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The wife of the man who owned the cart had undertaken to mind the business, and the other babies, upon condition of having the keys of all the taps left with her. As the manner of journeying over the moor has been described oft enough already, I will say no more, except that we all arrived before dusk of the summer's day, safe at Plover's Barrows.
It was the same figure I had seen once before in the moonlight, at Plover's Barrows; and proved, to my great delight, to be the little maid Gwenny Carfax. She started a moment, at seeing me, but more with surprise than fear; and then she laid both her hands upon mine, as if she had known me for twenty years. 'Young man, she said, 'you must come with me. I was gwain' all the way to fetch thee.
There a stony soil brings forth only thorns, and thistles, and sere tufts of grass; and blustering winds rush over the unsheltered reaches, where the rough-haired goats huddle for warmth; and there is no melody save the many-toned voices of the wind and the plover's wild cry.
A man's happiness is perhaps of more value than a plover's, though I do not see how we are to prove it; but my sympathies, then as always, were with the birds. Within a week or so I received a letter from Mrs. Celia Thaxter, together with a wing, a foot, and one cinnamon feather. "By this wing which I send you," she began, "can you tell me the name of the bird that owned it?"
Over the brook stand some high maple trees; to their thick foliage wood-pigeons come. The entrance to a coomb, the widening mouth of a valley, is beyond, with copses on the slopes. Again the plover's notes; this time in the field immediately behind; repeated, too, in the field on the right hand.
I could not stay very long, because, my horse being quite unfit to travel from the injuries which his violence and vice had brought upon him, there was nothing for me but to go on foot, as none of Uncle Ben's horses could take me to Plover's Barrows, without downright cruelty: and though there would be a harvest-moon, Ruth agreed with me that I must not keep my mother waiting, with no idea where I might be, until a late hour of the night.
For last twenty mile at least they told me 'twere only half a mile farther, or only just round corner. Now tell me that, and I fain would thwack thee if thou wert not thrice my size. 'Sir, I replied, 'you shall not have the trouble. This is Plover's Barrows farm, and you are kindly welcome. Sheep's kidneys is for supper, and the ale got bright from the tapping. But why do you think ill of us?
'What, Uncle Ben, dost thou not know me, thy dutiful nephew John Ridd? Not to make a long story of it, I cut the thongs that bound him, and set him astride on the little horse; but he was too weak to stay so. Therefore I mounted him on my back, turning the horse into horse-steps, and leading the pony by the cords which I fastened around his nose, set out for Plover's Barrows.
"I think the Bishops are beginning to understand Gregorian music a little better. No plover's eggs, thank you," said Mr. Smith, who was totally without a sense of melody, but who assumed a complete musical authority, based on the fact that he intoned in church. "The Bishops never go on understanding anything," said Mr. Amarinth.
Within was a fleece of raw silk containing an object which she presently displayed before the astonished gaze of our hero. It was a red stone of about the bigness of a plover's egg, and which glowed and flamed with such an exquisite and ruddy brilliancy as to dazzle even Jonathan's inexperienced eyes.
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