She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a
sense of the intractability of circumstances.



At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a
conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street,
opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and
Robert Creedle had accidentally met.

The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over
the parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the
matter--towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards
concern in respect of it as circumstance.

"Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to
lose her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A
man all skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little
Hintock for a better land, won't it make some difference to your
Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?"

"Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle. "Won't it! I was
only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing
way, and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know
what it means? It is upon John South's life that all Mr.
Winterborne's houses hang. If so be South die, and so make his
decease, thereupon the law is that the houses fall without the
least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House. I told
him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!"