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Timothy met the third party to that unfolding drama as he proceeded on to the Moor. Then came John Aggett with an anxious face looking out upon the world above his pale beard. The labourer stopped Tim, and in broken sentences—like a child that wrestles to describe new things within his experience but beyond his vocabulary—strove clumsily to express a mental upheaval which he lacked words to display. He made it clear, however, that he was in a great turmoil of mind and much driven by fear of appearances in connection with Gammer Gurney’s predictions of the previous night.

“I be just come from speech with the old woman, and can’t say as ’twas sense or yet nonsense I got out of her. She kept a close watch on her lips, ’peared to me; but her eyes threatened bad things an’ her weern’t at ease. ‘What will happen, will happen,’ she sez to me; an’ at the fust utterance it seemed a deep sayin’, yet, come to think on’t, ’twas a thing known so well to me as she.”

“Why did you go to her?” enquired Timothy, knowing without need of answer.