till after ye're baptised," said Mall Carke. "I'm like to be married first." "Tak care that marriage won't hang i' the bell-ropes," said Mother Carke. "Leave me alane for that. The young lord said he was maist daft wi' luv o' me.
Yet, little by little, this bird changed, and lo! in its place was a new Peter Vibart standing upon the old; and the New trampled the Old down into the grass, and it was gone. Then, with his eyes on the stars, the new Peter Vibart fell a-singing, and the words I sang were these: "For her love I carke, and care, For her love I droop, and dare, For her love my bliss is bare. And I wax wan!"
He is gaunt, sombre, bony, dirty, and dressed in a black suit which a beggar would hardly care to pick out of the dust. This ill-looking man nodded to her as he stepped on the road. "I don't know you," she said. He nodded again. "I never sid ye neyawheere," she exclaimed sternly. "Fine evening, Mother Carke," he says, and holds his snuff-box toward her.
What fondnesse is it to carke and care so much, at that instant and passage from all exemption of paine and care? As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so shall our death the end of all things. Therefore is it as great follie to weepe, we shall not live a hundred yeeres hence, as to waile we lived not a hundred yeeres agoe. "Death is the beginning of another life."
"His feyace was long, but weel-faured, and darker nor a gipsy; and his clothes were black and grand, and made o' velvet, and he said he was the young lord himsel'; and he lukt like it." "That will be the same fella I sid at Deadman's Grike," said Mall Carke, with an anxious frown. "Hoot, mudder! how cud that be?" cried the lass, with a toss of her pretty head and a smile of scorn.
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