CHAPTER VIII
Causleen was restless about the house of Logie. Her father dozed and roused himself by turns. Always in his waking moments he glanced at the pike that had gone to Flodden Field and back, and was eager to leave the roof that sheltered him. She watched the same pitiful struggle to rise and get his helpless limbs to ground, the same falling into stupor.
Near sunset of the day that followed the ewe-gathering, she drifted into Rebecca’s kitchen, pride and weariness waging a private feud within her.
“It is always the same tale, Rebecca,” she said. “My father is not well enough to go just yet, and we overstay our leave.”
“Who told you that?” asked the other dryly, as she gimped the edge of an apple-pasty before she set it in the oven. “Not me for one.”
“Nobody told me—in so many words.”
Rebecca glanced up. The harsh face that was worth a couple of watch-dogs to the house—as Hardcastle’s jest had it—was softened now.
“We’re a stiff folk here, the Master and me. It’s old habit to snap at foreigners—but once in a while the snap doesn’t mean so much. You’re very welcome to stay on.”
“If you’ll let us pay,” said Causleen, fire smouldering in her eyes. “We’re not beggar-folk, but pedlars—giving for what we get.”
“All in a fine tantrum, are you? As if Logie couldn’t give a lodging to a couple of far-spent wanderers.”
“We haven’t money, but I could help you—to wash up in the kitchen, and clean the upstairs rooms—”
“You could,” broke in Rebecca, “if I’d let you. You seem not to know that it’s joy and pride to me to serve the Master. He’s worth the while.”
“So we must go?”
“So you must stay, seeing how it is with Donald. You’ve enough to do, and so have I; and that should keep us two from worriting.”
“Why is the Master so hard?” asked Causleen, watching Rebecca stand away from the hiss of the opened oven-door before she put the pasty in.
“He met a fool-lass once, and thought her all made up of what never could be in this world. Women aren’t shaped out of rainbow-dreams, as the Master fancied. So he took a fall—and a long, steep fall it was.”
Tired as she was, Causleen’s interest was roused. Woman-like, she saw Hardcastle’s gruffness softened a little now that romance was its excuse.
“Was she bonnie, Rebecca?”
“Aye, like a bird you’d like to ’tice from its twig. The devil uses that sort sometimes. And now there’ll be no heir to Logie.”
“He’ll never marry?”
“Not he, unless the time of miracles came back. I’ve no patience with life, I tell you. Here’s a man as likely-set-up as one here and there—might pick as he chose—and he lets himself go bachelor all his days because a lass fooled him once.”
“He never thinks of the men before him? Seven hundred years the Hardcastles have been settled here, he told us.”
“Aye, he thinks of them, I fancy. They nag at him, and small wonder. It’s a shame and a crying pity that he should let the race die out, for sake of such as Nita Langrish.”
“What was she like?”
“Like nothing honest—a face that put even women in mind of flowers and such trash—and great, grey eyes—and a heart as dry as Ghyll Beck after a droughty summer. But she did one good turn to Logie. I’ll own to that.”
Rebecca had not paused in her work. Like a mill-wheel, she could chatter without hindrance to the day’s labour.
“They go far back, the Hardcastles,” she went on, spreading dough on the baking-board and rolling it with quiet, unhurried hands. “Yeomen, they, and content with yeoman’s pride. Then they bought a croft here, a farmhouse there, till they got to be big in the land.”
Causleen began to understand many things about Hardcastle, now she held the key. His grim hostility to women was explained. So, too, was the rugged, inborn dignity that could meet all men frankly, yet hold them at a little distance. In days gone by, she had known Highland lairds who had shown just this will-proud front to clansmen of the misty homeland.
“And then?” she added, like a child impatient for the end of a nursery-tale.
“There come breaks in a line as long as Hardcastle’s—a spendthrift, a drunkard, one silly in his wits—there must be breaks. The Lord Almighty favours none, and long-settled folk must take their chances with the rest.”
Rebecca was of the homeland, too, to Donald’s girl. The Lord Almighty favoured none, as all men knew who had lived with mountains and the storm.
“She did a good turn to Logie, this Nita Langrish?” asked Causleen.
“She did. The Master was all for guns and fishing, and letting a farm go here and there while he played at life. If the likes of her had married him, she’d have pushed him down to dear-knows-what of mortgages and ruin. But they quarrelled, thanks be, and the Master went hard as a flint. I watched him close and proper, I promise you, those first months after they parted. It bit deep, and might have taken him into any sort of devilment; but instead it stiffened him.”
“Soured and roughened him,” flashed Causleen, remembering how Donald and she had come to Logie first.
“Maybe. I own that I’d like to hear him laugh about the house again—just once in the week, say—but then you can’t have everything in this world. Instead of squandering farms, he’s buying them.”
Rebecca, rolling the dough out as she talked, remembered suddenly the pasty already in the oven, and darted to its rescue.
“There, now,” she scolded, “it would have been burned in another minute. That comes of your gossip, when you know I like a quiet kitchen. Take those white cheeks of yours out of doors, girl. You’ve been cluttered up too long between four walls. Take ’em out, and leave me to my baking.”
Causleen was learning the difference between the bark and bite of those at Logie, and Rebecca’s glance was kindly. “There is father,” she said, glancing wistfully through the open door at the sunlit warmth outside.
“And me to see to him till you come back. I’m not old enough yet to make a song about tending my kitchen and one ailing man. Take jobs by turns, and one’s a rest from t’ other.”
So Causleen, with a sob of sheer relief, stepped out into the afternoon. She died by inches in such imprisonment as she had known at Logie, but her feet seemed shod with fairy-boskins now that she was free to roam a land that reminded her at every turn of her lost Highlands. Through the russet sun-glow she went, up into the moors that knew no walls except the sky’s. The heather was not as tall as in her own country, where she had waded knee deep through it; but the scent and the friendliness were the same. When a cock-grouse got up and whirred over rise and hollow of the untamed lands, she knew his challenge ofgo-back, go-back, for a note as cheery as Rebecca’s when she had bidden her find an hour of freedom.
She left the moor at last, tempted by the lure of Logie Woods below, with their burnished colours glowing in the heat-haze; and once more, as she stepped into their cool shelter, the sense of home was with her. Underfoot the pale gold of fallen larch-leaves shimmered softly in the silver light that filtered through—a thick carpet, soft to tread. Ripe, nutty odours were abroad, and peace was sounding her elfin-trumpets through every brake and hollow. The wise big-hearted autumn was here, as in far Inverness—a northern autumn, that had fought for this tranquillity.
Causleen, in sheer content, followed the winding track, till it led her to a little, brawling stream, brown with moor-peat and ferned in every crevice of its banks with greenery for the water-pixies and their kind. She forgot every footsore step she had taken on the Pedlar’s Road. Here was the twin-hollow to one in the homeland, where she had grown from child to woman, dreaming of Highland feuds, and Highland loves, and the glamour that would come one day when a man’s eyes were steady and honest with her own, asking all she had to give.
She stood there, so quiet that a squirrel ran about her feet before he saw her and raced up a neighbouring fir-bole, pausing to wash fear away from his face before he glimpsed down on this intruder. As on Logie Brigg, no longer than two weeks ago, Causleen was aware now of the voice that spoke without any sort of speech—the little voice within that never lied. Not in the Highlands, but here in Logie-land, the man of her dreams would come.
So by and by she went down the rough bank of the stream, singing a Gaelic song that was in tune with the water’s voice, and came at last to the brink of Wharfe River, where it flowed in dappled, sunlit quiet—a great-bosomed stream, wide between its banks. And now she lost remembrance of the Highlands. They had rivers there in plenty, but none like this water that said so little and so much as it swirled by—lonely, majestic, unafraid.
She, who had learned in babyhood the language of many waters, big and little, could make nothing of Wharfe’s speech. Soft as its murmur was, there were undernotes that baffled her—eerie cries below the flood, and now and then a roaming whine, as if a fox pursued its prey by night.
A breeze was stealing now across the warm shelter of the woods—a moaning breeze, gentle and very cold. The rock-doves, crooning overhead, grew silent. Chatter of beast and bird ceased in Logie Woods. They knew what was coming to them from the north and something of their trepidation began to settle on Causleen. Such dreams as she had been weaving a moment since seemed empty, foolish, and their warmth had gone with the woodland glow.
Wharfe River, as she followed it, lost its breadth of flow; its tranquil temper. The under-cries grew louder as it swept through the narrows under grey-brown scuds of foam; and ever as the waters hurried down, the rocks on either bank set closer teeth on them.
Causleen, glancing across this place of tumbled strife, saw a man’s figure come down the wood on the far bank; and a smile of self-derision played about her lips. How bravely she had dreamed of a lover—and what a wakening, to find Hardcastle of Logie—Hardcastle the churl, who grudged Donald and herself each hour they spent under his roof. But at least he was on the other bank, and there was no bridge for him to cross. She was glad of that.
Then she saw him gather himself together, and run a little way, and leap; and he was on her side now of Wharfe River, laughing up at her astonished face.
“It saves the long way round by Logie Brigg,” he said—“but it’s no short cut for fools to take.”
She came close to the bank and glanced down, curious to learn how one leap could bridge a river; and under her she saw the whole tumult of the upper stream caged into a yard’s span, with Wharfe going silent, fast and deep between its prison walls. She saw, too, that Hardcastle had jumped from the low to the higher bank, and that the rock he leaped from was wet with spray.
“You took a mad risk,” she said, shivering as she watched the strong, remorseless flood go by.
“I said it was no short cut for fools. But Wharfe couldn’t drown me if she tried. There’s too long caring goes between us.”
“Wharfe River.The name sings to me since I heard it first.”
“And Wharfe sings—many songs. I’ve known her for thirty years, and never stale of listening. Soft as a girl one day, and the next a beldame, riving all her banks to pieces. A woman, all of her.”
“Why—a woman?” asked Causleen, with quiet mockery.
“She changes her mind so lightly—croons to you, like the gentlest stream that ever lapped quiet banks—and you’re half believing it when the storm-waters come, roaring to pluck you down.”
“Was it only Wharfe taught you what you know of women?”
Malice prompted the gibe, but Causleen was bewildered by the answering fury. She had driven a needle-point into some deep-hidden nerve, and for a moment she fancied Hardcastle would strike her. He was alive with rage. She seemed to stand shelterless under a mountain tempest that was soon to break about her. She did not care. Better to flout him in the open here than be a tongue-tied and unwelcome guest at Logie.
As she had watched him gather himself for the slippery leap across the Strith, she watched him now. He got temper into hand, as if it were a mettled horse he rode. He conquered the pain of an old wound she had pricked to life. The face he turned to her at last was grey and quiet.
“Not only Wharfe,” he said.
The breeze came sobbing, cold and comfortless, through the woods of Logie, and the red leaves blew about them in their fall. Again old griefs came to Hardcastle, and again he laughed, as of old, to drive them off.
“Wharfe’s a woman, as I said. She drowned the heir of all these lands once—a stripling, and his greyhound checked him at the leap. And then his mother reared the Priory below; and Wharfe slips by the ruins to this day, gentle as a dove—penitent, you’d think, for what she did up here.”
Causleen’s interest was stirred, in spite of herself, by the boldness of his fancy, the sure, straightforward hold he had on the lore of other days. At their first coming, when Donald resented the pike hung on the wall at Logie, the Master spoke of Flodden as if he had shared the battle lately. Now he talked of what happened in the elder years, before the shock of Flodden came, as if they, too, were recent. To-day seemed one with all the yesterdays to this man who loved his country-side and knew its inner secrets.
The breeze blew shriller now. Raw and wet, it fluted through the glory of the woods, plucking a red leaf here and there in passing.
“Brant was right,” said Hardcastle, “though I fancied his weather-wisdom had gone astray this once.”
As he spoke, and while Causleen was thinking bitterly that the prophet of ill-weather was always on the safe side of life, a great crying sounded overhead—a harsh, tortured crying, as of human things in anguish.
“What is it?” she asked sharply.
“Rebecca would say it was The Gabble-Ratchet.”
The first crying overhead had passed into silence, but now another came, louder and more anguished.
“Brant was right,” Hardcastle repeated—“and it’s time we both got up to Logie.”
She found herself going with him up the steep rise of the woods—found herself yielding a hand to his when he reached down to help her across some slippery rock-face—and had no time to wonder that she let her pride be quiet. There was something in the wet, rising breeze, something in the Gabble-Ratchet uproar overhead not long since, that made for awe and need of a man’s hand, whether he was rich or poor in courtesy.
They went past Ghyll House, where a dog barked at them from behind a stable-door, and up into the pastures.
Brant was right, no doubt, as Hardcastle had said. On one side of them, Pengables thrust his big rock shoulders up into the red sundown and the warmth; on the other a grey mist came running, like the ewes that Storm had chased into the Wilderness a few days since.
And now again there sounded the crying from above, shrill and terrible, and Causleen looked up to see what seemed a ship go overhead with the speed of a hurricane behind. It was a long, slender ship, its slenderer prow driving into the sunlit warmth ahead, and it was chased by the breeze that was a wind by now, hurrying the grey mists in front of it. Then Causleen came out of the eeriness that Logie Woods had laid on her.
“It’s the wild-geese flighting south,” she said, shaking herself free of omens.
“It is,” said Hardcastle; “and so many of them come that we’ve time to get to Logie and no more. Lord Harry only knows what sort of storm is skelping down.”
They two knew what sort of storm it was, when they reached the long pasture that raked up into the Logie highroad. The wind came, and the snow, and biting hail—came ravening on the track of the wild-geese fleeing south—and soon there were no landmarks.
There was a foresters’ hut, he remembered, at his left hand, where the field ran into the pinewoods. They could find shelter there, if anything could find it.
Hardcastle had known the pasture from childhood, but it was lost to him as if he trod foreign country. In the blackest night he could have found his way across it, but not through this scudding snow that swirled till it dizzied brain and sight—through the wind that bit and the hail that stung.
He was not making now for Logie. There was a foresters’ hut at the far end of the pasture where it met the pinewoods. Once he could find it they could shelter till the snow had ended; for tempests as quick to come as this, out of a warm October’s quiet, seldom lasted.
He could not find the hut—could find nothing but snow that was balling already under his feet—snow that would not let the sky come through. It was as if he tried to make way through a thicket, not of brambles, but of cotton-wool. Then a cry reached him. Whether it came from front or rear, he could not tell, but it was Causleen’s voice.
“Where are you, child?” he snapped, impatient at his own failure.
A little sob ran in between one wind-gust and the next. It hurt him strangely. “Lost. I was tired—I could not keep pace.”
She was lost indeed, though no more than ten paces from him. For the wind got up with a screech, and there seemed no space between the snowflakes. And over the din of it all there sounded, far overhead, the crying of belated wild-geese, hurrying south.
Even in that moment of harsh peril, Hardcastle laughed quietly. It was odd that he, of all men, should be asked to go seeking about for a woman lost in the snow. These five years past he had been striving to lose all women, except Rebecca.
Voice answering voice, they strove to find each other. Sometimes they came near, and again they called through the sundering distance. And then at last Hardcastle touched the rough pedlar’s cloak she wore, and reached down, and got her hand into his.
“No more straying,” he said roughly, “till we get out of this damned weather.”
Her hand lay close in his. He did not know that his own gripped it till she winced. He knew only that he must get her free of this pasture that would put the snow-sleep on them if they stayed much longer.
Causleen’s hand seemed in some strange way to guide him. He moved quickly, like one who knew his way at last, and presently his knees came hard against a fence of stone. He had not guessed till now that bruised knees could be a joy.
“Keep your hand in mine,” he said, “while I feel my way by the wall.”
It was a weary enterprise, this feeling the way. The wind was a gale now, and Hardcastle’s hand followed the wall as a blind man’s might, with slow caution.
Together they trudged through the thickening snow till Hardcastle’s numbed fingers touched something that was not stone. He had found the rough trunk of the oak-tree that stood this side of the foresters’ hut.
“Wait,” he said, and clambered up the wall.
In this whiteness that was worse than midnight, he could not see where to plant his feet. And, as is the way of dry-built walls, the stones went under him with a roar like the wind’s note overhead.
“You are hurt?” came Causleen’s voice—tattered to bits by the wind as she tried to repeat the frightened question.
One foot was bruised by a coping-stone of the wall. He could attend to that later on.
“No,” he said. “I’ve made a gap for you to come through. That is all.”
He reached out both hands to draw her up the half-fallen wall; and, as she climbed the opening, the gale drove her full into Hardcastle’s arms. He held her fast, and so they came, he carrying her, along one side of the hut, and round the corner of it, and into shelter of its lee-wall.
Snow lay thick on either hand. Overhead the wind was yelping. But there was a clear space in front of them, and the relief from battering of the tempest was instant, as if they had stepped from winter into June.
“Now you will free me,” said Causleen, with quiet laughter.
Hardcastle had forgotten that he still held her in his arms. He was thinking how nearly they had tasted death while they tramped up and down a pasture known to him from boyhood. If he had not found the wall in time to guide himself by it, there would have been rejoicing out at Garsykes; but the Lost Folk had not done with him as yet.
The door stood half-open. Sometimes the foresters locked it, but oftener not; and Hardcastle took it for a good omen that it was ajar to-day. There would be no need to set a shoulder to it and break it inward. There was a ready welcome for them here.
So he thought, till he pushed the door wide-open, and was challenged roughly. As he had battled to win free of tempest, it seemed he would have to fight for this shelter of the hut. He put Donald’s girl still further behind him and took a pace or two indoors.
“Down, you brute,” he said. “Down, I tell you.”
Then Hardcastle, to his amazement, heard the savage growling cease, and felt a rough snout pushed into his hand; and presently he came from the dimness of the hut into the grey gloom of the space that had snow overhead, and snow to left and right. He held Storm by the collar, because he knew his ways were sharp with strangers nowadays.
“We’ve the sheep-stealer safe. What shall we do with him?” he asked with grim banter.
Storm strained at his collar—to be at Causleen’s throat, he fancied, until the girl ran forward, and took the great, rough muzzle into her hands, and kissed him with frank abandonment. The dog licked her face, and after that licked Hardcastle’s. And the wind roared overhead; and here, on the lee side of the hut, was sanctuary for these three.
“To kiss a dog with his reputation up and down Logie-side,” said Hardcastle, and laughed.
Causleen had not known that he could laugh in this easy, heart-free way. Till now he had seemed austere as destiny—relentless as the driven snow they sheltered from.
“It’s not for the first time—is it, Storm?” she said.
Hardcastle, when they got indoors, knew his way about the hut—knew where to find the candles, the fuel, the demijohn of rum, hidden snugly under the slab that fronted the rough fireplace built of stone. A great blaze of wood and fir-cones was roaring up the chimney soon, and Causleen thanked him for it. Their journey up the pasture had been short in time, but long in suffering, and she was sick with cold.
She almost cried to him to come back when she saw him open the door and go out, and was glad when he returned. It would have been lonely here without him.
Hardcastle had only gone to fill a kettle from the snowdrift, and soon this was purring on the fire. She loathed the smell of the brew he offered her by and by—rum piping-hot in one of the foresters’ mugs—and turned her head away.
“I do not like it.”
“Maybe not; but physic’s better than your death of cold.”
She loathed the taste of it, too, though presently she was glad of obedience to compulsion. This physic, nauseous enough, had a strange gift of bringing warmth and well-being. She no longer shivered. The strain of that rough journey through the tempest was eased and mellowed, and already half-forgotten.
The three of them took their fill of ease. The gale out of doors grew harsher. It raved and screeched, falling back on itself once every while in whining, baffled spite. And they knew that, outside their four walls, the snow was driving thick from Pengables out to Logie, burying sheep and men, making a jest of landmarks.
Hardcastle and the girl had fought the gale, and won. By no other road could they have found the joy in listening to its fury while they hugged the fireglow. But neither guessed what Storm was making of the respite. Like them, the sheep-stealer had battled through the tempest, and found refuge here; but for him it was only one of many nights, with danger lying in wait at every turn. Here he was safe and warm, and in his sleep he gave little, snoring cries of joy.
“When did you two grow friendly?” asked Hardcastle, stirring the dog lazily with one foot.
“It was the night we came to Logie. They called you into the kitchen, and while you were away the illness came on father. I could do nothing for him except watch beside him while he slept.”
“I remember.”
“Then I heard a dog’s feet patter down the passage, and afterwards a lonely sobbing. And I found Storm in the cupboard under the stair, crying his big heart out. I was lonely, too, and he knew it.”
“You know much of dogs,” said the Master, with grudging praise.
“I should like to know more—and less of my own kind.”
“You’re young, to be so hard.”
A faint smile crossed her face. “And you?”
“Oh, I’m old as the hills. A man needs to be hard, or what’s the use of him?”
As he turned to pile fresh logs on the fire, a lull came in the tempest, and Storm lifted his head sharply from his lazy, stretched-out paws. Some sound had stolen from the snow outside that only he could hear. He got up, whining and growling by turns as he laid his nose to a crack in the door. Then he yapped, and after that he howled; and Hardcastle, who had thought of opening the door to learn who came, thought better of it. He knew what the wolf-cry meant.
“Shame on you, lad,” he said.
The fire went out of Storm. His tail drooped. He cringed about this new master of his choice; and, when no blow came, he settled himself by the hearth again and slept. But now he had muddled dreams for company.
CHAPTER IX
As the hours passed, the tempest gained in speed. Stout-built as it was, the foresters’ hut shook with the gale’s mishandling, and the din out of doors was as full of cries as if every warlock and hellhound had been loosed from Langstrothdale to Logie.
Causleen and Hardcastle sat on the rough benches built on each side of the hut. They faced each other across the fireglow, and between them Storm slept on, making the most of luxury.
“It would be fierce, but could not last at this time of the year,” said Causleen, with grave, accusing anger. “You promised that.”
“And could not keep the promise. I’m only the last fool who thought himself a prophet where Logie weather was concerned.”
“If the snow has stopped—go see if the snow has stopped—I should not care for the wind, however hard it blew. We could get up to Logie somehow.”
Her eyes were bright—too bright, to Hardcastle’s thinking—and she seemed to have some stubborn feud with him.
“How can we, through the drifts? Be glad we’re sheltered here.”
“Are you a man at all? I bade you go and see if we could get to Logie.”
To humour her, he went out and looked about him. There was a clear space still in front of the sheltered doorway, and little stir of wind. The hut lay in a little harbour of its own, secure; but a little space away the gale ravened through the snow as Storm at his reddest had never harried the grey ewes.
“The snow thickens,” he said, coming in again.
“Then there is nothing we can do to get to Logie?”
“Not yet.”
Quarrel showed in her eyes again. “A beggar-maid’s honour is of no account. It would not be, to you.”
He looked at her with puzzled question. To him, this was an adventure thrust on him by the tricky weather, and he would be glad to see the end of it.
“Your honour?”
“You are so dull, you men of Logie. It’s not you I doubt. I trust you—dear God, as I’d trust an oak-tree, or a stone. But they will say——”
She faltered, ashamed of her thought, dismayed by their imprisonment, bitterly resentful.
“They say,” snapped Hardcastle, “is the biggest fool in the Dale. He’ll not hurt us much.”
“You will not understand. Why did you bring me here?”
“Why? Would you rather be lying in the pasture?”
She was angered afresh by the knowledge that she owed her life to him, by the tolerant wonder in his face, as if he had a child’s absurdities to answer.
“Yes. I would rather be lying there.”
She faced him with frank enmity, and was silent for awhile.
“Have your Logie Women no nice sense of honour?” she went on. “Are they not taught that the least breath on it is worse than death?”
“They are,” said the Master, stung into defence of his own—“and with it they’re taught common-sense. Logie thinks none the worse of two folk because a blizzard keeps them safe indoors.”
“If you had been a Hielandman, and I’d said to him half of what I’ve said to you——”
“Well?”
“He’d have been fighting the drifts outside by now.”
The challenge was direct—out-facing if he did not take it up—and Hardcastle glanced at Storm, asleep still between them. The dog would be a sure guardian for her, if he failed. It was likely he would fail; but there was just a chance that he could win through to some other shelter.
He searched in the chest at the far side of the hut, where the woodmen kept their axes and sundry tools, and found a shovel. Then without a word he went out, closing the door behind him, and paused a moment to frame a plan before he left the narrow belt of shelter.
The trees, instead of giving protection to the ground below, were gathering even deeper drifts than the naked pastures. In such a storm as this, their branches—full leaved almost as in summer—trapped the snow and held it till some fiercer wind-blast sent it scattering down. There was no chance on that side; but there was hope if he could work round to the wall that made one side of the hut. Once he reached that, its whole length would give him the same narrow strip of freedom from wind and snow that the hut was giving him now. Afterwards he might travel, on the lee side of this and other walls, until he reached some barn or other.
Whether the plan failed or carried, he told himself grimly, Causleen’s good-repute would go white as the swirling storm. She would be found with a grizzled sheep-stealer for guardian, not with him; and maybe her restless pride would be content.
Out of his disdain for women—out of the slur she had put on all but Highland men—endurance came to him. Between himself and the wall he sought, a great bulk of snow lay at the corner of the hut, and he drove at it with his shovel. For the honour of Logie Men he must get through it, and give the pedlar’s chit her answer.
The drift could not be more than a few yards thick, he knew, and he worked hopefully in a lull of the wind. Suddenly, from the white mass in front, came faint voices raised in protest, and he remembered what Storm had heard not long since. There were over-blown sheep in the drift here—part, maybe, of the flock that Storm had hunted yesterday—and work had a double zest.
The gale had given him respite in mockery. It swooped on him afresh with a whistling screech, so that he could scarcely stand to ply his shovel. Drenched from within by sweat, the snow fell icy on him from the branches overhead—fell on the track he was carving, foot by foot, towards the drifted ewes, and half undid his labour.
Still he toiled, though passionate desire for sleep had joined the company of his enemies. There seemed no heaven but one, here or hereafter—a bed in this snow he strove to master.
Causleen, after she had watched him go, felt the same loneliness, the same longing to call him back, as when—years ago, it seemed—he had gone to get a kettleful of snow. She was filled with a great unrest, a wonder that she had chosen to drive him out. What had he done, except give her a roof there at Logie, and here in this warm hut?
Storm was uneasy, too. He got up and flicked a flea or two away from a hide that had known fouler quarters than the hut, and whined about the door. Then he glanced back at her.
She went to the door and opened it. As Hardcastle had done, she halted, watching the snow, listening to the gale that ceased for a moment and let a man’s voice through—a harsh, fighting voice. While she stood, reluctant to plunge into the white hurricane, Storm showed the way to her. Already snow had drifted over the lane Hardcastle had carved; and they found him at the corner of the hut, battling forward for the last yard that would take him to the lee-wall’s shelter.
Again the wind lulled, and Causleen was aghast to hear the deep, stubborn curses of this man she had sent out to battle. In simple earnest he was fighting the snow-sleep; but in fancy it was Garsykes and its devilry he fought. As he made forward, inch by inch, he cursed Nita Langrish, rained blows again on the three gaunt men who had met him at the pinfold; and Causleen could not remember afterwards how she and Storm got him safely back at last to the hut’s shelter.
They got him back, and for a while he lay in a dazed sleep, past this world’s ken. Then little by little he forced himself—by sheer will to fight on, it seemed—into wakefulness. He glanced at Causleen—at the fire she had replenished—at grey, old Storm, nosing his knee in quiet distress.
“How nightmare plays the devil with a man,” he laughed. “I fancied I was shovelling snow.”
He dozed again, and Causleen watched beside him. She had taunted him; but it seemed there was one man at least in Logie-side. And he might have died while going her errand.
The night wore on. Storm was asleep, too, but she sat wakeful, and listened to the dying tempest. The window of the hut was not blurred by snowflakes now. The wind no longer roared in glee; it wailed and sobbed, like a child left out in the dark. Strange noises sounded out of doors—soft, thick splashings that she knew by and by for melting snow shed by the forest trees—and across the window-space a keen, sharp radiance stole.
Dawn must be here, she thought. Yet anger against him, her fear of gossip, showed unworthy. She was here with the realities of the big, open lands, and she smiled, recalling Hardcastle’s rough “They sayis the biggest fool in the Dale.”
She turned to the window again, glad of the moonlight that meant the end of tempest; and, as she sat there, her whole body suddenly grew tense and her eyes wide with terror. She could not cry to Hardcastle for help. Tongue and limbs seemed chained.
Framed by the moonlight, a white, big face looked in at her—a face packed with evil—and then was gone. Hardcastle heard nothing, nor did Storm; but Causleen listened to the slushing scrunch of feet going over melted snow.
That sound ceased, and the door was opened warily till it stood open to the moonlight and the fireglow. And still Causleen could not stir, or cry a warning; and Storm snored on.
It was Hardcastle who woke. With a bound he was up. Murgatroyd, dazed for a moment by the unexpected greeting, turned just in time, and ran, and clashed the door behind him.
Hardcastle followed, Storm silent as he raced behind the Master. The two of them went forward, over slush of the melting snow, under the scudding Hunter’s Moon; but Long Murgatroyd was part of the snowy wilderness by now, lost beyond the night’s finding.
They came back unwillingly, and to Causleen it seemed that Hardcastle had never shown his true self till now. Smeared with sweat and weariness, limping on the foot bruised by the coping-stone, his eyes were bright as a lad’s.
“We can get to Logie now,” he said—“and it’s time we went, after losing Long Murgatroyd. He may be dodging out to Garsykes, to bring the Wilderness on us.”
Full moonlight shone on the fast melting snow as they went out. A warm breeze stole against their faces. Winter’s journey to the Dale had been hurried, alike in coming and going, as if she feared her welcome.
At the corner of the hut, where the drift had been, there was no more than a slender bank of snow, with rivulets playing down its sides. A shovel lay in front of it, and for the first time Hardcastle recalled, with a sudden rush of memory, how he had struggled here in a wind that bit to the bone.
Storm’s nose was buried already in the slush. He scented the oily reek that spoke of hunting-days, past and to come; and when he drew his head back and glanced up at the Master, there was wistfulness in his brown eyes.
“Gone away,” laughed Hardcastle. “You’d best come up to Logie, out of Brant’s reach.”
CHAPTER X
Before the storm broke that drove Causleen and Hardcastle into shelter of the foresters’ hut, Long Murgatroyd had been poaching up the moor. He knew all about the uses of a wire looped at both ends and set across the tracks the grouse took to their drinking-places; and he laughed as he gathered his spoils together and turned for home.
“They’re Hardcastle’s birds,” he chuckled, “and they’ll taste sweeter in the pot for that.”
He had got half down the moor when the first of the tempest struck him, and he ran for the lower country as fast as his great legs would take him. He reached the first pasture only to be blinded by the swirl of snow, so that he had to creep forward, feeling his way. His hands touched stone at last, and he worked his way round to the lee side of a bield-wall, built two-sided to shelter ewes from the north wind and the bitter east. In the angle of this he dozed and shivered through the storm; and afterwards, when the moon shone out on thawing snow, he picked and slushed his way downhill to Garsykes.
His way lay past the foresters’ hut, and as he went by he halted, astonished to see its window shining crimson out across the snow. Peering in, he saw Causleen there beside the hearth, and no one else. Drenched to the skin, hungry and shivering, Long Murgatroyd laughed—as he had laughed when he snared Hardcastle’s birds on the moor. There was shelter here, and a log-fire, and a lass to share the warmth with him—a bonny lass, and a prime favourite up at Logie these last days, if all folk said was true.
He opened the door, to find Hardcastle rise in menace, to see Storm bristling at him in rage that seemed gigantic. He banged the door home and fled. By instinct of the hunted he knew they would catch him in this hindering broth of snow and water. So he doubled back into the wood. The snow made silence under his feet. The black firs hid him from the moon. He was lost utterly to Hardcastle and Storm.
Murgatroyd watched the moon pale in the dawning sky, and the sun leap ruddy to the top of old Pengables Hill, before he came in sight of Garsykes. It was a tedious way for one spent with fright and hunger, and he lumbered down into the hollow, and looked about him at the closed doors of the village—especially at the inn-sign, “The Poacher’s Rest,” that swayed cracked and dirty in the breeze.
He went in at last, and a flaunting, big-breasted woman answered his call.
“Oh, ye, Long Murgatroyd!” she said, her arms akimbo. “What d’ye want?”
“A dollop of rum, and summat to eat.”
Widow Mathison pointed to a row of figures on the door. “Nay, you’ll ruin me. I’m for ever chalking up your slate till I’m tired of you and your debts.”
Murgatroyd drew out a brace of grouse from some hidden pockets and slapped them on the table. “Keep ’em awhile, widow, till they’re like to drop to bits. You relish ’em that way.”
“Hardcastle’s birds? Ay, they’ll be toothsome.”
She busied herself now, with entire goodwill, about the fire; and Murgatroyd looked up by and by from a steaming dish of eggs and bacon.
“You’d wipe out your chalks against me, widow, if I told you what I saw in Logie Woods. But, there, I’m not for telling.”
“What did ye see?”
“Nay, another noggin o’ rum wouldn’t draw it from me. There was Hardcastle of Logie in the woodmen’s hut.”
“Was there?” asked the widow, filling his glass afresh.
Murgatroyd took a wide gulp at the measure, and drained it. He was cold and weary.
“Not if you filled it afresh—and thank you, widow, for it does drive the wet out o’ one’s bones.”
“Hardcastle was in the hut,” said the woman.
“Aye, he was, in front of a cosy fire, and the pedlar’s lass with him, sitting on his knee. I saw ’em through the window as I went by.”
Widow Mathison gave a screech of glee. “For a woman-hater, he frames fairish well.”
“Fairish well,” agreed Murgatroyd, with a maudlin leer. “There she was, and there he was. You wouldn’t say aught could alter that—would you, now? I opened the door, and I listened—and dang me if they weren’t cooing like a pair o’ cushats. And she a pedlar’s brat. And him with his mucky pride.”
The door swung open, and a squat fellow entered, sallow-faced and touzled.
“There’s water in plenty hereabouts,” said the widow, after a shrewd glance at him; “but it seems to run to waste. One man could lead Jake Bramber to it, but twenty couldn’t make him wash.”
“I wasn’t thinking of water specially,” growled Jake.
“You wouldn’t be. It’s the itch i’ your throat that bothers you at this time o’ day. And there’s your tally, side by side with Murgatroyd’s. I’m tired of chalking up your owings.”
“That’s easy mended, widow. Stop chalking ’em.”
She bridled at his effrontery, but drew him a measure. Then, “Tell him, Murgatroyd,” she said.
Long Murgatroyd told him what he had seen in the foresters’ hut, and with repetition the tale gathered volume, till all the Garsykes swine had garbage to wallow in for many a day to come.
“Nita Langrish will laugh herself to bits when she hears this,” said Jake.
“I’m not so sure,” broke in the widow. “Nita may fool you men of Garsykes—ifyou’re men, which I begin to doubt—but Hardcastle escaped her. So she wants him. I’ve known her since she toddled, and that was always her way. Near died o’ crying for the moon, when she was three years old. It’s always the thing she hasn’t Nita longs for.”
“That’s true,” snarled Jake. “Awhile since she was making her baskets on the Brigg. ‘Jake,’ says she, ‘you’ve a way with dogs.’ ‘I have,’ says I. ‘It’s a birth-gift. They like as they love me, same as if I was one o’ them.’ And then she told me to put hemlock into a ball o’ meat and take it up to Logie. Hardcastle’s dog would be waiting for him at the gate, said Nita. So I went, and friendlied Roy. And I was a sick man, I tell you, coming home. To poison a dog—it doesn’t bide thinking of—but Nita made me do it.”
Long Murgatroyd rose suddenly to his big, shammocky height. He was shaken by a storm of passion.
“She’s the devil and all among us, with her basket-making and her eyes on all four sides at once to fool us. I’ve done with Nita.”
“No,” said the widow. “You’ve never done with such as Nita.”
And now feet began to patter up and down the cobbled street. Garsykes Folk were late to wake, for their work lay mainly with night-time tasks of poaching and robbery.
The woman beckoned Long Murgatroyd out of doors. He followed her with unsteady, shambling feet, and soon they had a company of unwashed folk about them, listening to the widow’s ribald laughter.
“There’s news from Logie,” she said. “Tell ’em, Murgatroyd, as you told it Jake.”
Long Murgatroyd propped himself against the wall, and looked about him with a clown’s solemnity.
“It’s about Hardcastle o’ Logie.”
“Damn him,” snarled a thin, wolfish man. “He goes abroad as if we’d put no token on him.”
“Don’t you worry, my lad,” said Murgatroyd. “We’ll know where to find him nowadays. He’ll not wander far from pedlar’s brat.”
So then he told them what he believed by now that he had seen in the foresters’ hut; and such a storm of applause greeted him that he left the friendly shelter of the wall behind him, and talked at large as he strutted to and fro across the street. No tale such as this had come to Garsykes for many a year, and for the moment they half-liked the Master of Logie, because he was a backslider like themselves.
When the tale was done, and the folk began to get about their ways, Nita Langrish came among them. Used as they were to her young beauty, going among them from day to day, they never ceased to marvel that such as she had grown out of Garsykes mire.
Fresh from her morning bath in a pool she knew of up the fells, gowned in soft grey that clung about her slender body, she stood like a creature from some other world among the tattered women of the village.
“Is there news from Logie?” she asked, in her pleasant voice. “They told me Hardcastle would be up the moor yesterday, so I persuaded one of ours to take an errand for me.”
“There’s not what you might call news from Logie,” laughed Widow Mathison, “but Murgatroyd here has word of Hardcastle.”
Long Murgatroyd faced her, and old hunger, old dismay found sudden vent. “He’s out of your reach, Nita,” he snarled.
“He always was,” said Nita gently, “after I sent him out.”
“Same as you’ve sent all of us, one by one?”
“When you tried to come too close.”
She stood there, soft as this morning that followed a night of grim tempest—a radiant thing, knowing herself mistress of them all.
“Well. Hardcastle’s tied to another apron-string. She’s a bonnie lass, too, as I glimpsed her in the woodmen’s hut. They made a picture, sitting by the fire as if they’d set up housekeeping together.”
A wild-rose flush leaped to Nita’s cheeks. “Who was it?” she asked.
“The pedlar’s lass. He’s chosen dark and trusty this time, as the saying is. None of your yellow-haired women again for him, says Hardcastle—and I don’t wonder.”
Nita took up the challenge. “You saw them in the hut?”
“Aye. I opened the door to creep in for shelter, and Hardcastle was there.”
“And you ran for your life? To be sure, you’d not forget what he did to you at the pinfold. None of your masters of Logie again for you, if you can help it—and I don’t wonder.”
Her mimicry, the quickness of her answer, raised such a storm of laughter against Murgatroyd that he gave up the contest; but presently he followed, as she went by the field-track that led to Logie Brigg, and overtook her.
“Nita, my lass,” he said, “you’ve got to stay and listen.”
“Have I?”
“Aye, like it or no, you have.”
In his face she saw the baffled hunger that she had brought to many men. His voice was rough and harsh, but there was pleading in it—a headstrong pleading that it was her life’s delight to thwart.
“Well?”
“It’s this way. I’m sick and tired o’ my days. Naught matters, save you—you and your devilments.”
“I’ve baskets to weave. All up and down the Dale they’re asking for Nita’s baskets. There’s no time to care for men.”
He put out a savage hand, to draw her to him. She did not seem to spring aside, yet suddenly she stood far away, putting her smiling spells on him afresh.
“Nita,” he said, sombre and hungry-eyed, “I’m not of the fanciful sort; but summat or somebody is whispering at my ear. One of us two is going to die of your devilry—and I don’t care a tinker’s damn which it is, so long as it comes soon.”
Across Nita’s young vigour, her joy in torturing men for pastime, a little, cold wind began to play. Long Murgatroyd was sobered. He was in dead earnest, and his big, uncouth face was lit as with some fire of prophecy.
Then her mood passed. “It will be you to die of it, I think,” she said, and laughed at him as she took her way to Logie.
Rebecca was busy in her kitchen up at Logie on the afternoon of the great snowstorm. She was thinking how wise she had been to send Causleen “just to get a bit of colour into her cheeks” when the sky began to darken, till she could scarcely have seen to ply her rolling-pin but for the ruddy hearth-glow. Now and then she turned on the great, brindled cat curled up inside the fender
“You’re a grand ’un for bringing bad weather,” she said, “and that’s why I named you Jonah. You never sit close to the fire but it means a storm.”
The cat stretched himself, and licked his handsome fur, and dozed again. It was odd to him that human folk had so little knowledge of weather.
“Just Jonah, you—and an idle vagabones at that I’ve a mind to sweep you out of my kitchen with the thick end of a besom.”
Jonah heard the threat without disturbance. He knew the way of Rebecca’s weather, too.
She went on with her pastry-making. The Master had a big body to be filled, and a sweet tooth for pastry after he’d had his fill of strong meats. Men were all alike. Feed ’em and fill ’em, and they’d be lambs about a house. And Rebecca never guessed why her hand was light at the work—and the pastry light, by that token. She had never a man to care for, except Hardcastle of Logie, and it was a joy to wear herself to the bone for him.
The wind got up and snarled, as it snarled by the Strith when Hardcastle and Causleen listened to the vanguard of the storm piping low through Logie Wood. And then there came the crying of the wild-geese, winging high above the house.
Rebecca dropped her rolling-pin, and went out into the wind-gusts and the greying light. She was at prayer, of her own sort.
“The Gabble-Rachet always brought me luck,” she said. “It’s that I live for.”
Flight after flight went overhead, with ceaseless uproar. Rebecca was no longer the practical, deft-handed housekeeper at Logie. She was as Causleen and old Donald had seen her, when the pedlar showed baby-wear among the litter of his pack, and she went wild.
She thought of the lad who was to have married her in the far-off time, of his death because he would pay no toll to Garsykes. The man who killed him had died while the Gabble-Ratchet screeched overhead. Years afterwards his son broke his neck to the self-same music. Luck was in for her, and out for Garsykes, at such times.
She had crossed the stable-yard and gone into the field beyond, to get clearer sight of the wild-geese; and when the last of them had hurried by, she looked about her. There were signs in plenty of the storm to come. Just as the brindled cat had sought the fender, sheep were hurrying to cover of the wall. Rooks, feeding tranquilly an hour since in upland oat-stubble, sped homeward. In the high thorn-edge, storm-cocks, that love a tilt at harsh weather, cried lustily.
Rebecca looked far down the field, and saw a speck move up it. The speck took man’s shape by and by. A scud of snow was following him up the hill, and by his shammocky stride she was sure he hailed from Garsykes. This puzzled her. An attack in force on Logie she could have understood, but it was not like the Wilderness Folk for one of them to come alone into a hostile country.
The snow-scud overtook and hid him for awhile. Then again she saw him plodding up, and she could distinguish now a bulky sack that swayed about his shoulders. With a grim face, and a grimmer heart, Rebecca waited. Jonah the cat, hugging the fire indoors, had claws to show in time of need. So had she.
The gale was up in earnest, and snow thickened fast about the man who hurried up the field. Soon he began to blunder this way and that through the blinding maze, and a sharp, bitter cry rang up-wind.
“Damn Nita Langrish. She sent me into this.”
Rebecca laughed with eerie gentleness. The man came from Garsykes, as she had guessed, and Nita had sent him on an errand. Already he was hidden by the on-driving wall of snow, and so much for him. The wild-geese had flighted to-day, and Logie’s luck was in.
So intent the woman was on nursing vengeance that the storm was on her, too, before she found a thought for her own safety. Though scarcely twenty yards from the gate that led into the stable-yard, it took long to find it; and afterwards, close to her own kitchen, wind and snow played blind-man’s-buff with her before she found the door, and opened it, and had to use all her lean, hard strength to close it against the in-leaping storm.
Jonah still slept tranquilly inside the fender, dreaming of rats to be hunted in the stables when good weather came again. Rebecca’s glance rested on him, lying plump and sleek there, and wrath descended on her. She snatched a besom up, and gave him the thick end of it with zest, as she had promised not long since in idle banter.
“That’s what I give to vagabones,” she said, and thwacked him again.
Jonah sprang to the top of the big chair beside the hearth, and spat at her. His fur was stiff, like an angry dog’s, and he swept down a wild-cat’s paw at her.
“Getting to be your own man again?” said Rebecca. “Well, it’s time you did, now the rats creep up from Garsykes.”
With that she took up her rolling-pin and went on with the pastry-making as quietly as if nothing had disturbed the work; but her thoughts were with the man she had watched creeping up the field. A glance at the window showed panes crusting ever thicker as the snow drove at them, and a hard smile played about her lips.
The brindled cat eyed her with wrath that cooled by slow degrees. He washed himself all over, as if to clear away the besom’s touch, and stood on the chair-top in sullen dignity. Then suddenly he jumped to the floor and up to Rebecca’s shoulder at a bound. They could never quarrel for long, these two.
“At your cantrips again,” said Rebecca calmly, “as if you were kitten-high—and resting all your great, idle weight on a woman that won’t put up with such-like nonsense.”
The cat stayed where he was, and presently Rebecca began to talk to him.
“There’s a Garsykes Man out yonder, Jonah. It must be cold lying. He’ll never taste kitchen-warmth again, or the crisp of an apple-pasty.”
Jonah purred against her withered cheek, and watched the rolling-pin go up and down.
“I can see him now as he came up the pasture. The snow overtook him, and he wambled like a drunken man, and dropped. There’ll be his burial-mound above him—a biggish mound by this time. So there’s another of the foul brood gone.”
From within-doors—loud as the wind was screaming at the windows—Rebecca heard a fretful cry steal down the passage.
“It’s the pedlar,” she grumbled. “Good sakes. I’d forgotten he was all on his lonesome—his legs forsaking him, and all.”
Donald was striving pitifully to rise when she reached the long-settle. “Where’s Causleen?” he pleaded. “I feel an old, old man, buried out of sight, when she’s not near.”
Rebecca wondered, too, where Causleen was. The Master was out in the storm, but he knew every barn and bield-wall of his country, and would find shelter somehow. Causleen was a stranger. It might be that she had met the same white death that the Garsykes Man had found. And she had sent her out.
“She’ll be here by and by,” she said, pity stirring at her gnarled old heart.
Donald’s glance wandered to the pike that had gone to Flodden Field and back, and again he tried to rise. “There was so much I had to tell her. You’re kind, and bid us stay at Logie—but there’s rust of Jaimie the King’s blood up there. I cannot eat or sleep within the house. Causleen knows I cannot—and she will not come.”
“Now I’m tucking the blankets round you,” said Rebecca, her hands deft and gentle, “and I’m telling you to get to sleep, or give me a reason t’ other way.”
Donald yielded to the warmth and rest; and in his dozing his heart leaped into his lips, and he told in few, poignant words what the years behind had meant to him.
“The long, grey roads—the footsore roads—selling Pedlar’s Balsam to other folk—it’s a weary life. There’s no time for the pedlar to balsam his own feet.”
And so they watched beside him through the night, Rebecca and the brindled cat. From time to time the woman crossed to the window, to see if there were any sign of the storm’s abating. There was none, and her fears for Causleen increased. Yet she could do nothing, and fell asleep at last in the chair drawn up beside the settle.
The day was up when she awoke. A glance at Donald showed him lying in childlike slumber, with Jonah curled up on the blankets; and Rebecca went out into the sunlight, scanning the lower slopes in search of the Master or Causleen. They did not come, though the thaw had opened out wide tracks of green between the drifts.
In her long time at Logie, Rebecca had never known a tempest so quick to come and go. A wind swift and bitter from the east had driven her indoors last night. Now a warm, playful breeze played against her face. The gold and crimson glory of the autumn woods reared itself above great scuds of snow that melted almost as they fell. And everywhere there was the cry of waters, big and little; for every dingle of the pastures was a running beck, and all the glens were rivers, bank-top high with snow-broth.
Rebecca heard the rooks come clamouring to their sycamores and ancient nests—heard a throstle pipe a stave or two, as if he scented spring after this wild October night—and knew then that the storm would not return for many days. Rooks and the thrushes were old in weather-lore.
Still the Master did not come, nor Causleen, and Rebecca wondered if the Gabble-Ratchet had brought luck to Logie, after all. The pedlar’s girl meant little to her, but if Hardcastle was dead—if never again she would sew buttons on for him, or cook his meals, or bear with his gusty temper—it was near her time to be done with this world and its foolishness.
Rebecca glanced downhill again, and when still no sign of life showed between the brimming waters, her thoughts turned to the man from Garsykes who had been overtaken by the storm last night. She crossed the stable-yard and went down the field on the far side of it till she reached a pile of melting snow. Out of the mound showed a man’s two hands, limp and glistening-wet.
No spark of pity or horror touched Rebecca. With fierce, exultant patience she watched the snow-shroud crumble, till now his arms showed to the sunlight, then his lean neck with the mouldy kerchief tied about it.
Sun and south wind between them were busy with the melting, and presently the man’s face showed. It had been a coarse face, lined with slyness; but snow and death had washed it, and it carried a strange look of peace.
The sack he had carried lay beside him. She opened it, and knew at last the object of his journey. It was filled with pine-logs, twigs and resin. These and the tinder-box in his pocket were enough to set Logie flaming from end to end of its grey gables.
The dead man could tell her nothing now; but he had told all yesterday when, baffled by the storm, he cursed Nita Langrish for bringing him into this. Rebecca pieced the tale together with shrewd vision. There was none from this to Langstrothdale who garnered news like Nita the basket-weaver. Men passed her as she sat on the bridge-wall, her fingers slender almost as the withies she plaited. They stayed for gossip with a maid known through the Dale to be a maddener of men, and she ’ticed their news from them.
Nita had learned, no doubt, that the Master was from home, and had sent up this poor, dead fool to fire the house. Rebecca stirred the body with her foot, in grudging pity. Then the peace in his face—the still unalterable peace—brought wrath and brimstone round her once again.
“You’ve found too soft an end,” she grumbled—“too soft by half, my lad.”
She was still standing there, the feud raw at her heart, when Causleen and the Master came up together from their vigil in the foresters’ hut.
“You’re safe, then, the pair of you,” she said. “I was fearing for the pedlar’s girl. She’s not used to our rough country.”
Causleen was ashamed of her own shame, as she heard Hardcastle tell how he had met her just in time—heard Rebecca’s blunt thankfulness that they had found a hut to spend the night in, safe from the worst blizzard ever known on Logie-side. Why had her pride taken fire because Hardcastle had saved her life? Why had she stooped to think of gossip and dishonour, when these two saw the past night as a fight against weather—a fight won by Logie?
Then Causleen saw the muddled heap that yesterday had been a man—saw the wet face and hands, the pitiful, threadbare clothes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“One from Garsykes that’s dead,” said Rebecca tranquilly.
“Poor pedlar. What does he carry in that big pack of his?”
“Enough to burn Logie down from roof to cellar. But he’s dead. And the Master’s quick. It’s Logie’s turn this time.”