Griff Lomax bethought him, early on Monday morning, that his friend the preacher would be better for a little more of the same treatment to which he had subjected him yesterday. He found Gabriel just coming down the stairs.
"Well, old fellow, how are things with you to-day? You're late down, at any rate, and that means you have slept."
"Ay, like a child," said the preacher, with a half-rueful, half-ashamed air. "Like a child, Griff—and that after I'd sinned grievously against the Lord."
"Confound it, man," laughed Griff, "I wish I could drive it into you that you're a poorer hand at sinning than most of us. Just you tell yourself, Hirst, that the Lord has a pretty handful to look after, and that He can't spare you the exclusive attention you seem to count on: I should be ashamed to expect it, myself."
"Griff, lad, don't make mock; try to soften your heart to the Lord, and His ways will come clear to you."
The preacher's voice was tender. His yesterday's excitement had left him weak, and his heart turned to Lomax with a mixed feeling that the lad was at once a tower of strength and a weak unbeliever.
"I don't mock in my heart, and you know it, Hirst. But I want to kick some of the nonsense out of you, and that's the truth of it. Now, I'm going to watch you eat your breakfast: what is there on the table? Humph! three slices of bread and butter, and tea—the tea is unconscionably weak, too, by the look of it."
"Here—I say, Griff—what are you going to do?" criedGabriel, as his visitor strode out of the room, and across the stone flags of the hall.
Lomax, however, was in the kitchen by this time. The housekeeper was ironing one of Gabriel's coarse cotton shirts.
"Betty Binns," said the intruder, "do you call yourself a woman of sense?"
Mrs. Binns fairly gasped at that. It was bad enough that young Lomax should march into her kitchen without permission, but that he should forthwith give battle to her in this foolhardy way—"well, it did beät all."
"If so be as I'm not, I'm ower old to learn!" she retorted, waiting till her opponent should give her some sure ground for combat.
Griff, spoiling for one of his old-time fights with the redoubtable Betty, put on just that air of smiling effrontery which most annoyed her.
"A woman is as old as she looks, Mrs. Binns, and there's heaps of time yet for you to learn."
"Tak your fal-lal Lunnon manners to them as wants 'em!" snorted Mrs. Binns, viciously laying to on the wristbands of the shirt, and glaring bellicosely at the intruder. She broke a button during the process—a piece of carelessness which did not tend to soothe her ruffled feelings.
"All right; I'm off in a moment. What I wanted to say to you was just this—a woman of sense would never let her master starve as you do. Gabriel Hirst will die before long, if he goes on with these precious slops you give him, and his death will be at your door."
This was an aspect of the situation which had not occurred to Betty. She was not going to confess as much, though, so she merely growled an invitation to Lomax to go on with what he had to say.
"Just put a pan of water on the fire, and a couple of good fresh eggs in the pan—no, you can put four. I've breakfasted already, but I'll start again by way of example."
"An' who gave ye leave, if I may mak so bold as to axe to come lording it i'mykitchen?"
"No one; but I'm here all the same. You don't know the food a strong man needs, and I've come to teach you."
Betty Binns was in two minds whether she should throw her iron at Griff's head; but she restrained herself, and tried her hand at grim satire instead.
"Th' maister is a man o' God, Mr. Lummax, whichtha'llniver be nohow tha tries. It's nobbut likely he should want his vittals different fro' other fowks's."
"The more he's a man of God, the more strength he needs to fight the devil.—Now come, Mrs. Binns, we've had many a set-to in times gone by, and I'll acknowledge you generally have the best of it: won't you do my way this once?"
He was talking sense now, Betty could not but admit. Of course she always had the best of it—it took something more than a mere man to vanquish Betty Binns—and she always had said "there war summat she liked i' th' lad;" and perhaps he was not as far wrong on this occasion as bothersome men-folk generally were.
"Well, happen ye've hit on a bit o' common sense once i' a while. Th' maister, he do look main poorly when th' Sperrit keeps strong meät out on him. Ay, well, well, we'll be seeing."
Lomax chuckled at the overthrow of Betty Binns; he had expected more fight from her. Truth to tell, however, the housekeeper had been sorely bothered of late to see Gabriel growing leaner and leaner; he was a solid, square-built man, as his father had been before him, when Nature had her own way, but his increasing mania for slops was playing havoc with him. So that Betty was really a good deal relieved to find an ally in young Lomax.
"Didn't I say you were a woman of sound sense?" said Griff, with barefaced disregard of his first statement. "You're jolly fond of me, too, Betty, under all that bluster of yours."
Betty raised a rolling-pin from the table, and pursued her tormentor as far as the kitchen door.
"And, Betty, as you love me," he said, by way of a lastParthian shot, "make a couple of rounds of buttered toast. You will, won't you?"
"I'll lay this about your lugs," retorted Betty, brandishing her weapon, "if ye're not off in a brace o' shakes."
Gabriel Hirst was standing by the window when Griff returned.
"Well, what have you been doing?" he demanded.
"Oh, nothing. I felt a bit hungry after the walk from Marshcotes, and I asked Mrs. Binns to boil four eggs."
"I thought you'd had breakfast, or I should have offered it long ago."
"I have had one, but I intend to tackle another. Two eggs for me, two for you; a round of toast each. Your Betty Binns isn't half the sport she was, Gabriel; she gives in like a lamb."
"He's a gooid for naught, is Griff Lummax," muttered Betty, as she cut the bread and held it before the fire; "but there's summat I like about him; ay, I willun't deny 'at he hes a way wi' him."
Gabriel made a last stand when the eggs were set down before him with a clatter.
"You don't know, Griff, how religion takes a man; he wants to be always subduing, subduing, and it's a fearful sin to pamper the carnal body."
"Fiddlesticks! You look after your body, and the Lord will look after your soul; play the fool with your body a year or two longer, and you'll begin to wonder whether you have a soul at all."
"But, Griff—John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, and——"
"You're not John, though, and you happen to have some one to look after you. Chip that egg."
Gabriel obeyed meekly, though he sorely doubted Griff's way of putting things. He ate with a relish, however, and at the end of it Lomax got to the real subject in hand.
"What about this girl? Who is she?" he asked abruptly.
The preacher flushed.
"All last night I was dreaming of her, and that was why I slept so quietly: I forgot that it was the flesh, and we went over the moor together till we got to the Thorntop road. She was more like a spirit than a woman, and her eyes were as quiet and deep and far away as the stars. I whispered, 'Greta,' and she took my head to her breast, and 'Hush!' she said; 'the fight is over and done with, and the reward is here.' Griff, man, it's hard, hard, coming back to the sin."
Griff watched him curiously. The innocence of this broad-shouldered man, his childish outspokenness—he could not tell whether more to pity or admire them.
"Greta? It doesn't sound like one of the names hereabouts. Who is she, Gabriel?"
"Greta Rotherson. She lives at the corn-mill in Hazel Dene."
"What? Is some one running the old mill again? It was standing when I left here last year."
"Yes; Miller Rotherson came from the low country in the spring, saw the mill, and bought it out of hand. You should hit it off, you and he; many's the time I've sought to save his soul alive, but he always has the one answer. 'Give it up, Mr. Hirst,' says he. 'Some men were made to take religion, as your saying is, and some were not; and there's about the end of it. I don't need it, and I couldn't take it if I tried from now till Doomsday.'"
Griff smiled; he recognized a kindred spirit.
"Did you ever try to convert the daughter?" he asked, after a pause.
Again the preacher flushed, and the lines on his face deepened.
"I've been thinking that over, and it seems as though that fit of mine was not a matter of yesterday, nor the day before nor the day before that. It's been coming on a long while, Griff, though I never guessed it till I saw her, winsome as a fairy, paddling in the beck. Ididtry to convert her, just once; but the words wouldn't come, and when she laughed, with a kind of coo at the tail of her voice, I fell soft and hadn't theheart to upbraid her. Ay, Griff, it's been coming this long while."
"And the best thing that has come to you since you were born," cried Lomax, cheerily. "What with the girl, and enough to eat, and a rap over the knuckles now and then from me—for old times' sake, you know—we'll make a moor man of you yet, Gabriel. Do you ever feel the swish of a gale making you drunk?"
For a moment the preacher yielded to that storm-suggestion; his whole face lit up, his eyes sparkled.
"Yes, drunk. When the heather lies low against the peat, and the rain belches out of the sky—it's almost like freedom at times."
"You'll do," growled Lomax.
The light went out of Gabriel's eyes.
"But it's the old Adam; it has to be beaten under."
"I wish you'd let your old Adam alone a bit, Gabriel. He's not half as bad as some who followed him. Come for a ride to-night; the moon is at full, and Lassie is eating her head off in the stable."
"Yes, I'll come. It's good to have you back again, Griff."
"As good as to be back? I doubt it. I must be off now, anyway, or that mother of mine will be seeking me with a hunting-crop; I promised to take her for a walk this morning. It's a pity about the mill, Gabriel; I used to bathe regularly in the stream, and there is an end of that now; I was coming for a bathe when you ran into me yesterday."
"Shall you be going to see Miller Rotherson?" asked Gabriel, wistfully, as they stood at the gate.
"Of course, old fellow, if only to give him a helping hand; you're a terrible chap when you set your mind on conversion."
"Because if—if you liked me to go with you—I know them, you see."
"Yes, I see," smiled Griff. "All right; I'll call for you on the way."
The preacher's brow was clouded as he went back through the fading stocks and asters that lined the garden path.
"Just the same, just the same," he muttered; "when you're serious, a devil of passion, and when you're gay, a scoffer. But, God knows, lad, how I love you!"
"I'm late, mother," said Griff, rushing into the Manor parlour at his usual hurricane speed. "Old Gabriel has been in a poor sort of way, lately, and I had to bully him. Where are we going to-day?"
"Anywhere you like, Griff. Let us take the first path we come to, and go straight ahead. We won't bind ourselves to anything."
Every day since he returned, the mother and Griff had had a long walk together. The man's zest for the moors was increasing apace; the more heather he got, the more he wanted, and the two of them found so much to talk about, that Kate Strangeways, the quarry-master's wife, went clean out of the old lady's head. Their cross-country tramp this morning, however, chanced to bring them in sight of Peewit House.
"Were you ever in that house up there?" asked Mrs. Lomax.
"Never; but I have often thought of exploring it. Who lives there? Some one must do, as there is smoke coming out of the chimney."
"The worst-assorted couple you can imagine; a husband who ought to be horse-whipped every day of his life, and a wife who is, in my judgment, as fine a woman as I know anywhere. I want to drop in, by the way; Mrs. Strangeways has been ill for a long while, and I stop for a chat now and then. Will you come?"
"Of course I will. I happen to be in search of a type of the genuine moor woman, too, and perhaps she will oblige me."
"Griff, Griff! Always on the hunt for people to dip your brush into. I sometimes wish you were not quite so full of your work."
"It's all right, mother," laughed the other, as he made hertake advantage of his arm up the side of the brae; "I try to keep a tight hand on it, and only let it out when itoughtto be let out."
But the laugh died on his lips: they were close to the bit of intake that guarded Peewit from the moor, and Kate Strangeways was leaning over the gate. Griff had dreamed of that pure-bred moor woman of his for many a year, and it seemed to him that he had found her at last in the flesh; she had the lissom strength of figure, the lips that were clear-cut for tenderness or scorn, the resolute hazel eyes, all just as he had imagined them.
"Mother, she is beautiful!" he whispered.
The old lady looked hard at him; then laughed, a dry, uncertain laugh.
"Let her be just a type, Griff, dear; don't dwell too much on the flesh and blood."
Once the first shock of surprise was over, Lomax was disposed to laugh at himself touching his half-second of emotion. He warmed to the thought of canvas and palette; he saw fine capabilities in the handling of this moor woman by a man who had the same peat salt in his fibres.
"Well, mother, I have my chance at last," he said, as they came away. "That type is absolutely new in art; I can only pray that I may not spoil her in the drawing."
Her laugh had no uneasiness in it now; she saw that Kate Strangeways, the actual, had very little to do with that swift light of enthusiasm on Griff's face.
"If you are a very good boy, I may bring you again—but I warn you that her husband is jealous; are you afraid for your skin, Griff?"
"Not I; I would not forego that model if there were fifty husbands, each with a hundred jealousies. When will you bring me again?"
"Just like your father, just! You must take life at a gallop. We will see; perhaps at the end of the week."
When Joe Strangeways went to the kitchen sink that night for his evening wash, Hannah, the maid of all work, took careto be at hand. Hannah had lost no whit of her spite against her mistress, and she saw that something was to be made out of that morning's visit.
"It's a doiting bird 'at leaves its nest for another," she observed, polishing a knife on a leather board.
"If tha's getten owt to say, speak up, lass, an' doan't go dithering an' mumbling to thyseln."
"Mrs. Lummax war playing th' grand lady here again the morn."
"Oh, she war, war she? A limb o' th' devil, I call her, and a limb o' th' devil I say she is, choose who hears me. Hast 'a nowt else to say?"
"She warn't by herseln. That long-legged son of hers came along wi' her. Seems like as if he fancies hisseln, thinks hisseln fearful fine, wi' his Lunnon slithery spache; he'd mak a likely pair o' tongs, yon, I'm thinking."
"Lang i' th' leg an' short i' th' heäd, as t' saying is," chuckled Joe. "What wod my fine gentleman be after, think ye?"
Hannah tossed her head, and her thin black hair stood up straight from her forehead in token of outraged scruples.
"What should fine gentlemen be after, when they cross three miles o' moor to see a man's wife—and him away all th' day at th' quarries? Some fowk are fearful slow to see which way their noses point."
Joe reflectively washed the soap-suds from his face and buried his head in a towel. He was indebted to Hannah for a suggestion that might bear fruit in the near future.
The bar of the Dog and Grouse hostelry at Ling Crag was very noisy on Wednesday night. The serving-maid was beginning to show signs of temper, for orders were being hurled at her with confusing rapidity, and with reiterated requests that she should hurry. From the girl's snappishness, and the density of the tobacco-smoke that filled the bar, anhabituéof the inn could have guessed the time—close upon ten o'clock—with almost as much certainty as if he had used the ordinary form of chronometer.
The clatter of mugs, the burr of weather-roughened voices, ceased on a sudden. The men took their pipes from their mouths and gaped interrogatories one at the other. For they had heard a horse ridden up to the door at a gallop, and a stamp of feet on the sanded floor, and an abrupt demand on the part of some unknown male to see the landlord.
"Begow, there's summat agate!" said a burly carter. "What dost think it mud be, Jim?"
"Nay, how should I know?" muttered Jim, scratching his head.
"There's summat i' th' wind, for sure, but it's noan for me to say what it mud be."
"Murder, happen, or high treason, an' yon's a constable chap come i' search o' th' fugitive!"
This suggestion, made with an air of wise importance, came from the village cobbler.
A thrill went through the company. Murder was a fearsome thing, yet they knew exactly what it was; but that ingenioustouch of the cobbler's set their minds working on an unknown quantity. High treason might mean anything, and, "if it war, so to say, at their own doorstuns, a man mun look to hisseln and not be ower rash wi' his tongue."
So, in wonder and trepidation, they crowded to the door of the bar, the less valiant peeping over the shoulders, or between the arms, of their comrades in front. One and all felt aggrieved when the stranger, who was still standing in the passage, showed himself to be much like other men. He wore no special dress, save the customary one of a gentleman who has reached his destination on horseback, and there was about him no trace of any peculiar odour, such as might have been associated with high treason or other of the black arts. Furthermore, when the landlord at last stepped in from the mistal at the rear of the house, he was met by the commonplace request that he would get ready a room for the night. By dint of setting the serving-maid to sleep on a sofa downstairs—her ruffled temper was not soothed by the inconvenience—the landlord was able to oblige his guest, and the horse was led round to the stables.
The company in the bar returned to their mugs. They felt hurt that the stranger had offered so little excitement, though the cobbler hinted darkly that, when a man fell quiet-like and tried his hardest not to make a fuss, it was a safe thing to suspect him of having some deep-laid project on hand.
Perhaps the cobbler was right; but the stranger's plans, whatever they might be, seemed to be confined just now to the matter of substantial food. "Something hot, landlord, and plenty of it!" he said briskly. "I've ridden twenty miles since my last meal."
"Right, sir; I'll see to it. Will ye have it in this little room here, sir, or in th' kitchen? Th' kitchen is a sight snugger, and it's none ower warm at neets for th' time o' year."
"The kitchen, by all means. This way? Don't be long with the cooking, my friend, or I shall starve."
The stranger, who certainly found the Ling Crag temperaturenone too high on this night of early September, retired to the ingle-nook after supper, and lit a pipe.
Ten sounded across the valley from Marshcotes parish church, and the occupants of the bar slouched out one by one; each, as he reached the passage, turned his eyes towards the kitchen.
"What's his business, think ye?" murmured Dick the cobbler.
The landlord, with his hand on the street door, grinned pleasantly. "Tha'rt a sight too curious, Dicky. Maybe he's some sort of a land-agent—Squire Daneholme's, happen. I remember, now I come to think, tha wert boasting a neet or two back about a matter of a hare—tha'd best be keeping a quiet tongue in thy heäd, Dick the Cobbler."
"Begow!" said Dick, laying an arm on his host's sleeve. "Dost 'a think that?"
"Out ye get, the lot of ye! Do ye think I want Constable Lee i' my public, an' th' magistrates on Friday?" cried Boniface, not heeding Dick's frightened appeal.
"Constable Lee knows which side on his mug th' beer is, and I'm thinking he'll noan be hard on ye," put in one of the departing crowd.
The landlord joined in the laugh that followed, and locked his door for the night. "He's a bit of a softy, is Cobbler Dick," he observed. "They're a sight too thin-skinned, this younger breed o' poachers. Well, well, I'd like to know, myseln, what the gent's business might be."
The landlord felt that he had a right to be the first recipient of any news whatsoever; for was he not named Jack o' Ling Crag, and had he not the reputation of being able to see further into the heart of a haystack than any man in the parish? They are much given, these dwellers on the uplands, to naming a man after the house or cottage in which he lives; and since the Dog and Grouse was in a sense—the most cheerful possible sense—the representative building of the village, Jack was accredited with the proudest surname a man could have up there.
And before another hour had passed, Jack did become partially enlightened as to the stranger's object in coming to Ling Crag. His visitor asked him to join him in a pipe, and he sat down on the other side of the hearth. They talked of indifferent topics for awhile—the crops, the grouse shooting, the fishing in Scartop Water—until the stranger turned abruptly in his seat.
"Do you know of a house to let anywhere near? I want to be out on the moors, and yet not too far from a village like this of yours."
"It's a bit o' shooiting, likely, ye'd be after?" insinuated the host.
The stranger paused a moment before replying, and smiled a little to himself. "Yes, that's just what I want—some good shooting. Any house will do, but it must have shooting attached to it."
The landlord already had his eye on exactly the place required, but he was not disposed to give away the situation too lightly; he felt that Ling Crag ought to uphold its motto of "keeping itseln to itseln."
"There's none too many houses hereabouts," he observed slowly; "and what there is is fearful sought after."
"Are they, now? I should have thought, being so far away from a town, and——"
"Ay, sir, but—begging your pardon—it's a fine thing to be able to say ye come fro' Ling Crag: there's a sort o' respect goes with th' name in fowks's minds, an' we stay on here fro' generation to generation, seeing as how we could nobbut exchange for th' war. An' that maks houses scarce, like."
The stranger, beginning to understand his man better, laughed easily. "I shall try to be worthy of the honour, landlord, if you'll only find me the house."
The host rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then slapped his thigh with a great show of impromptu delight.
"Now that's queer; all th' time ye've been talking I niver once thought o' Wynyates Hall. Why, it's just th' place for ye, sir; two score acre o' shooiting, an' a regular old-fashionedsort o' house—just such as th' painter chaps come for to paint."
"That sounds all right. How far is it from here?"
"A mile an' a bittock; an' a good highroad from there to here. First ye pass Scartop Water—as I was telling ye about—an' then ye come right to Wynyates Hall, standing i' a bit o' wood of its own, wi' th' moors just aboon. Oh, ay, it's a grand place, is Wynyates!"
"Any houses near?"
"Well, there's what we call Wynyates hamlet a quarter-mile away, but it's nowt mich to crack on—just a two or three cottages an' a farm or so."
"It is to let, is it, this Wynyates Hall?"
"Ay, it's to let right enow, sir. But I mind me there's some queer tales abroad; happen ye're not feared o' ghosts?"
A shadow passed over the stranger's face, and seemed more at home there than his previous air of cheery carelessness. "Ghosts?" he muttered. "I've got too many of my own to be afraid of other people's." His face cleared again, and he laughed a denial at his host.
But the grizzled old man shook his head doubtfully.
"Best not laugh at 'em, sir, an' that's my belief," he said gravely. "There's been some fearful goings-on up at Wynyates. Two brothers there war lived up at th' Hall, an' they'd been trained in a school ye don't find i' these ower-eddicated days. Ay, they war of th' owd breed, for sure; as lusty an' devil-paced limbs as ye'd light on th' countryside through."
"You seem to be rather proud of them, if one may judge from the look in your eyes," said the stranger, breaking into a reflective pause on the part of his host.
Boniface chuckled.
"Well, the fact is, sir, they war a tidy pair at th' poaching, an' my heart allus did go out to a poacher, God bless 'em! I war fifty, an' they war nobbut a bit th' wrang side o' thirty i' those days, but I could teach 'em nowt—nowt at all. Sakes alive, they hadn't no call to poach! They'd plenty o' brass an' land o' their own; but it war just i' th' blood, so to say, an'they did it for plain love o' sport. Ay, they war likely chaps, them two."
"And what was the end of them? End there must have been, or Wynyates would not be to let."
"To tell ye t' truth, sir, I doan't like to speak on it. They war i' drink one neet—summat about a woman, for young 'uns will be youngs 'uns th' world ower——"
"You're right there," interrupted the stranger, and shut his lips down on his tell-tale mouth.
His companion glanced shrewdly at him, but made no comment.
"As I war saying, they war i' their cups, an' they fell a-fighting. Th' younger he shied a brandy-bottle, an' caught t' other fair on th' forehead, an' killed him deäd as a door-nail. Then he hanged hisseln to one o' th' parlour rafters, an' that war th' end of th' owd family. Ay, sad, sad, for sure; but they war bonny lads at a bit o' poaching."
"And their ghosts haunt the old Hall?"
"So fowks say, an' I've no reason to doubt it. Dirt cheap th' owd place is going; for them two brothers, being Ling Crag born, doan't part in a hurry, an' they mak it fair too hot to bide in for them as comes to live there."
"They won't trouble me, at any rate. It will be a little excitement. What sort of ghosts are they?"
The landlord frowned on the other's levity, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"They do say—and what am I to deny it?—that th' ghost o' th' brandy-bottle is th' hardest to bear; it shooits up i' th' air, an' dithers around, an' then strikes t' other ghost so as to bring a bloody stream from his forehead.—But idle chaps will allus be telling idle tales," he finished, replenishing his pipe.
The discrepancy between the opening of his speech and the finish was easily accounted for. Pride in the village ghost had led him on to wax eloquent in description, but monetary interest induced him not to put hindrances in the way of a good bargain. Doubtless there would be pickings for himself if his guest took Wynyates Hall.
A long silence followed.
"Ye come fro' th' low country, I'm thinking?" said Boniface at length.
"From—from the low country?" repeated the stranger.
"Ay—from t' South, as some fowk call it."
"Oh, yes, I'm from the South."
"I thowt as mich fro' your spache. Happen, then, ye'll know Miller Rotherson, what's ta'en th' mill i' Hazel Dene?"
"No, I don't know him."
The stranger was trying to realize a new point of view. Evidently the people of Ling Crag regarded themselves as one village, and the rest of England as another. They expected all South-country people to know each other, just as the landlord here knew Betty Binns, or Gabriel Hirst, or Dick the Cobbler. Such isolation took the stranger's breath away.
Another silence.
"I mind me that th' agent what looks after Wynyates Hall—an' a sight more property, too—comes here to-morrow to collect th' rents," said the landlord. "Him an' ye might come to an agreement."
"I think we might. What time is he due?"
"Fro' nooin onwards to six o' th' clock."
"Very well. Call me at nine, will you, and give me bacon and eggs for breakfast. It's high time we turned in."
The stranger took his candle and slowly mounted the stairs. As he went, he muttered softly to himself, "Such isolation—it is fatuous—it is magnificent. I have come to the right kind of place. Gossips, of course; but so there are everywhere. Do I know Miller Rotherson from the low country? Ha, ha!"
A draught at the stair-head blew out his candle, but the door of his room stood open, and a flood of moonlight came across the landing to show the way. He did not trouble to relight the candle, but clashed the door to after him and went to the uncurtained window. He had a clear view across the moors; one after another the dark rises swept to the broken sky-line, striding the misty hollows, till his eye caught that queer sense ofendlessnesswhich the moor people know fromtheir birth. His face went grey as he watched, and through the greyness leaped a wild expectancy. Like a boy this man of forty stretched out his arms to the heath, and talked as if it had ears to hear him. "Janet—I wonder if you're there. In the heart of the moor, you told me—it must be down in one of those white hollows." Then he paused, and his voice went out again in one yearning cry of "Janet!"
The stranger pulled himself together. He laughed bitterly, as men do who have once safely passed these things and find it hard to have to go back again. Then he kicked off his boots, undressed, and lay for an hour on his back, watching the moon through the window.Oneboomed from Marshcotes church, and every hollow of the moors seemed to catch the sound, to pass it on, till the heath was to the already dozing man one everlasting succession of striking clocks.
"Get to sleep, you fool!" he muttered drowsily. "Curse the bells—they sound uncanny; it'll be long before they ring forthatwedding. God knows she's taken the heart clean out of my body—one,one,one; curse the bells!"
At eight of the next evening, Griff Lomax was surprised by a visit from the preacher—surprised, because only a few hours ago they had parted at the end of a long ride together.
Gabriel wore an air of clumsy craftiness which sat laughably ill upon him.
"It's time you paid your respects at the mill, don't you think?" he said, shifting from foot to foot.
"Oh, the wind blows there, does it?" laughed Griff, noting that the preacher's face was more carefully shaven than usual, and that he wore a shirt of fine linen.
"I know them, Griff, and you don't. It seems but neighbourly to go together."
"You saw her this afternoon, I fancy? Gabriel, boy, you're in a bad way. I have work to do; can't you wait till to-morrow?"
Lomax was in a teasing humour, and refused to take the preacher's—or any other—matters seriously.
"Well, of course—if you can't come," murmured Gabriel, with crestfallen looks.
"He can come, Gabriel; and, what is more, I shall see that he does," said Mrs. Lomax, who had entered unobserved.
Griff had given her a hint as to how matters stood, and the old lady was entirely of her son's mind, "that it would make a man of Gabriel."
Griff took his mother in both arms and lifted her as if she had been a baby.
"Oh, you threaten me, little mother, do you?" cried he looking fierce.
"Griff, what a boy you are—put me down again. I shall never be able to train you properly," she added whimsically. "I can't learn the trick of being angry with you."
"Honour thy father and thy mother," murmured Gabriel Hirst, scandalized for the hundredth time by Griff's relations with the old lady. "I wish Griff was more respectful."
The end of it was, of course, that Lomax set off with his friend. Through the churchyard they gained the moor, and thence struck across to the foot of Ling Crag village. The last of the sunset was dying over the heath, and something in the aspect of that well-loved country of his touched an inner chord in the preacher.
"It's sweet and clean, Griff," he said presently. "It seems to be telling me not to take shame if——"
He broke off there, and Griff supplied finish and answer alike in his brief, "You can believe it, Hirst."
They crossed the stile on their left, and pushed up the darkening valley. The stream brawled beside them; from a farm on the crest of the ridge came the clatter of milking-pails and the guttural cries of the farmer's men. The tail of a stiff west wind blew down the Dene, and Gabriel Hirst, for a few brief moments, threw his sins to the breeze and let it make what it would of them. But his heart misgave him when they stood at Miller Rotherson's door. The maid was long in responding to his knock, and his disquietude grew almost to a panic; he would have turned and fled, had he been alone.
Then, after Nancy had admitted them and shown them into the parlour where the miller was smoking his pipe, Gabriel could find no word to say, and Lomax had to take the initiative. Old Rotherson took stock of the stranger, decided that he liked the hang of him, and declared it was downright neighbourly to pay him a call in this way.
"Well," laughed Griff, "apart from anything else, I was curious to see the man who could make Dene Mill pay. When I was last at home the old place had been unlet foryears, and people said that the big millers near the towns had it all their own way nowadays."
"And there was no room for the smaller men, they told you? Oh, yes, they told me that tale, too, when I started here. They were wrong, Mr. Lomax. I said, the first time I saw the mill, that a man who could let all that water-power run to waste, day in and day out, deserved to starve. I trusted a little in Providence, and a good deal in my own head, and I got the place dirt cheap on a long lease. I supply half the countryside now, and am bidding fair to secure the other half. The big towns are too far from Marshcotes and Ling Crag and the scattered farmhouses that hug the moor."
"Providence, Mr. Rotherson——" Gabriel began, then stopped. His spiritual arguments grew tangled, for his carnal ear had detected the swish-swish of skirts along the passage.
"So this is Gabriel's lady," thought Lomax, as Greta came in, with a pretty bashfulness that suited her well. "There seems more excuse for his lunacy than there did."
"This is my little girl, Mr. Lomax," said the miller, with an explanatory wave of his churchwarden pipe.
Gabriel Hirst watched the girl's unformed bow, and the shy uplifting of her eyes to Griff's. A sudden pang struck through him, taking him unawares. Not till this moment had he seen his friend in the light of a possible rival.
Greta was perverse to-night. Instinctively she fell to comparing the little points of manner, dress, speech, in which the two men differed. She grew angry with the preacher for compelling such comparison; now and then she blushed for Gabriel Hirst, as she had not blushed when he came upon her with her little bare feet paddling in the water. She had taken the only vacant chair, which chanced to be close to Griff's: Hirst sat by the miller at the other side of the room, and tried to talk, listening eagerly the while for scraps of the conversation that was passing between the other two.
"And how do you like our wild country?" asked Griff, by way of making idle chit-chat.
Gabriel was in the middle of a polemical discussion withold Rotherson, but he paused for Greta's answer. She glanced across at the preacher and saw that he was listening.
"Well enough," she said, with a toss of the head. "But the people are like the country—rather too wild, don't you think?"
The preacher writhed in his chair; it was a girl's unbalanced coquetry, yet it cut straight to his simple heart. And the two on the other side of the fireplace went on with their light talk, and Greta let no chance of a stab go by, knowing well that the man who presumed to care for her would hear her every word. Lomax, seeing by the man's face how things were going, strove to lead his companion into quieter channels; but her wit was nimble, and, no matter what the topic might be, she made it good for a covert gibe at Gabriel.
"Greta, lass, it's about time we had some glasses in," said the miller at length. "Smoking's dry work without a drop of whisky to help it down. You take a dram now and then, Mr. Lomax?"
"That I do."
"I thought you looked that sort, somehow," said the miller, with an involuntary glance at Gabriel.
When the whisky had been brought in, with icy, beaded water from the well-spring just without the house door; when old Rotherson had allowed his guest to mix him a glass, and had entreated him, with a jovial twinkle, "not to drown the miller;" when Griff had helped himself to a liberal half-and-half, which the strength of his head warranted—it occurred to Lomax to effect a redistribution of seats. Gabriel, seeing him hovering vaguely on the outskirts of the hearthrug, at length divined that he had an opportunity of sitting beside the girl; he moved clumsily across the floor, and Greta frowned as she watched him.
"I was at chapel on Sunday night," she observed.
"So I saw. Did you—did you——"
"Like your sermon?" she finished demurely. "I suppose I did, only—I was disappointed. You have such a reputation for—wildness—and I wanted to hear you really inspired."
The miller caught her words.
"Greta, don't be so forward with your tongue. It isn't fair to badger a man on a week-day about the work he does on Sunday."
"But Mr. Hirst badgers people on a week-day, father, about the things theydon'tdo on Sunday. It's only tit for tat."
"God knows I mean it for the best," muttered Gabriel, too low for any but Greta to hear.
She glanced at him, and dropped her air of mockery. A softer light came into her grey eyes. Then again she looked across the hearth, and saw how at home the two men were with their pipes and glasses; and back her eyes travelled to the preacher, in his ill-cut clothes of black, glooming there with neither pipe in his mouth nor glass at his side, his hands sitting lonely on his knees. "If only he weren't such awoman," she murmured, and rose to bid them all good night.
Gabriel sat in his corner, after she had gone, without word or motion. He felt like one who has sold his soul to the devil, and been cheated of his price at the end of it all. Where was the swift enthusiasm for the Word that had braced him to ten years of fervid preaching? Gone. Where was his feud with the flesh? Swallowed up in the depths of two grey eyes. What had he gained? Scorn that was harder to bear than sin, mockery which no wrestling with the Adversary had taught him how to parry.
Griff, meanwhile, talked glibly to the miller, hoping to cover his friend's moroseness.
"There is land attached to the mill yet? Do you farm it, as your predecessor did?"
Old Rotherson smiled grimly.
"Yes, I farm it—after a fashion. But it's sadly like trying to skin a flint, as the saying goes. You've a hard country up here, Mr. Lomax."
"For grass, yes. But we're fine when it comes to growing heather."
"And what good is heather, I'd like to know?" quoth the practical miller. "It will make a broom to sweep my floorswith, but what else can you do with it? There's one other thing that grows well hereabouts, though; one of my fields is as full as it will hold of parsley, and I can't make it out. Never a bit of parsley-seed have I sown; yet up it comes as if the seed had been raining from the sky."
Griff chuckled, and his host glanced at him inquiringly.
"Hares are very fond of parsley; wonderfully fond," murmured the younger man, with a sly look in his eyes.
"Well, so they are. Only last night I was looking out of my bedroom window, and I counted five all at once in the field. But that doesn't help me to know how the parsley came there."
"Itiscurious," said Griff. But he hinted never a word of the old-time nights when he and Jack o' Ling Crag had gone out salting their neighbours' fields with parsley-seed.
They rambled on from this topic to that, till they were startled by a mighty sob that came from across the hearth. Gabriel Hirst, wrapped all this while in his own miserable thoughts, had instinctively given vent to the despair at his heart.
"Nay, nay, lad," said the miller, kindly. "You're overwrought a bit. Take a drop of strong drink, and you'll see the world in a better light." He got up from his armchair, and poured out a tolerable measure of the spirit, never stopping to think that his goodwill might be misdirected. The preacher took the glass from his hands.
"I wouldn't, if I were you, old fellow," interposed Lomax; "you're not used to it, and——"
But a devil had come into Gabriel's eyes.
"I'll go my own way," he said sullenly, and swallowed the tumblerful in three big gulps. They said good night to the miller soon after—it was past eleven—and the preacher's step was uneven as he left the room.
The mill stream was dancing with the moonbeams through Hazel Dene, but Gabriel was in no humour to mark such trivial beauty. He stopped when they reached the little pool with the pine-log on its bank. He gripped Lomax's arm and gazed into his face.
"She was mine that day, Griff Lomax. I wish to God I'd never brought you here, to spoil a blessed Sabbath's work."
"Man, you're a fool. Come home to bed, before you pick a quarrel with some one who isnotyour friend."
"Friend? Yes, and a pretty friend you've shown yourself." A hiccough had intruded itself into the preacher's voice, as the fresh air made headway with the whisky. He laughed like a madman, and sat himself down heavily on the log. "The flesh, the flesh, the flesh!" he yelled, with a hiccough between each word. Then he fell to crooning like a child; he tucked his sable legs under him, and swore that the preacher was topping the rise on the opposite side of the stream. Finally, he rose from his seat, and regarded the other with grave inquiry. "Why does the stream want to get to the sea?" he demanded. "The ways of the Lord are surely strange?"
"I give it up, old chap. Come home to bed, I tell you."
Griff threaded his arm through Hirst's, and led him, steadier on his feet now and meek as a lamb, to his own door. Latches were unknown in Ling Crag, but the preacher always carried the door-key with him; he was often abroad at nights, and neither Betty Binns nor her husband, who slept in the house, could be expected to wait up for him at these times. Gabriel Hirst made two or three ineffectual assaults on the door, then handed the key to Lomax.
"Griff," he said, with unsober cunning, "I'm a sinful man, and vengeance shall come like a thief in the night—but I shouldn't like Betty to hear. Help me to bed, Griff, for old times' sake."
When Lomax came out into the moonlight again, after locking up the house and pushing Gabriel's key under the mat, the smile on his lips was a tender one. "The pace is a bit swift for old Gabriel nowadays," he muttered. "He's been drunk for the first time in his life, and in love for the first time. It will do him good in the long run, because there's solid bottom under that hysterical piety of his. But, Lord, what a time of retribution he will make for himself!"
He strolled along the highroad in the direction of Wynyates: the night was calm, and he felt in no humour to return. Greta and her queer, two-sided lover slipped gradually from his mind, and Kate Strangeways, his treasure-trove, took their place. His pulses quickened, with a passion that was entirely artistic; this moor woman, as he saw her now, was a being wonderful, remote, magnificent; he almost feared to handle her, lest he should spoil her in the drawing. Yet he must certainly ask her to sit to him, whether he made the best of his chances or not. He turned at last and started home at a brisk pace. At the door of the Dog and Grouse he espied the landlord, swallowing a mouthful of fresh air before he turned in for the night.
"Good night to you, Mr. Lummax," called Jack o' Ling Crag.
"Hallo, Jack! I thought you'd be in bed long ago."
"Well, so I should be, sir, in a orn'ary sort o' way. But things hes been happening, sir—such things as keep a plain man out o' bed thinking on 'em."
Griff cocked his head a little on one side, and gave Jack a look which suggested that some kind of Freemasonry existed between them.
"Have you been taking a little midnight exercise, Jack? I feared they'd catch one or both of us many a time last year."
Jack o' Ling Crag gurgled complacently.
"Nay, now, Mr. Lummax, is it likely 'at they'd nobble an owd bird like me wi' gamekeeper chaff? It's all right, I says, an' none 'ud deny it, that chaps like Dick the Cobbler should be cotched: they're green hands meeting green hands—for all th' owd lot o' keepers, an' a smart set they war, is gone—an' it's a toss up whether it ends in th' coort-house for Dicky an' his mates, or i' broken heäds for th' keepers. But me—Lord, sir, I thowt ye knew me better nor to go thinking owt o' that sort!"
"Still," said Griff, with a slow, retrospective smile, "still, we ran it pretty close that night in Birch Wood. Do you remember? By Jove, but it was sport!"
"I remember varry weel, Mr. Lummax; for that war th' firsttime I felt sartin sure ye'd getten a heädpiece on your shoulders—ay, lad, your father's heädpiece. It do seem queer," he added, meditatively, "that even th' gentry up hereabouts is allus itching for a bit o' poaching. There war old Tom Hirst, now; he war a regular nipper afore religion stuck in his gizzard an' choked th' life out on him. Mony's the time—— But it gets chilly, like, standing i' th' road. What say ye to a glass o' th' blend 'at a two or three on us knows about?"
"I say that nothing would suit me better, if our friend Lee has not grown wide-awake since I used to know him."
"I've a great respect for Constable Lee, sir," observed Jack, gravely, as he led the way indoors, "an' Constable Lee hes an ekal respect for Jack o' Ling Crag. We've niver hed a wrang word sin' a little scrape 'at it took me all my time to get him clear of: he's a man what bears gratitude, an' ye may tak my word for that."
"And, in any case, I'm coming in as your guest. Bless me, it's odd if a respectable innkeeper can't entertain a friend to a glass of whisky."
"That's so, sir; an' proud to be named your friend."
"About this matter that has been keeping you out of your bed?" said Griff presently, holding his glass to the light and looking through it with the eye of a man on whom good drink is not wasted.
"Oh, that? It's nowt so varry special, when all's said; only it's not ivery day 'at a gent comes to Ling Crag a-house-hunting—nor ivery twelvemonth that he leaves a ten-pun note behind him."
"And who was he? From these parts?"
"Nay, he war fro' th' low country; as to his name, I mind me now he niver mentioned it. At after he'd had a bite o' supper, he asks me fair an' square if I could light my eye on a likely house i' th' neighbourhood; he wanted a bit o' shooiting, said he. Well, I bethowt me o' Wynyates, an' telled him 'at th' agent war coming this varry morn to collect his bits o' rents; an' what does my gentleman do but settle it all right off wi' th' agent, an' gi'e me a ten-pun note—to settle his bill wi', as heput it. Then, sooin as he'd settled about a couple o' rooms being got ready i' th' Hall afore th' week war out, off he rides again to Saxilton."
"Saxilton? What should he find to do in Saxilton?"
"Nay, that I can't say, save that he'd left some traps there an' wanted to fetch 'em. Summat a bit queer-like, eh, i' sich a whirlwind o' a man coming to Wynyates?"
"It does seem odd. I say, Jack, we'll have a night at his game some time; it's a year and three months since we went out together, and that is fifteen months too long."
"Well, if it's all th' same to ye, Mr. Lummax, I'd rather tak th' Squire o' Saxilton's game: he niver give me nowt, didn't Squire, save a cut on th' side o' th' heäd wi' his riding-whip; there warn't no bank-notes parted company wi'him."
This was a touch of morality that tickled Griff mightily.
"The old Squire is that kind of man," he laughed. "If he takes to a man, he can't do too much for him; but if he doesn't——"
"The Lord help him!—He's a rough customer, is Roger Daneholme: I reckon ye'll know him?"
"Only by repute. Perhaps you'll introduce me some night, Jack?"
"Happen I will, sir—wi' the stock of a gun for salute. What!—going? Well, good neet, sir; good neet."
They dined in the middle of the day at Marshcotes Manor, and they dined well. Mrs. Lomax, consequently, liked to have a clear hour's sleep in the afternoon—a luxury which Griff made the basis of one of those tender little accusations that were constantly passing between mother and son.
"And now, I suppose, you will want toreflectfor awhile," he said, when Thursday's dinner was over and Mrs. Lomax had risen from the table.
"You need not put that ironical emphasis on the 'reflect,' Griff. I want to sleep, and am not ashamed to confess it."
"Yet you grumble when my work takes me away from you. I'm going to be jealous, too: I grudge you that wasted hour."
"Foolish boy! You may kiss me, if you like, just as a bribe to get rid of you. There, there; away you go. Are you going to ride?"
"Yes; for an hour or so."
"Of course. If it is not your ridiculous work that stands in the way, then you must needs rush off to the stable. It is lucky for me, Griff, that Icansleep with such a thankless son on my conscience."
"Talk to Lassie about it, mother: she will have exercise, and no one but I can manage her properly. That's what I like about the mare; she is twice as faithful as any woman I have come across—except my mother."
Mrs. Lomax frowned, a real frown; she did not like Griff's occasional flippancies about women.
"I think, boy, if you had stayed at Marshcotes, youropinions might have kept more wholesome. Your south-country women must be curious, Griff."
He smiled a little at her prejudices, and patted her on her rough grey hair, and went out. But a cloud was on his face as he mounted Lassie, standing saddled at the door.
"I think," he murmured, "that if mother knew about Sybil Ogilvie, and the dance she led me, she would never speak to me again."
The blood rushed hot to his cheeks, and Lassie was surprised by an impatient jerk of the snaffle. She would stand a good deal from Griff, but an unprovoked assault of this kind, before ever they had cleared the garden gravel, was too much for any mare of good breeding. She shook her head just once, and tore through the open gate like a thing bewitched.
"I hope he won't break his neck; it is rather a failing in the family," sighed Mrs. Lomax, patiently, as she watched him down the highroad.
Griff soon brought the mare to reason, and explained to her that, having lately dined, he was in no mood for such violent exercise. Lassie took this as an apology and forgave him; and they ambled contentedly round by Ling Crag, Wynyates, and back again. As they were crossing the moor close to Marshcotes, Griff espied a tall figure making towards them. It proved to be Kate Strangeways, returning from the village grocery with a well-filled basket. He drew rein and slipped off his nag.
"You're looking tired," he said, in his direct way, with a keen glance at her face.
"I am tired, but it can't be helped. I think I'm falling lazy nowadays, Mr. Lomax."
"Lazy? Well, if you like the word. Mother tells me a different tale. You're coming to have tea with us before you walk the three miles back to Peewit."
She coloured slightly.
"Oh, no, thank you! It's time I was home."
"Nonsense!" put in Griff, brusquely. "I say you are coming."
"Up here we are not accustomed to being ordered about," said Kate, between vexation and amusement.
"Except by one of your own kind. Come, Mrs. Strangeways, I'm moor-born, too, and you know what that means. I intend to have my way."
She gave in at last, and it was not until they struck the village that Griff bethought him there was a certain oddity in the situation. When they reached the Manor, he learned from Rebecca that Mrs. Lomax had been called out to see some sick body in the village; and he was rather sorry that he had given his off-hand invitation to Kate Strangeways. He told Becky, however, to bring in the tea, and speedily found himself launched into such a brisk discussion that he entirely forgot his mother's absence. They got, by a round-about route, to literature, and from that to some books which Griff had lately lent her. They were all novels of the day, some of them written by friends of his own, and he had thought them exceedingly good when he had first read them. Griff knew that Kate and his mother had been friends for a long while past, yet it staggered him a little to discover that this wife of a master-quarryman was capable, not only of reading, but of digesting, the novels he had lent her.
"I don't understand story-writing," she explained, with a half-hesitating air. "I only know about the life we live, all of us; and that is a different thing."
He looked hard at her, with a puzzled air.
"It ought not to be. What these men are striving for, they would tell you, is to get lifeas it is. They seemed to me to ring true when I read them." Yet he faltered on the words. To what did they ring true, he could not help asking himself? To the falsity he had cherished through ten long years of his life, answered conscience. But he was stubborn: it was one thing for him to ridicule his late acquaintances, and quite another to listen to some one else doing the same; from sheer contrariety he grew warm in defence of the novels.
"But those books—you won't think me silly, Mr. Lomax?you are so much cleverer—they don't describe women, as I know them."
Kate, too, was holding her ground, despite a feeling that this argumentative being must know a hundred times as much as she did about the art of character-drawing.
Griff got up and leaned against the mantelshelf. He was nettled. It was all so true, he felt—and it was bitter to have to admit that this woman, whom he had vaguely patronized as affording a valuable model, should be able to tell him what it had taken him so long to learn.
"I—I thought they did," he said lamely.
"Of course, you know best. Only they seem to me either too good or too bad—and far too clever. There isn't one realheart-sobin all these books—and women, God knows, live by heart-sobs in real life."
She remembered herself at that, and flushed. It was too easy to forget how clever Mr. Lomax was, and she was surely a very silly woman. But Griff knew she was right; he said nothing for that very reason, because he felt so cross.
Then the mother came in, and smothered her surprise at finding the two of them chatting so snugly together, and gave Kate a hearty welcome.
"Mrs. Strangeways has been abusing my judgment of women," laughed Griff, his good temper restored.
Kate tried to expostulate, but Mrs. Lomax cut her short.
"Quite right, my dear, quite right. All Griff's pet women are like dough that has been badly kneaded. I tell him so, often, and he doesn't half like it. Perhaps he took it more kindly from you?"
"I say, two to one! This isn't fair," protested her son.
"You will weather the storm, Griff," retorted the old lady, imperturbably. "After all, you have made a name for yourself; a knowledge of women was not necessary there. The whirr of a gale across the heather carried you through; you forgot your weaknesses sometimes."
"Would you like some tea, mother?" ventured Griff, mildly.
When Kate Strangeways finally rose to go, Lomax insistedon "setting her on her way." "I'll go agatards wi' ye," he laughed, translating his intentions into the language of the country, as he loved to do when talking to Mrs. Strangeways.
Kate, laughing too, congratulated him on his knowledge of the tongue, and they set off in high good spirits. He did not leave her till they reached the top of the last rise that lay between themselves and Peewit House; and when they said good-bye, he had secured a half-promise that she would sit to him for her portrait.
A surly-looking rascal, with a beard an inch long and a cutty pipe rammed tight in one corner of his mouth, was leaning over the fence; Lomax judged him to be a farm-hand, said his farewells to Kate, and set off back across the moor.
"Well, I'm beggared!" muttered Joe Strangeways, removing the cutty pipe from his jaws.
Griff went to look up his friend the preacher on the following afternoon. He found him in a state of wild self-castigation. Gabriel's eyes were far too bright, and his fingers twitched to the tune of each fresh thought. That marvellous straight-forwardness of his came to the front at once.
"Well, Griff, lad, I was drunk the night before last."
"Not quite that, old fellow; a bit bothered by the road, that's all; it's not an easy path through Hazel Dene."
"I was drunk, I tell you. Yes, and I was mortal sick in the night, Griff. But it wasn't the sickness of the carnal body I cared for; the trouble went deeper than that."
"Your head was bad the next morning?" queried Griff, innocently.
"Man, yes! But it's not that I mean. Think of the sin: think of a preacher of God's word showing himself no more than a cutting from the old stock." This was Gabriel's unconquerable pride coming out; he was humble in theory only.
"When you've understood that a little better," said the other gravely, "you'll be fit to preach. Good-bye, old chap; just ponder on that for a while. When are you coming for another ride?"
The preacher looked through and beyond his friend.
"I never thought to come to this. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Look here," he broke off, with a sudden flash of fury, "they say that the Lord looks after His own. Well, I don't believe it. Why did He bring that girl across my path?"
"To make a man of you," said Griff, and vanished.
Betty Binns was lying in wait for him without. A subdued exultation was visible in her face.
"I war sure, Mr. Lummax," cried she—"I war sure ye didn't rightly know what war good for th' innards of a man o' God. Th' maister, yester-morn, war as yaller as hen-corn, an' his heäd warked fit to burst.That'swhat comes along o' strong meät when th' Sperrit hes hold on a man."
"Betty," said Griff, "you mustn't be hard on me. I meant it for the best."
"Ay, ay, them as is for meaning th' best is allus for doing th' worst!" And Betty was retiring in triumph, when the other called her back.
"Just tell your master, will you, that I shall be here at nine sharp to-morrow night, and shall expect him to be ready for a ride. You have no objection to offer, have you, Betty?" he added, with an air of humble deference.
"Get along wi' ye! There's no mak o' shame i' th' young fowk nowadays, no shame at all. It taks a likelier nor ye, Mr. Griff, to trail Betty Binns. Now, will ye let me shut th' door, or willun't ye?"
"Parting, Betty, is such sweet sorrow, that I——?" He found himself talking to the bare oak of the door, and laughed mightily, in his boy's way, as he swung down the garden-path and into the highroad.
Remembering, later in the evening, that his whisky had run out, he slipped across to the Bull to buy a bottle. A crowd of idlers was hanging about the steps, with Joe Strangeways conspicuous in their midst. Joe was in his usual condition of semi-drunkenness, and he scowled on seeing Lomax approach.
"That's him," muttered a companion; "tha wert talkingbig, Joe, about what tha'd do to him when tha cotched him. Now's thy chance." The tone was ironical, and did not suggest any great confidence in the quarryman's practical bravery.
Strangeways felt that he must make a demonstration of some kind, in view of a few recent utterances of his. He squared his shoulders so as to dispute possession of the doorway, thrust out his lower jaw, and regarded Griff with an air of sullen mockery.
"There's a saying, Griff Lummax, that lang i' th' leg spells soft i' th' heäd," he observed, repeating his favourite little pleasantry.
A chuckle sounded from the bystanders. Griff stopped on the lowest step, took his pipe out of his mouth, and regarded Strangeways with an air of quiet gravity; when he spoke, it was with a good Yorkshire brogue that not one of the bystanders could have bettered.
"There's another saying, mate. Lang i' th' drink spells short i' th' wit."
A big laugh went up at that. They were fond of Griff at Marshcotes, and they liked to find him ready with his tongue. Joe's face grew red, with a dash of purple about the gills. He had nothing to say, so confined himself to filling the doorway a little more completely.
"I want to pass," said Griff.
"Oh, tha dost, dost 'a? Well, it's gooid for young 'uns to want."
"I want to pass," repeated Griff.
"So tha said," responded the quarryman, emboldened by the other's quietness. "And how if tha'rt not going to be let pass?"
Griff said not another word, but took the four steps in one easy bound, twisted Joe round in his hands, set his foot to the man's heel and his right arm to his chest, and lowered him gently to the ground, where he lay with his feet on the threshold and his head on the bottom step. Then he went indoors and did his business.
"It's time tha wert wending home, Joe," suggested oneof the crowd. "It taks a likelier nor thee to tackle Griff Lummax."
"Lang i' th' leg, an' strong i' th' arm," laughed another.
Joe, having got to his feet again, shambled off towards the churchyard gate.
"Bide a bit, lads," he growled. "Bide till I've getten my fist round th' heft of a knife, and I'll cut th' bleeding heart out on him."
Lomax, unaware of Joe's delicately-expressed intentions, sketched the adventure to his mother when he got back, and wondered what particular quarrel the man had with him.
"What was he like, Griff?" asked Mrs. Lomax.