Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He would engage a servant for the year at the Martinmas hiring, but as soon as the year was up the man would leave, and it became increasingly difficult for the farmer to find a substitute. "What mak o' a gaffer is Learoyd?" one labourer would ask of another as they stood together in the Holmton market-place waiting to be hired.
Such were the opinions passed on Learoyd by the farm labourers round about Holmton, and it was little wonder that, as the years went by, the condition of his farm grew steadily worse. When the Parfitts had been married fifteen years, a strange rumour reached their cottage of a spiritual change that had been wrought in the soul of Samuel Learoyd.
A visitor to Holmton, one of the smaller manufacturing towns of the West Riding, on a certain October morning, about the middle of the nineteenth century, might have witnessed a strange sight. It was market-day, and a number of farm people were collected in the market-place, where a brisk trade in cattle, sheep, and dairy produce was being transacted.
After his shameless traffic in the Holmton market-place Learoyd had for some months lived alone. Never a sociable man, he shunned the society of the neighbouring farmers, and they, on their side, resenting his outrageous conduct to his stepdaughter, studiously kept out of his way.
She came to him in his dreams, and always under the same form. What he saw was a girl, with downcast eyes and supplicating hands, standing at the foot of the Holmton market-cross, with a halter round her neck. Nor was it only in his dreams that he saw her.
Six months Tom Parfitt waited to see whether Learoyd would make any attempt to recover the stepdaughter whom he had wronged, and then, as the farmer made no move, he quietly married Mary Whittaker at the Primitive Methodist Chapel. Years passed away and a gradual change came over the character of the social and economic life of Holmton.
She tried to comfort him, but the farmer shrank from her, as he had done when she first entered his house, and when she came into his bedroom to say good-night, he screamed out in terror and would not let her come near him. That night the vision of the girl with downcast eyes and supplicating hands, standing in the Holmton market-place, came back to him with all its old haunting power.
"Aye, I bowt her for sixpence afore I wed her," he said, looking them steadily in the face, "an' t' man that selled her to me said I'd gotten her muck-cheap. Them was t' truest words he iver spak, an' shoo would hae been muck-cheap if I'd gien a million pund for her." During all the years that Mary Whittaker had spent at Holmton she had not once caught sight of Samuel Learoyd.
Mary Whittaker was at once dispatched to the Woolpack Inn, and, after an hour, returned with the news that her mother was not there and that the barman was also missing. With an oath, Learoyd saddled his mare and rode in all haste to Holmton.
Fieldhead Farm was only four miles away, but she had never had the courage to go near it. The farmer visited Holmton only on market days, and notlung could ever induce his stepdaughter to go near the scene of her deep humiliation. But though she did not see Learoyd he was never long out of her mind, and through her husband and children she kept herself informed of what was going on at the farm.
Word Of The Day