After Clough's positive dying declaration, it was hardly to
be expected that his daughter Mary could show any kindness to her old
lover, Ben Craven. But week after week went by, and people saw that
she positively refused to speak to Bill Laycock, and that she shrank
even from his passing shadow, and they began to look queerly at the
man. It amounted at first to nothing more than that; but as a mist
creeps over the landscape, and gradually possesses it altogether, so
this chill, adverse atmosphere enfolded him. He noticed that old
acquaintances dropped away from him; men went three miles farther off
to get a shoe put on a horse. No one could have given a clear reason
for doing so, and one man did not ask another man "why?" but the fact
needed no reasoning about. It was there. At the harvest festivals the
men drew away from him, and the girls would not have him for a partner
in any rural game. He was asked to resign his place in the knur club,
and if he joined any cricket eleven, the match fell to the ground.
One September evening Elizabeth and Phyllis went to the village to
leave a little basket of dainties in Martha's cottage. They now seldom
saw her, she was usually in the chapel; but they knew she was grateful
for the food, and it had become all they could do for her in the hard
struggle she was having.
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