After a great deal of chaffering and bargaining for various articles, the tramp consented to receive in payment some fine woollen yarn that dangled from the beams, observing, "that she must turn a penny somehow." She then put aside the basket, and sat down, to discuss the bread and cheese, and tankard of home-brewed ale, that Dorothy placed on the table for her supper.
"You found the roads bad," said Rushmere, refilling his pipe.
"Up to the top of my boots," and the woman lifted up her large foot, which was cased in a heavy highlow, thickly studded with iron nails. "I was near mired, at the lower end of the heath, and began to think I would have to stay there all night. Who would have expected to step into a mud-hole during such a hard frost as this?"
"You be lucky to get out as you did," said the farmer. "That are be Storby Moss. The ground be allers wet, an' holds the water like a sponge. Many's the good beast that's died in yon quag."
The woman leaned back upon the settle, stretched her feet to the fire, and began leisurely to examine the large hall, from the well garnished beams above her head, to the iron bars that secured the windows.
"These old houses," she observed, "are much stronger than the new. The people in the old times knew what they were about when they built them. Arn't you afraid of being robbed in this lonely out of the way place?"
"Never think of such a thing," said Rushmere, "we live among honest folk. I keep a good blunderbuss loaded over the door, an' thieves would na' find it an easy job to get in through these iron bars. We never keep ony thing o' value in the house, to tempt them sort o' chaps, wi' a bank so near.
"Have another glass o' ale, lass? Art fond o' nuts? Dolly, bring some o' those filberts out o' the sack in the pantry, and the crackers foreby."
Dorothy brought her apron full of nuts. "Catch?" she cried, in a laughing tone, as she threw a double handful into the tramp's lap.
Dorothy turned to the dresser, and a strange expression came over her face.
After the woman had eaten the nuts, and seen the bottom of the tankard, she began to yawn, and asked, "if she could lie down and sleep beside the fire?"
"I will show you a room; follow me," said Dorothy.