The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a

yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to

back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street

were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the

opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and most

luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could afford over-looked

the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard were to be

seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and

gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender

mist. The time was early autumn, "When the fair apples, red as evening sky,

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Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,

When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,

Do dance in air, and call the eyes around."

The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of

the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in

his mind.

In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the

finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months

after the wedding, and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see

the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to

accompany him. They had reached the last stage of a long eight-weeks'

tour, and were going on to Hintock that night.

In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene

natural to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and

press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing

fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding

them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed

forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent of these proceedings, to

whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing

manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had hung

his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves

rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the

pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had

alighted upon the brim of his hat--probably from the bursting of a

bag--while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the down

upon his fine, round arms.

She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of

the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus

and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw

"cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's

plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively,

where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each

proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the

travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed to wheels

instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of horses,

buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from

place to place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in

such a prolific season as the present.




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