This was a strange Christmastide, she pondered, as she strode across the East Moor with Hawk's Tor as her guide, and the hills rolling away from her on either side. Last year she had knelt beside her mother in church, and prayed that health and strength and courage should be given to them both. She had prayed for peace of mind and security; she had asked that her mother might be spared to her long, and that the farm should prosper. For answer came sickness, and poverty, and death. She was alone now, caught in a mesh of brutality and crime, living beneath a roof she loathed, amongst people she despised; and she was walking out across a barren, friendless moor to meet a horse thief and a murderer of men. She would offer no prayers to God this Christmas.

Mary waited on the high ground above Rushyford, and in the distance she saw the little cavalcade approach her: the pony, the jingle, and two horses tethered behind. The driver raised his whip in a signal of welcome. Mary felt the colour flame into her face and drain away. This weakness was a thing of torment to her, and she longed for it to be tangible and alive so that she could tear it from her and trample it underfoot. She thrust her hands into her shawl and waited, her forehead puckered in a frown. He whistled as he approached her and flung a small package at her feet. "A happy Christmas to you," he said. "I had a silver piece in my pocket yesterday and it burnt a hole. There's a new handkerchief for your head."

She had meant to be curt and silent on meeting him, but this introduction made it difficult for her. "That's very kind of you," she said. "I'm afraid you've wasted your money all the same."

"That's doesn't worry me, I'm used to it," he told her, and he looked her up and down in the cool offensive way of his, and whistled a tuneless song. "You were early here," he said. "Were you afraid I'd be going without you?"

She climbed into the cart beside him and gathered the reins in her hands. "I like to have the feel of them again," she said, ignoring his remark. "Mother and I, we would drive into Helston once a week on market days. It all seems very long ago. I have a pain in my heart when I think of it, and how we used to laugh together, even when times were bad. You wouldn't understand that, of course. You've never cared for anything but yourself."

He folded his arms and watched her handle the reins.

"That pony would cross the moor blindfold," he told her. "Give him his head, can't you? He's never stumbled in his life. That's better. He's taking charge of you, remember, and you can leave him to it. What were you saying?"

Mary held the reins lightly in her hands and looked at the track ahead of her. "Nothing very much," she answered. "In a way I was talking to myself. So you're going to sell two ponies at the fair, then?"

"Double profit, Mary Yellan, and you shall have a new dress if you help me. Don't smile and shrug your shoulder. I hate ingratitude. What's the matter with you today? Your colour is gone, and you've no light in your eyes. Are you feeling sick, or have you a pain in your belly?"

"I've not been out of the house since I saw you last," she said. "I stayed up in my room with my thoughts. They didn't make cheerful company. I'm a deal older than I was four days ago."

"I'm sorry you've lost your looks," he went on. "I fancied jogging into Launceston with a pretty girl beside me, and fellows looking up as we passed and winking. You're drab today. Don't lie to me, Mary. I'm not as blind as you think. What's happened at Jamaica Inn?"

"Nothing's happened," she said. "My aunt patters about in the kitchen, and my uncle sits at the table with his head in his hands and a bottle of brandy in front of him. It's only myself that has changed."

"You've had no more visitors, have you?"

"None that I know of. Nobody's crossed the yard."

"Your mouth is set very firm, and there are smudges under your eyes. You're tired. I've seen a woman look like that before, but there was a reason for it. Her husband came back to her at Plymouth after four years at sea. You can't make that excuse. Have you been thinking about me by any chance?"

"Yes, I thought about you once," she said. "I wondered who would hang first, you or your brother. There's little in it, from what I can see."

"If Joss hangs, it will be his own fault," said Jem. "If ever a man puts a rope around his own neck, he does. He goes three quarters of the way to meet trouble. When it does get him it will serve him right, and there'll be no brandy bottle to save him then. He'll swing sober."

They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the throng of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother's. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought was an unpleasant one, and she shrank from it. Supposing this had been Joss beside her ten, twenty years ago? She shuttered the comparison at the back of her mind, fearing the picture it conjured. She knew now why she hated her uncle.

His voice broke in upon her thoughts. "What are you looking at?" he said. She lifted her eyes to the scene in front of her. "I happened to notice your hands," she said briefly; "they are like your brother's. How far do we go across the moor? Isn't that the highroad winding away yonder?"

"We strike it lower down, and miss two or three miles of it. So you notice a man's hands, do you? I should never have believed it of you. You're a woman after all, then, and not a half-fledged farm boy. Are you going to tell me why you've sat in your room for four days without speaking, or do you want me to guess? Women love to be mysterious."

"There's no mystery in it. You asked me last time we met if I knew why my aunt looked like a living ghost. Those were your words, weren't they? Well, I know now, that's all."

Jem watched her with curious eyes, and then he whistled again.

"Drink's a funny thing," he said, after a moment or two. "I got drunk once, in Amsterdam, the time I ran away to sea. I remember hearing a church clock strike half past nine in the evening, and I was sitting on the floor with my arms round a pretty red-haired girl. The next thing I knew, it was seven in the following morning, and I was lying on my back in the gutter, without any boots or breeches. I often wonder what I did during those ten hours. I've thought and thought, but I'm damned if I can remember."

"That's very fortunate for you," said Mary. "Your brother is not so lucky. When he gets drunk he finds his memory instead of losing it."

The pony slacked in his stride, and she flicked at him with the reins. "If he's alone he can talk to himself," she continued; "it wouldn't have much effect on the walls of Jamaica Inn. This time he was not alone, though. I happened to be there when he woke from his stupor. And he'd been dreaming."

"And when you heard one of his dreams, you shut yourself up in your bedroom for four days, is that it?" said Jem.

"That's as near as you'll ever get to it," she replied.

He leant over her suddenly and took the reins out of her hands.

"You don't look where you're going," he said. "I told you this pony never stumbled, but it doesn't mean you have to drive him into a block of granite the size of a cannon ball. Give him to me." She sank back in the jingle and allowed him to drive. It was true, she had lacked concentration, and deserved his reproach. The pony picked up his feet and broke into a trot.

"What are you going to do about it?" said Jem.

Mary shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't made up my mind," she said. "I have to consider Aunt Patience. You don't expect me to tell, do you?"

"Why not? I hold no brief for Joss."

"You're his brother, and that's enough for me. There are many gaps in the story, and you fit remarkably well into some of them."

"Do you think I'd waste my time working for my brother?"

"There'd be little waste of time, from what I've seen. There's profit enough and to spare in his business, and no payment in return for his goods. Dead men tell no tales, Jem Merlyn."

"No, but dead ships do, when they run ashore in a fair wind. It's lights a vessel looks for, Mary, when she's seeking harbour. Have you ever seen a moth flutter to a candle and singe his wings? A ship will do the same to a false light. It may happen once, twice, three times perhaps; but the fourth time a dead ship stinks to heaven, and the whole country is up in arms and wants to know the reason why. My brother has lost his own rudder by now, and he's heading for the shore himself."

"Will you keep him company?"

"I? What have I to do with him? He can run his own head into the noose. I may have helped myself to baccy now and then, and I've run cargoes, but I'll tell you one thing, Mary Yellan, and you can believe it or not, as the mood takes you: I've never killed a man — yet."

He cracked the whip savagely over his pony's head, and the animal broke into a gallop. "There's a ford ahead of us, where that hedge runs away to the east. We cross the river and come out on the Launceston road half a mile on. Then we've seven miles or more before we reach the town. Are you getting tired?"

She shook her head. "There's bread and cheese in the basket under the seat," he said, "and an apple or two, and some pears. You'll be hungry directly. So you think I wreck ships, do you, and stand on the shore and watch men drown? And then put my hands into their pockets afterwards, when they're swollen with water? It makes a pretty picture."

Whether his anger was pretended or sincere she could not say, but his mouth was set firm, and there was a flaming spot of colour high on his cheekbone.

"You haven't denied it yet, have you?" she said.

He looked down at her with insolence, half contemptuous, half amused, and he laughed as though she were a child without knowledge. She hated him for it, and with a sudden intuition she knew the question that was forming itself, and her hands grew hot.

"If you believe it of me, why do you drive with me today to Launceston?" he said.

He was ready to mock her; an evasion or a stammered reply would be a triumph for him, and she steeled herself to gaiety.

"For the sake of your bright eyes, Jem Merlyn," she said. "I ride with you for no other reason," and she met his glance without a tremour.

He laughed at that, and shook his head, and fell to whistling again; and all at once there was ease between them, and a certain boyish familiarity. The very boldness of her words had disarmed him; he suspected nothing of the weakness that lay behind them, and for the moment they were companions without the strain of being man and woman.

They came now to the highroad, and the jingle rattled along behind the trotting pony, with the two stolen horses clattering in tow. The rain clouds swept across the sky, threatening and low, but as yet no drizzle fell from them, and the hills that rose in the distance from the moors were clear of mist. Mary thought of Francis Davey in Altarnun away to the left of her, and she wondered what he would say to her when she told him her story. He would not advise a waiting game again. Perhaps he would not thank her if she broke in upon his Christmas; and she pictured the silent vicarage, peaceful and still amongst the cluster of cottages that formed the village, and the tall church tower standing like a guardian above the roofs and chimneys.

There was a haven of rest for her in Altarnun — the very name spelt like a whisper — and the voice of Francis Davey would mean security and a forgetting of trouble. There was a strangeness about him that was disturbing and pleasant. That picture he had painted; and the way he had driven his horse; and how he had waited upon her with deft silence; and strange above all was the grey and sombre stillness of his room that bore no trace of his personality. He was a shadow of a man, and now she was not with him he lacked substance. He had not the male aggression of Jem beside her, he was without flesh and blood. He was no more than two white eyes and a voice in the darkness.

The pony shied suddenly at a gap in the hedge, and Jem's loud curse woke her with a jar from the privacy of her thoughts.

She threw a shot at a venture. "Are there churches hereabout?" she asked him. "I've lived like a heathen these last months, and I hate the feeling."