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It was thus with th’ man who at that moment strode past me and caught up child and woman into his embrace. “I have come back to thee,” he said–“I have come back to thee. Look up, wife! Ruth, look up!” But when she did look up, and he saw her face as white as morning, and her hair as black as night, and her tall figure like to a young elm-tree–ay, when she looked up, ne’er saw I a man not dead seem so like death. He drops down his arms from about them, as though smitten from behind by a sword, and he staggers and leans against th’ table, and lets fall his head upon his breast, staring straight in front o’ him. But she stands looking upon him. And I got me out with all speed; so ne’er knew I more o’ what passed between ’em, saving that he did take away Ruth with him th’ next day, and she as happy as a bird whose mate hath come back to ‘t with the springtide. But a knew how that my lass had taken his wife into her bed, and nursed her through her sickness night and day, after the hard words he had spoken unto her and the ill names he had called her. And that was all I cared to know. He had set th’ iron in my lass’s heart, and now ’twas in his own; and for th’ rust, it did but hurt him more. Ay, ay, comrade, thou knowest what I do mean.

Well, the winter passed, and spring came on again, and ’twas in the May o’ that year that I did break my hammer-arm. God above us only knows what would ‘a’ befallen us had ‘t not been for my Keren. Wilt believe ‘t? (but then I think thou’lt believe a’most anything o’ that lass o’ mine now–eh, comrade?)–th’ lass did set to work, and in two weeks’ time a was as good a farrier as was e’er her daddy afore her. Bodykins, man! thou shouldst ‘a’ seen her at it: clad from throat to feet she was in a leathern apron, looking as like mine own as though th’ mare’s skin whereof mine was fashioned had, as ’twere, foaled a smaller one for th’ lass–ha! ha!–and her sleeves rolled up from her brown arms, and th’ cords a-standing out on them like th’ veins in a horse’s shoulder. And so would she stand, and work th’ bellows at th’ forge, until, what with th’ red light from the fire on her face, and on her hair, and on her bare arms, I was minded o’ th’ angel that walked i’ the fiery furnace with th’ men in holy writ. And when a pounded away at a shoe, and her young arm going like a flail–chink, chank–chink, chank–and th’ white spatters o’ hot iron flying this way and that from th’ anvil, meseemed ’twas as though Dame Venus (for thou knowest how in th’ masque twelve year gone this Yuletide ’twas shown as how a great dame called Venus did wed wi’ a farrier called Vulcan–I wot thou rememberest?)–as though Dame Venus had taken away her hammer from her goodman Vulcan to do ‘s work for him. By my troth, ’twas a sight to make a picture of–that ’twas, comrade.

Well, ne’er saw I such trouble as that arm gave me (and ‘t has ne’er been strong since). First ‘twould not knit, and then when ‘t did ’twas all wrong, and had to be broken and set o’er again. But th’ lass ne’er gave out once. Late and early, fair weather or foul, a was at th’ forge; and a came to be known for as good a smith as there was in all Warwickshire. But, for that none had e’er heard tell o’ a woman at such work, or for some other reason, they did come to call her, moreover, “The Farrier Lass o’ Piping Pebworth.”