He drank a little milk, remained silent a moment with his eyes upon the fire, and presently began to tell his life’s strange tale.
“Me an’ my brother was the only children our parents ever had; an’ my brother was five years older’n me. My father, Jonas Mundy, got money through a will, an’ he brought it to Dartymoor, like a fool, an’ rented a bit of moor from the Duchy of Cornwall, an’ built a farm upon it, an’ set to work to reclaim the land. At first he prospered, an’ Aller Bottom Farm, as my father called it, was a promising place, so long as sweat of man poured out there without ceasing. You can see the ruins of it yet, for when Jonas Mundy died an’ it falled to me, I left it an’ comed up here; an the chap as took it off my hands—he went bankrupt inside three year. ’Tis all falled to pieces now, for none tried again.
“But that’s to overrun the matter. When I was fifteen an’ my brother, John James, was twenty, us both failed in love with the same maid. You stare; but though fifteen in years, I was twenty-five in understanding, an’ a very oncoming youth where women were concerned. Nelly Baker had turned seventeen, an’ more than once I told her that though a boy of fifteen couldn’t wed a maid of her age without making folks laugh, even if he could get a parson to hitch them, yet a chap of three-an’-twenty might very properly take a girl of five-an’-twenty without the deed calling for any question. An’ her loved me truly enough; for though you only see a worn-out scarecrow afore you now, yet seventy year agone I filled the eye of more maidens than one, and was a bowerly youth to look upon—tall, straight, tough, wi’ hair so black as a crow.
“John James he never knowed that I cared a button for Nelly. I never showed it to a living soul but her by word or look; an’ she kept quiet—for fear of being laughed at, no doubt. Her folks were dead on the match with John James, an’ he pressed her so hard that she’d have took him but for me. He was a pretty fellow too—the Mundys were very personable as a family. Quite different, though, from me. Fair polled, wi’ flaxen hair, an terrible strong was John James, an’ the best wrastler on Dartymoor in them days.
“Me an’ her met by appointment a week afore she’d got to give him a final ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I mind it very well to this hour; an’ yet ’tis seventy-odd years agone. On Hartland Tor us sat in the heather unseen, an’ I put my arms around her an’ loved her, an’ promised to make her a happy woman. Then I told her what she’d got to do. First I made her prick her finger wi’ a thorn of the furze, an’ draw blood, an’ swear afore the Living God she’d marry me as soon as I could make her mistress of a farm.