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And then there was another sound, which Mrs Clowes did not notice until it had been repeated several times; the cry of a human voice out on the road:

“Missis!”

She opened wide the doors of the van and looked prudently forth. Naturally, inevitably, Jock-at-a-Venture was trudging alongside, level with the horse’s tail! He stepped nimbly–he was a fine walker–but none the less his breath came short and quick, for he had been making haste up a steepish hill in order to overtake the van. And he carried a bundle and a stick in his hands, and on his head a superb but heavy beaver hat.

“I’m going your way, missis,” said Jock.

“Seemingly,” agreed Mrs Clowes, with due caution.

“Canst gi’ us a lift?” he asked.

“And welcome,” she said, her face changing like a flash to suit the words.

“Nay, ye needna’ stop!” shouted Jock.

In an instant he had leapt easily up into the van, and was seated by her side therein on the children’s stool.

“That’s a hat–to travel in!” observed Mrs Clowes.

Jock removed the hat, examined it lovingly and replaced it.

“I couldn’t ha’ left it behind,” said he, with a sigh, and continued rapidly in another voice: “Missis, we’n seen a pretty good lot o’ each other this wik, and yet ye slips off o’this’n, without saying good-bye, nor a word about yer soul!”

Mrs Clowes heaved her enormous breast and shook the reins.

“I’ve had my share of trouble,” she remarked mysteriously.

“Tell me about it, missis!”

And lo! in a moment, lured on by his smile, she was telling him quite familiarly about the ailments of her younger children, the escapades of her unmarried daughter aged fifteen, the surliness of one of her sons-in-law, the budding dishonesty of the other, the perils of infant life, and the need of repainting the big van and getting new pictures for the front of the booth. Indeed, all the worries of a queen of the road!

“And I’m so fat!” she said, “and yet I’m not forty, and shan’t be for two year–and me a grandmother!”

“I knowed it!” Jock exclaimed.

“If I wasn’t such a heap o’ flesh–“

“Ye’re the grandest heap o’ flesh as I ever set eyes on, and I’m telling ye!” Jock interrupted her.

VIII

Then there were disconcerting sounds out in the world beyond the van. The horse stopped. The double doors were forced open from without, and a black figure, with white eyes in a black face, filled the doorway. The van had passed through the mining village of Moorthorne, and this was one of the marauding colliers on the outskirts thereof. When the colliers had highroad business in the night they did not trouble to wash their faces after work. The coal-dust was a positive aid to them, for it gave them a most useful resemblance to the devil.

Jock-at-a-Venture sprang up as though launched from a catapult.

“Is it thou, Jock?” cried the collier, astounded.

“Ay, lad!” said Jock, briefly.

And caught the collier a blow under the chin that sent him flying into the obscurity of the night. Other voices sounded in the road. Jock rushed to the doorway, taking a pistol from his pocket. And Mrs Clowes, all dithering like a jelly, heard shots. The horse started into a gallop. The reins escaped from the hands of the mistress, but Jock secured them, and lashed the horse to greater speed with the loose ends of them.

“I’ve saved thee, missis!” he said later. “I give him a regular lifter under the gob, same as I give Jabez, Sunday. But where’s the sense of a lone woman wandering about dark roads of a night wi’ a pack of childer?… Them childer ‘ud ha’ slept through th’ battle o’ Trafalgar,” he added.

Mrs Clowes wept.

“Well may you say it!” she murmured. “And it’s not the first time as I’ve been set on!”

“Thou’rt nowt but a girl, for all thy flesh and thy grandchilder!” said Jock. “Dry thy eyes, or I’ll dry ’em for thee!”

She smiled in her weeping. It was an invitation to him to carry out his threat.

And while he was drying her eyes for her, she asked:

“How far are ye going? Axe?”

“Ay! And beyond! Can I act, I ask ye? Can I fight, I ask ye? Can ye do without me, I ask ye, you a lone woman? And yer soul, as is mine to save?”

“But that business o’ yours at Bursley?”

“Here’s my bundle,” he said, “and here’s my best hat. And I’ve money and a pistol in my pocket. The only thing I’ve clean forgot is my cornet; but I’ll send for it and I’ll play it at my wedding. I’m Jock-at-a-Venture.”

And while the van was rumbling in the dark night across the waste and savage moorland, and while the children were sleeping hard at the back of the van, and while the crockery was restlessly clinking in the racks and the lamp swaying, and while he held the reins, the thin, lithe, greying man contrived to take into his arms the vast and amiable creature whom he desired. And the van became a vehicle of high romance.