CHAPTER XVII
That night they waited in Garsykes village till the moon dipped over Scummer Rigg and grey-black gloom shrouded heath and pasture-land. Then every man who had strength to carry a burden reached out for his well-filled sack.
Long Murgatroyd came up the hill with his shammocky stride just as they were shouldering the sacks. He stood awhile in the lamp-glow streaming from the tavern windows, and they drew away from him as if he had the plague. There was something unearthly in his white, drawn face, in the laugh that broke his silence.
“So I’m in time, after all? It’s better pastime, this, than hanging yourself in Nita’s garter.”
The man still felt raw of a hempen cord about his neck—the cord that Hardcastle had loosed not long ago. Yet he laughed again, as he glanced from one to another. Once he had lain in wait for Hardcastle, and twice the Master had given him his life. The memory bit and rankled.
“Logie flares red as hell to-night,” he said. “Let’s make a start!”
They went out into a dark that could be felt, soon as the inn’s friendly gleam was left behind. It reared itself against them like a wall, so that they feared almost to break themselves against it. Then, as their eyes grew used to it a little, they picked their way across lean fields, over marshes yielding to the tread, through woods of pine and larch whose rustling blackness put slack fear into their limbs. But they dreaded more the open highway that gave them a ready way to Logie. Deep in the bones and fibre of the Lost Folk lurked distrust of roads where honest men might be encountered.
It was when they came to Logie Brigg that superstition gathered thick about them. They huddled together, a lack-luster mob, on their side of the crossing. It was a saying centuries old in Garsykes that luck never came of hindering a Hardcastle. They might rob or take tribute of Logie’s tenants, but must not touch its master.
“Bleating ewes, are you?” snarled Murgatroyd. “There’s all us—and up yonder only Hardcastle and two women, and an aged man who may be quick or stiff by now. And you bleat.”
A rough voice answered him through the murk of the windy night, over the song of Wharfe River as she raced below.
“It was you brought the trouble to Garsykes, when you were fool enough to wait for Hardcastle at the pinfold. There’s been naught but ill-luck since.”
The jostling mob, glad of a scapegoat for its panic, turned on Murgatroyd.
“Aye, be you first to cross the bridge—if you dare, mad Murgatroyd!”
His madness came on him in earnest. The broken years of his slavery to Nita, came to a head. Better any happening up at Logie than Nita’s laughter if they left the house standing and came back with the tale.
He forced his way through the press. Shammocky no longer, but grim and straight and broad he led his Legion of the Lost between the grey, narrow walls of Logie Brigg. And all men followed him, afraid of the gaunt figure striding through the gloom.
They came to the gate of Logie, where Donald had found their token in the autumn days. Above them the house lay dark and hushed. Starlings cheeped and scolded in the ivied wall, but no other challenge answered their intrusion.
Murgatroyd gave a low chuckle—bleak and terrible as when he had jested after looking over the brink of death.
“We’re not expected, though I blabbed to Hardcastle. He fancied, seemingly, that a liar never can speak truth.”
Then, with savage zest, he planned the night-surprise, giving them no time for a second panic. He would lead one half to the main door, while the rest stole through the stable-yard and attacked the kitchen-entry.
“Sharp and ready does it, and any man would be a fool to fall soft now. He’d have Long Murgatroyd to reckon with.”
Overwhelming weight of numbers was with them. So was the slumber of a house that did not look for them to-night. But Murgatroyd’s gruff threat was the steadying note.
Those chosen for the rear attack crept pad-footed round the yard, and piled their sacks against the kitchen door with frantic haste till the woodwork was hidden by a bulging load of fuel. They littered the stone porch with what bags were left, and fired them.
The blaze was so fierce and instant that they leaped back into the cool dark of the night, and waited for those in Logie to be burned in their beds, or to come through the flames for what waited them. And the first that those within-doors heard of trouble was Storm’s frenzied barking as he hurled himself against his cupboard-door, to break it through for Logie’s sake.
The Master lay for a moment between sleep and waking. One window of his room opened on the stable-yard, and below he heard the restless tread of feet, the crackling of flame. Grey, pungent smoke was drifting in already across his bed, and he sprang up with an odd sense of readiness—and of relief. What they had waited for was here at last, to be met and grappled with.
Brant, too, had heard the uproar, and they met at the stairway head and ran down together to the kitchen. Hardcastle was in shirt and breeches, donned hastily, and the shepherd made a queer figure, his beard splayed above the top of a woollen nightshirt that reached to his unlaced boots.
They glanced at each other in the light of the smouldering kitchen-fire.
“You’ve a fowling-piece, Master?” murmured Brant. “Better have chosen a likelier gun. From what I’d heard, I fancied they were coming—this night or the next.”
He broke off to listen to the roar of flame outside, to watch the door blister and gape open in wide rents.
“I borrowed a blunderbuss before I got up to bed,” he went on, in the same low voice, “and loaded it. It would make you laugh to know what I crammed into its muzzle—pebbles and rusty nails, and all kinds of winsome odds and ends.”
The door they were watching gaped wider, and great joy came to them, born of the house they loved. Without were fire and all the scum of Garsykes. Within were two leal men.
“The odds are with us, Stephen,” said Hardcastle, breaking a silence that seemed long. “When the door’s down, they’ll be in the glare, and we in darkness.”
“You’re getting quick at the uptake,” grunted Brant.
A light step sounded close behind them, and Causleen stood there, her hair rippling in a dusky cloud about her night-gear.
“Oh, go back, child,” said the Master. “There’s trouble.”
“I’ve faced many kinds. Shall I tell you why I stay, Hardcastle of Logie?”
He was daunted by her courage, by the smouldering anger in her face. Causleen did not seem to hear Brant, or gaping door.
“I stay to see if you’re better at the fighting than the wooing. A laggard in one is a laggard at both, they say.”
It was no time for warfare of the tongue, and Hardcastle turned sharply to carry her out of harm’s way. He turned again, for the thick, nail-studded door had crashed inward with a swirl of flame and dancing faggot-embers.
Nothing chanced for awhile save fire that drove him back, and stench of tar and resin. Storm’s barking rang like a wolf-cry through the house, till suddenly it ceased, and Rebecca stood among them, the dog bristling by her side.
“Here’s a queer upset in my kitchen,” she said, glancing from the blazing doorway to the men’s faces. “I wakened late, I own, but I’d sense to go and loose Storm first. He might have been burned alive, poor lamb.”
Brant and the sheep-slayer eyed each other with slow wonder, as folk who had not looked for the meeting and did not relish it. Then, with peril waiting close at hand for both, the shepherd’s full-fed wrath blazed out.
“I shot you, Storm. I shot you, d’ye hear, for killing ewes of mine. And you’re alive!”
Storm left Rebecca and showed bared teeth to Brant. He was no outlaw here at Logie, but ripe and ready for what was coming to the house he guarded.
“So much for you, Brant,” said Rebecca, with a cackle of wild laughter. “A word from the Master, and he’ll have his jaws in your lean throat.”
The flames of the blazing door were lessening now, for kitchen and porch alike were floored with stone and offered no fresh fuel; and the moment came that Hardcastle had looked for. The Garsykes Men, when no uproar sounded from within—though the besieged should be between two fires by now—grew restless and afraid of some ambush waiting in the dark of the stable-yard. A common impulse swayed them to dash over the live embers into the house before the first shock of surprise was over.
As they came into the ruddy murk of the porch, Hardcastle aimed point-blank at them. A wild-beast howl followed from men not used to bearing pain. Then the porch was empty, save for the foremost of the Garsykes Folk, whose legs were full of shot.
Outside there was a rough stampede of men who fought each other in their panic to get out of gun-reach. And Brant the shepherd suddenly went mad with the blood-lust. Robbed of his chance to fire a shot, he pushed Hardcastle aside, trod over the fallen body and ran out with a grim oath in his heart.
The night was black, impenetrable. Sight aided him nothing, but hearing did. On the high uplands Brant had learned to see with his ears when need pressed. The fleeing mob, not far down the road as yet, was making noise enough to rouse dead men on their gibbets, and Brant’s blunderbuss bellowed like a stag gone mad at rutting-time.
A livid shriek of anguish followed, and those in Logie’s kitchen waited for Brant to return in triumph.
“Hark to them,” said Rebecca, rubbing her hands together. “They came to Logie, as my lad told me at the gate—and they go as he fore-warned me. By the marrow, how they squeal!”
Causleen thought of her father. He had been asleep when she glanced in on her way to the kitchen; but the uproar must have roused him, and it was terrible to picture him lying there, alone and helpless, waiting for he knew not what.
The Master’s thoughts were with his shepherd, who did not return. “Brant’s long in coming,” he muttered restlessly, and had taken a step toward the porch when he halted, checked by the strangest tumult that had come to Logie on this night of crashing din.
He heard a bellow of mingled rage and fear, and knew the voice for Long Murgatroyd’s. He heard, too, the muffled oaths of other men. He sprang to Causleen’s side and put her behind him; and now the sharp stench of fire wisped and eddied down the passage.
“Go back,” he muttered, hearing her steps close following his.
She would not, and they ran down the long corridor together till they reached the open door of the room where Donald lay. And on the threshold they stood as in a nightmare, aghast at what they saw.
Long Murgatroyd and a press of Garsykes Men were in the room, their faces lit by a fire they had piled in the middle of it. The lamp-glow, stealing through the room where Donald slept, had shown them an easier way of entry than burning down the main door. They had crashed through the window, tossed down their sacks pell-mell and lit them. If they had seen the sleeping man, they took him for dead or helpless and had not heeded.
So much was plain to Causleen and Hardcastle, looking on with the nightmare grip about them still. But the pedlar slept no longer. He was awake and on his feet. His face caught the fireglow as wrinkled parchment might—little lines of crimson criss-crossing its ancient pallor—but the body they had thought chained was alert and strong, willowy with youth.
Donald had gone to sleep content. His girl would be safe in Hardcastle’s hands, and he was free to let dreams take him down the roads of old romance, when those of his race plied claymores and heard the battle-din. He woke to see an ill-kempt company lighting a fire at the far end of the room; and suddenly life raced into his palsied limbs.
Peril to Logie was mingled in his thoughts with far-off combats up the glens at home. He stood there, supple and thin and dominant, gathering the dreams come true at last. And the Garsykes mob gaped at this dead man who faced them without any weapon but his consuming joy in battle.
Long Murgatroyd was twitching from one foot to the other. The men behind him were bound as by a spell. So was Hardcastle, who was aware of deeper things than he had known till now. The Garsykes Folk saw only Donald. That was plain, and the pedlar must have his will of this last moment, till there was need to intervene.
Donald glanced about, as if in search of something that had shared his tedious days in this same room. And still Murgatroyd and those behind were held in thrall. The fire they had kindled blazed and smoked by turns in the sleepy draught, till Murgatroyd kicked it into flame.
“The wood’s wet,” he muttered, “and be damned to the fools that gathered it.”
“Aye, wet with blood,” shrilled Donald.
With that, strength came to him. His glance, roving again about the walls, found the thing he sought. With speed incredible he leaped to get the pike into his hands—the pike that had gone to Flodden and returned.
He swung it gently to and fro for one swift moment, as if he doubted which of its three blades to ply. Then, with a Gaelic battle-shout, he leaped forward, through and over the fire’s reek, whirling the axe-edge high above his old, grey head.
Long Murgatroyd got his skull away from the blow; but the axe clove his shoulder till it gritted on the bone.
“I’m done, lads,” he growled, swaying to his fall. “Get about this madman risen from the dead.”
No voice answered him. The Garsykes Men had gone the way they came taking still dread for company. Alone with one who whirled his axe to strike again, Murgatroyd gathered what strength was left him, and ran screaming out into the night.
A great light shone in Donald’s face. There was strength in his body still, and a pibroch in his soul; and, when Causleen ran to him across the dwindling fire, he turned happily.
“It was so they fought in the old days gone. I’m glad you saw me make an end that way.”
He toyed with the pike lovingly. He praised Logie for keeping its edges grouted and sharp through the centuries for this night’s work of his. Then his strength fell away, a borrowed joy. The pike dropped from his grasp, clattering into the embers that Hardcastle was stamping out.
“Your hands, child,” he whispered.
She guided him to the long-settle that had been his bed for many weary days, and her tears rained on the blankets she gathered round the motionless body. Donald opened his eyes once—glad, tender eyes, at peace with this world and the next—and he found voice, as he had got strength awhile since to lift the pike.
“Causleen, little Evening Star, you’ve lit the roads for me. And now—dear God, there’s sunrise on the hills.”
The pedlar lay quiet awhile. All that was of this world clamoured round him. He was saying good-bye to the broken roads he loved. There would be no to-morrows, with curlews wailing over summer hills and dusk cradling in purple hollows of the moor—no journeys on blistered feet through the tang of winter gales. He ached for the northland he must leave, and his spirit shrank from the last Crossing because the world was full of lovesome things. Surely he would see once again the shimmer of buttercups glowing like grace of old allegiance across the ripening meadows, would hear the storm-cock pipe defiance to the gale. Just once again he must smell, too, the reek of clover-hay as it came home on creaking wagons between the briar-rose banks.
“It grows dark,” he murmured suddenly. “And now the light shines through—and, child, there’s your mother beckoning from the braes. She’s just as young and bonnie—as bonnie——”
It was so the warrior died, and Hardcastle stood with bowed head till Causleen’s first storm of grief was ended. A strange gentleness came to him, a softening of the ice-cold years, as he covered Donald’s face and drew the girl away.
They stood facing each other in the dim lamplight. A chill breeze blew through the broken casement, tossing to and fro the reek of the stamped-out fire. On the floor the pike lay in a little pool of crimson, darkening fast. Yet nothing prevailed against the austere and tranquil presence that filled this room of death.
“Causleen,” he said, by and by, “you need not be lonely.”
She was feeling like a child lost in mid-winter moors. No words could have reached her heart as his simple, “you need not be lonely,” did. He was changed, as she was, by this alchemy of death, into finer metal.
Then, longing to believe in him, she took a step away. “It is not the time or place to—to doubt you.”
“It is the place to tell me why you doubt.” His glance went to the death-bed. “Could I be false, with your father lying there?”
“You could not—no—and yet it seems so mean a thing to talk of here.”
“It divides us, andhedid not want that.”
“I am ashamed either way,” she said, her brave eyes meeting his—“of you, or of myself for doubting.”
Little by little he drew the tale from her. She had come to the wood between Logie and the slope to Wharfe River, weeks ago, and seen him with Nita’s arms stretched out to him.
Hardcastle understood now all that had baffled him these late days. He recalled each detail of that half-forgotten scene—Nita’s alluring eagerness, the sharp crack of a twig, his glance backward to learn if one of the Lost Folk was stealing on him from behind.
“You saw us there,” he said, “and she was an old love of mine. What else could you have thought?”
His quietness seemed to rebuke her. All these weeks she had been the silent accuser, he the shameless culprit. Was he a liar through and through, under his mask of gruff honesty?
“We shared the woodmen’s hut for a night,” he went on, “and afterwards there was trouble. I asked to clear that for you.”
“From pity.” It was her turn now to glance at the silent figure on the settle. “We never cared for charity, he and I.”
“I did not offer charity,” he said, direct and forthright. “While I was persuading you to that, Nita wove her devilry into it all.”
“What devilry?” she asked, her eyes grave and questioning.
He glanced from the shattered casement to Donald’s death-bed, and his face hardened.
“She offered me escape from what has come to Logie—and I would not take it.”
Causleen’s heart was free at last, as she watched this man whom she had flouted. He showed greater than his height in the dim lamp-glow that made flickering lights and shadows through the room. His voice though hushed in deference to what lay yonder, was vibrant in its simple candour. He loved her—loved her for herself.
A gusty weariness came about her, a need to lean on the man who had caused her sleepless nights and tears as salt as the nether brine-pits.
“I was afraid—till now,” she whispered, and put her hands into his as if she gave a kingdom.
CHAPTER XVIII
As they stood there, a stifled bark sounded from the doorway. Storm, his grizzled hide quivering with eagerness, came sidling in. Fire and gunshot and the night’s swift happenings had opened the windows through which dogs and horses see things hidden from most men.
He knew that death was in the room, and cringed his way to Donald’s side. He crouched for a while, his head on the still body, and whimpered like a child; for the pedlar and he had shared many an hour of friendship when life was wrong with both.
Then the sheep-slayer rose and shook himself. There was no cringeing now, no sorrow. Self-reliant, strong of body and of courage, he came to Hardcastle, who knew less than he what was soon to happen on Logie-side. He looked at the Master with brown, candid eyes—a lingering glance of sheer affection—and put two hairy paws on his shoulders while he licked his face. And afterwards he said good-bye to Causleen, and turned once at the broken casement before passing out into the night.
“Poor devil,” muttered Hardcastle. “I’d whistle him back, if Brant was not about the house.”
“Brant would not shoot him, after all we’ve shared with Storm?”
“In cold blood. Logie might go, and all of us, if Stephen’s ewes were safe.”
“It is a hard country,” said Causleen, clinging to his sleeve with sharpening dread.
And now Rebecca came running to the door, and stood like one turned to stone when she saw these two together. The kingdom of her days at Logie was ended. That was plain.
“What is it?” asked the Master.
“Naught that matters now; but, for my part, I’d have chosen a likelier time for sweethearting. My kitchen asking a week o’ days to redd it up again—fire and brimstone on this side o’ the house—and you two fancying you’re cushat-doves high up in a mating tree. I’ve no patience.”
“What is it?” asked Hardcastle again.
“Naught that would trouble you if I told it. You’re past caring how an old woman fares, though she’s skin and bone for your sake—wearing her life out, cooking and scrubbing. And, ‘What is it?’ asks the Master. It’s this, if you must know. Brant’s not come back, and I’m tired of guarding my kitchen with a rolling-pin against yond lean swine from Garsykes. If Brant’s gone, some o’ them are lurking in the stable-yard.”
Hardcastle put Causleen from him gently. The new peril was harsh enough, but he was quick these days to face unexpected happenings.
“Stay here, child,” he said sharply.
She stayed for one snatched moment to stoop above her father and give his soul a God-speed. Then she followed Hardcastle, and he felt a hand steal into his.
“Oh, get back, child,” he said. “There’s trouble.”
“So my place is with you.”
She would not be denied; and when they came into the kitchen, Brant the shepherd was crossing the doorway.
“Spared us the need to go in search of you, have you, Stephen?” snapped Rebecca. “You look moiled, and fuzzy in your wits.”
“So you’d look,” grumbled Brant, “if you had forgotten there were two ends to a blunderbuss—one that spat at the Garsykes sort, and t’ other that knocked me heels over head with the back-kick. I struck against a rock in falling, and lay silly for a time.”
“Well, it would be no new feeling to you, Brant.”
“If I had a tongue like thine, Rebecca, I’d do two things—tie a double knot in it, then cut it at the root.”
“Hark to him, Jonah,” shrilled the old woman, gaunt and fiery. “Comes bringing his saucy ways to Logie’s kitchen, where you and me live.”
The brindled cat knew his mistress, her every look and change of voice. His fur had been scorched, moreover, at some time of the wild onset, and he was in evil temper. He stalked up and down about Brant’s knees, growling as a dog might.
“Going Storm’s way, are you?” said the shepherd. “You’ll be for the wild lands soon, and a dollop of lead to teach you poacher’s shrift.”
Causleen looked on, wide-eyed and troubled. In her Highland glens they had sung of far-off battles. She had been suckled in the faith that warriors returned from victory with glad faces and shouts of triumph. Yet here at Logie, safe through heavy odds, Rebecca and the shepherd were snarling at each other, as if all was lost. It was her first taste of battle and its aftermath.
“While I was getting up from my dazement, Master,” said Brant by and by, “I heard another screech and running of the Garsykes Men, and made shift to follow with the butt-end of the blunderbuss. But they outran me, like. So I stepped in here, to ask what had happened.”
“All the world, Stephen—and what’s beyond it.”
And now Causleen heard the note of victory at last—heard it in his voice. All that was Hardcastle was hers, and she was his. She thought of the father lying yonder. He would be content.
Hardcastle, going to the porch to hear if there were any lurking Wilderness Folk about the courtyard, lifted a foot instinctively as he crossed the threshold. He remembered the body that had fallen in answer to his charge of shot.
“Aye, hewasthere,” said Rebecca dryly; “but I took leave to shift him into the stable-yard. We’ll hoist him over the Long Pasture wall to-morrow—and the Garsykes sort will steal up to take him off. They’re like rats in that way, too—attentive to their burials.”
Dawn crept grey and misty over Logie. And as they stood in Rebecca’s kitchen—a silent company, waiting for they knew not what—the old house grew restless. It knew itself secure for a little while. There was safety as yet, the rout of the Lost Folk. Yet one of their dead lay just outside the porch, pleading for reprisals.
Logie was no senseless block of stone and mortar. It had sheltered Hardcastles through seven hundred years of weather. Its heart and spirit had grown with the growing generations that romped and married and died within the kingdom of its stubborn loyalty. It had watched lusty fathers lick their sons into manhood’s shape—listened to the muffled tread of bearers as they carried one and another of the race to burial—heard women groaning in the child-birth, lest there should be none to reign in Logie-side.
And to-night Logie did not know what would chance. It had felt the pain of its flaming door, had been aware of the oaths of prowling men who threatened walls and rafter-beams. Every nerve and sinew had been racked by battle, and the end was not yet. The stir of unguessed dreads to come roamed its corridors, and sorrow piped through every casement. For Logie had found life strong and sweet of savour, and was loath to die.
CHAPTER XIX
Nita made sport of the Garsykes Men when they returned from Logie in the spitting rain of dawn. Slim, and fresh as if she came out of the new day’s heart, she waited for them in the village. And first there came a slack-set company of twenty, glancing behind them constantly.
“Is Logie fired?” asked Nita softly.
“Aye, we blazed the door through,” came an answering growl.
The twenty men went their way, and presently another company lumbered over the hill and down. Most of them went lame, pitted by what Shepherd Brant had crammed into his blunderbuss.
“What have they done to you, there at Logie?”
Nita knew now that all had miscarried, and they snarled in answer to her spite. For a moment they had in mind to rive her limb from limb; and, knowing the danger, she faced them with outstretched hands and a pleading smile that might have been a child’s.
“Why should you hurt your little basket-weaver?”
“Because we’re plugged with lead and rusty nails,” grunted a shammocky rogue whose right arm hung limp.
“Aye,” said another. “It was you that sent us up to Logie.”
They were round her now like wolves. Foiled and wounded, they longed to spring on this new prey, yet could not. Nita had queened it over Garsykes so long that old experience did not fail her now. She wove little, wanton spells about them—then pleaded again with frail, helpless hands—till the old witchcraft stirred about them. The grumbling oaths grew muffled, and Nita, seeing them half-cowed already, laughed with stinging mockery.
“I sent you up to Logie, thinking you were men. Thirty of you went against Hardcastle and could not take him.”
The snarling uproar rose afresh, but she held the lash now and wielded it.
“You were to bring him—alive, if might be—to little Nita, so she could teach him many ways of humbling pride. And all you bring is—your tattered selves.”
Widow Mathison had joined them—plump and touzled, just as she had left her bed at sound of the uproar, except for a cloak thrown over her nightwear.
“All Garsykes couldn’t lay hands on one man up yonder?” she asked, rocking to and fro with laughter. “If Hardcastle was minded that way, I’d risk a second wedding. The more I see of our sort, the deeper I fall into love with Logie’s Master.”
“Hardcastle’s got a bonnier wench up there,” said the shammocky rogue, striving to rally his wilting fellows—“bonnier than Nita, if it comes to that.”
The chance shaft found its mark. The girl stood silent for a moment, gathering years behind and years to come into her hands. When she spoke at last, they drew away as from some instant menace in their midst; and each poor fool began to scratch at his wounds afresh and to long for ale.
“They couldn’t bring Hardcastle to Garsykes—thirty of our strong men could not. But little Nita can.”
Her voice was bitter quiet. She did not seem to see the frowsy press of men about her. Aloof, hard as mid-winter on the barren uplands, she saw Hardcastle taken in toils of her devising—and not Hardcastle alone.
“What will you do?” asked the rogue with the splintered arm.
“Aye, what will I do? Let him wait, first of all, till he’s sick with fear for another. Then I’ll put fire of hell into him before ever he comes to our village in the hills—and afterwards——”
A man’s full-throated curses broke across the dawn’s stillness, and Long Murgatroyd came lurching up, his arms thrown about two comrades who steadied him on either side. They had clapped rough bandages about the wound that Donald’s pike had given, and he had thought his end was come till now, in the grey dawn, he saw Nita.
“A rare warrior, you,” she said, her bitterness let loose afresh.
The will to live returned to Murgatroyd. Hardihood came back though his wound dripped and snarled.
“Aye,” he said—“and I’ll wive you, soon or late.”
His face was so white and livid in the dawn-light, that Nita drew back with a sense of sharp foreboding. Twice she had felt this same dread of Murgatroyd, but it was keener now. Then she rallied her courage.
“When Garsykes is ended, you’ll wive me, maybe. Can you wait as long?” she mocked.
“I can bide,” he said, and limped bravely on till he was out of sight. Then his head drooped. “Get me home, mates,” he muttered. “I’m sick and wambly. Get me home.”
Nita stayed on, alone with the grey mists that eddied over from Pengables. She thought of Logie, secure after long warfare against odds—of Hardcastle, who was another’s now—and no winter’s spite, packed with hurricane and sleet, had ever blown so cold, so merciless, as the storm in her own heart.
An old man of the village passed, and glanced at the silent figure.
“At your dreams, little Nita?” he asked, with grandfatherly indulgence of a favourite.
“At my dreams, Tanty.”
“It’s well to be young while you can,” said he, and went by on rheumy knees.
Still Nita halted. She had spun as many webs in her time as she had woven baskets, but none as strong as these she was binding into a net for Hardcastle. Like a figure of doom she stood, the wet mists hurrying by.
For two weeks and a day thereafter there was peace round Logie. No attack came on the house, no ambush waited in the roads when dusk crept down. Farm-servants carried Donald to the kirkyard under the hill, and none molested the mourners in going or returning.
Then came afterwards the quiet, half-awed return to usual life that follows death in any house. Rebecca and the brindled cat got to their friendship’s bickerings. The Master rode abroad on business of his lands, or brought game home for the larder. And, as if the skies were in league with peace, the long warmth-in-winter held.
Causleen began to fret—not for the father who had ended bravely and in happiness—but for Hardcastle. He grew lean and gaunt, ate as if he must, with no relish for what lay on his plate, and left the wine scarce tasted. Try as she might, she could get no answer to the riddle of his moodiness, until, one morning near November’s end, he strode restlessly about the breakfast chamber, and came to a sharp halt before her.
“Causleen,” he said. “I want you to go up to Shepherd Brant’s. It’s a rough lodging—but it’s safe.”
And now she understood; and, for very gladness, she made pretence of doubt.
“Tired of me already?”
“Don’t jest, child.” He was hard, peremptory. “You must go to-day.”
“And if I will not?”
“I shall set you on pony-back and take you there.”
“What is amiss with you?” she asked—knowing, but longing for the spoken word.
“Fear,” said Hardcastle.
“Fear?” she echoed.
Again he paced up and down, and again came to her side. “I’ve a lifetime’s knowledge of Garsykes, and I tell you we’re in the thick of danger. Whenever their silence comes——”
“It means another firing of the house?”
“Or worse, now that you’re here at Logie. Will you not understand?”
“If they took me from you? If you fought till you could do no more, and they took me?”
“I should run mad.”
He was fierce, possessive, as he drew her to him, and she was content. The lean years of her trudging days—weather, and blistered feet, and scorn of men for the peddling-sort—were forgotten. Deeper than his love of Logie—deeper than his love of life for its own good, stalwart sake—lay fear for her.
“You’ll go up to Brant’s?” he said by and by, half between entreaty and command.
“How can I—now that you care? My place is with you.”
Then she cried happily against his sleeve, and he could make no further headway with persuasion. The next day it was the same. Whenever, out of his stifling dread for her, he tried to get her out of Logie and up into the trackless hills, she glanced away.
“They’re rough quarters, I know,” he would begin.
“That does not trouble me,” she would answer gently.
“And, of course, there’ll be only an old shepherd-man up there, and you’d want another woman with you. Rebecca can go.”
“And what would you do here without her?”
“Fend for myself.”
“If we can persuade Rebecca to it, I will go,” she said, her glance inscrutable and grave.
And now, as time dragged slowly by, Hardcastle learned much of the ways of women, and more and more he was reminded of the slant, drooping flight of plover when their nests are threatened.
Rebecca’s mind had been his own—to get the girl into safety—till Causleen’s heart to endure had captured her grim liking. If the Master must find a wife—and it was time there was an heir to Logie—he might go further and fare worse.
“I cannot thoyle it, Jonah,” she would grumble to the brindled cat, “but I’ve got to. Me and you watching the Master’s goings out and his comings in—slaves, as you might say, to his will—and a slip of a lass making all as if it had never been. But she’s hill-born, with a spirit of her own. That’s so much to be thankful for.”
When the second week was nearing its end, Hardcastle grew so weary of the peace brooding like thunder-weather over Logie, so sick with dread for Causleen, that he strode into Logie like a hurricane.
Rebecca was in the hall, as it chanced, plying her broom as if it were a flail she wielded against the Garsykes Men.
“What is it, Master?” she asked, standing in a dust-storm of her own making.
“It’s this, Rebecca. You take her to Brant’s hut to-morrow of your own will, or by mine.”
“Afraid they’ll burn the roof over your head? They’ve tried it twice—and we’ll teach ’em that the third time pays for all.”
“Are you a fool altogether, woman? There’s Causleen in the house.”
“Aye, it’s her place. She’d be a poor sort o’ wife for Logie, if she left you at the pinch.”
Hardcastle was in no mood for argument. He told her—simply and with command—that she must take Causleen to Brant’s hut to-morrow. And Rebecca grew submissive on the sudden.
“It’s as well she should be away,” she admitted, “if only for your peace of mind.”
The next day, however, when Hardcastle came down to breakfast, he was met by Causleen with news that Rebecca could not stir from her bed and sent word to the Master that she was “twisted with rheumatics.”
“She has chosen the worst time she could,” snapped Hardcastle. “If the woman must have luxuries of that sort let her have them when you’re safely up at Brant’s, the two of you.”
Causleen fingered the spray of crimson-berried hawthorn she had gathered for the breakfast-table in place of flowers. She put it into the jar, turned it this way and that till she was satisfied, then glanced up at Hardcastle.
“You can only be hurt through me nowadays. You care as much as that?”
“Yes. They can rob me of more than Logie now.”
“Garsykes knows. Gossip would tell them where you had hidden me—and what could two women and Brant do against them when they came—to rob you of me, and me of you?”
A great cavern opened in the man’s heart. All that was in her eyes, in the simple, candid words, broke into deeps that had not been stirred till now.
“I was sending you out of my reach?” he said, aghast at his own folly.
She came to him of her own accord, and crept close into his arms. “I could not bear it. I—I have only you—and we must be together.”
Hardcastle laughed by and by, soberly. “You’ll have to take charge of my wits,” he said. “They were never strong.”
Late that afternoon, Rebecca’s ailment left her as if by magic; and Hardcastle, returning from a journey up the far moors, encountered her at the gate.
“Tied to your bed no longer?” he asked dryly.
“I can shift rheumatics as well as one here and there, when the Master’s got rid of his own ailment. But every talk of going to Shepherd Brant’s will make me bedridden, and so I warn you.”
They fell silent presently, yielding to the twilight quiet of the place. Here the flint arrow-head had waited on the gate-top for Hardcastle’s return when October russeted the woods. Here Rebecca had communed with her dead lover through forty years of constancy to feud. They seemed to listen to the rustle of unsubstantial feet.
“The pedlar’s girl should be proud to be among us now,” said Rebecca, her voice low and crooning. “All the years Logie has bided—and vengeance in her hand at last.”
The Master could not rid himself of dread for Causleen. Fast as he beat down one attack, another fear came shadowy at him from behind.
“Garsykes swarms with its scum, and we are few,” he growled. “Who made you a prophet?”
A step sounded up the road, and Hardcastle, turning with quick instinct to defend himself, saw Michael Draycott, his wide, cheery face less full of colour than its wont.
“You, Michael? You look peaky, man.”
“Well, it’s this way. I found my best heifer dead this morning—a fine little roan she was—and a scrawled token by her side.Hemlock grows in the Wilderness.That was the message.”
“A mucky folk,” said Rebecca tranquilly. “They were bred mucky. They couldn’t help it, maybe.”
“As they’d put that on me, I knew naught else would happen to the homestead for a bit; so I stepped up to spend the night at Logie, by your leave.”
“You’ve heard of something planned?”
“Not I; but they’ve let you alone so long that it stands to reason there’s mischief brewing.”
Rebecca was her bustling self again. “You’re no sort of laggard, Michael. For a man so death-shy you do very well—and there’s a game-pie in the oven.”
They kept watch together that night, the Master and Draycott, with a jug of October ale between them. They sipped it sparingly, for it was potent, and they kept wide ears for any sound outside the four stout walls that sheltered them.
Causleen, about the middle of the watch, woke from an evil dream, and shuddered as she lay in the darkness. A rat scampered across the ceiling. In the silence its feet sounded like the tramp of hurrying men, and she lifted herself in panic.
She conquered that. Fear, they had taught her in babyhood, was a shameful thing to harbour. But with the conquering came blinding loneliness, a reaching out for the dead father whose voice she would not hear again. They were kind at Logie, but it was a house of dread. If only her father were laying below-stairs there, his eyes kindling with welcome though his body was outworn. If only he were living. But he lay in the wet earth down yonder, dust to dust.
A man’s tread came down the passage, and halted at her door. She did not know what peril was at hand, but roused herself to meet it.
“Who is it?” she asked sharply.
“Who should it be?”
The relief was instant. No voice she had heard till now had been so strong, so welcome.
“All’s well with Logie?”
“Yes,” said Hardcastle. “All’s well.”
She heard his step go down the corridor, lessening into silence, and a new world came to dawn, after the nightmare that had been. Outside Logie’s walls were skulking folk; but within their six-foot bulk was a man after her own heart.
Twice that night she heard him come to her door again, and halt and repeat his quiet “All’s well,” and her heart warmed to his gruff strength, as she fell into a dreamless sleep.
Dawn was filtering through the shutters when she woke, and her first thought was that Hardcastle would be hungry after his long watch. Dressing hastily she went down, stirred by a simple thrill of joy in the hope that Rebecca would not be astir as yet. Her own hands should prepare the Master’s breakfast.
Smiling gravely at her eagerness, she stepped into the kitchen, and was chilled, somehow, by what she saw. The fire was dead and grey. Michael Draycott sat wakeful, the candle by his side guttering in the thin, peevish draught, and pointed to Hardcastle, who lay back in his hooded chair, so fast asleep that it seemed he would never wake again.
“Speak soft, and don’t ye rouse him,” whispered Michael. “He kept up till the first streak o’ dawn came.”
“Are you lying to me, Michael? Is—is he dead? I would rather hear the truth.”
“You’ll never get less from me. He’s as live as three men put together—or will be, when he wakens from this strong sleep of his.”
She glanced about, half between relief and dread. “I came to give him breakfast.”
“Give him sleep instead. It’s worth more than all the eggs and bacon ever reared in Logie Dale.”
He unbarred the door and beckoned her out into the nipping air that was like balm after the indoors warmth.
“I’m glad I stepped up last night,” he said, “though naught’s happened to Logie, after all. You’re a sensible sort of lass, I fancy.”
He was so downright that Causleen could only laugh—a wan little laugh plucked out from hardship.
“A sensible lass, and not as hard as Rebecca. Well, then, I’ve a warning for you. The Master, as I told you, held his head up to the very minute dawn stepped in. That meant no Garsykes sort would come. Daylight and they were never friends.”
“Yes, Michael?”
“Then he fell back in his chair, and sleep came on him like a wolf. He’s doing too much these days.”
“Is that news to me? The grey cobwebs run across his face. Sometimes he falters in his stride as he comes up Logie-lane, for very weariness.”
“Aye, and he’ll break, one day soon, if he’s not looked after. He never rests by day—riding, or shooting, or what not—and he seldom sleeps o’ nights, by the look of him. No man born o’ woman can carry it for long.”
Causleen remembered the weeks gone by. Her pride had resented Hardcastle’s aloofness, his fits of moodiness. Now she understood, and lifted a child’s penitent face.
“What would you have me do?” she asked.
The man’s big, shy heart found room to speak. “I’d have you marry him as soon as maybe. Rebecca tells me you’re both minded that way.—And, there, I’ve frightened you. An old man had no right to say as much.”
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me——”
“It’s you that’s three parts of his trouble.”
“Then I can go, Michael.”
“He’d only follow, and bring you back. He’s got to that pass, he’d rather Logie went than you.”
They stood together in the stable-yard. Starlings were making a sleepy din among the ivy, and over old Pengables the red of dawn pushed through the mists. The day seemed full of grey foreboding, but Causleen did not ask what was to come. Michael’s blunt simplicity made it sure that he was speaking truth. “He’d rather Logie went than you”—the words were like a throstle’s song in spring.
“Then I will stay,” she said, and smiled on him, and went indoors.
Rebecca had come down, prepared to light the fire and scold her way through household tasks, but even she stood mute at sight of the Master. In all her days she had not seen a living man so dead to sound or motion. There was only the gentle breathing to tell her he was more than the husk of what had been.
She started as Causleen entered, then rasped at the girl to cover her own disquiet.
“Now, don’t you faint away, or any o’ those maidish cantrips. There’s a time and season for ’em, and it isn’t now. Fancied he was dead, I reckon? Well, he’s quick. All the Hardcastles are made that way. Gluttons for sleep they always were and will be.”
The brindled cat had learned Rebecca’s mood at a glance and leaped to the top of a cupboard, where he sat with vain hope that he was safe. Rebecca, in sore and restless trouble, searched for outlet, and her roving glance fell on Jonah. With a twist of the long hearth-brush in her hands, she brought him down, and aimed a wild blow at him in his flight.
“That’s for washing yourself like a dandy, same as if naught was amiss at Logie.”
Then she lit the fire with vicious haste; and, when she looked up again, Causleen saw the slow, thin tears of age trickling down.
“I’m worrited, lass, and don’t ye heed. They can come blazing Logie down every night and all, and welcome. It’s when Garsykes willun’t come, and keeps us at full stretch, I get to my nagging.”
The morning went by on leaden feet. Michael Draycott had gone to the work waiting for him at Broken Firs. The Master slept on, spent and in some far land that seemed neighbour to the grave. The wind stole whining from the moors and through the forest trees. There seemed little hope for Logie.
Causleen could bear it no longer. All trouble was easier to face in the frank open than prisoned by walls that harboured dread. So, when Rebecca had gone to the dairy for a moment, she stole to Hardcastle’s side.
“Dick, do you hear me?” she whispered, longing to hear him answer, yet hoping he would sleep on, to find his strength.
No answer came, except theclack-clackof Rebecca’s pattens on the dairy floor. So then she bent and kissed him, and went out—across the mistal-yard, and up the home pastures, and out into the moors that lay near to Garsykes. She needed the winds of God about her—needed, too, in some half-confessed fashion, to be sentry while the Master slept.
At Logie, Rebecca went on with her cooking and her scouring as if no inner voice was whispering of havoc, soft-footed, stealthy. All she had longed for—all she had prayed, through the lonely years that had gone since they killed her man—was gathering to a head. In her bones she knew it, as she knew “the rheumatics” that was twisting them out of all earthly shape.
It had never been Rebecca’s habit to think that ten thousand such lean swine as the Garsykes Men could have their will of Logie; but a dark cloud of doubt lay between her and the further vision. There was thunder-weather brewing, and it must break before ever Logie came to safety and its own.
The teasing doubt stayed with her, till Jonah came in, a full-grown rat in his mouth, and layed it down before her—in propitiation, as it were.
“Now, bless you, lad,” she cackled. “If I did dust you with a besom, it was for your good. Thwack the male sort, say I—thwack ’em true and often—and they thrive the better for it.”
Jonah played with the half-dead rat for a while, then came purring and bridling against the woman’s skirt.
“Oh, aye, you’ve done well, lad. There never was such a rat for bigness.”
The more she praised him the thicker grew Jonah’s fur, till Rebecca began to laugh shrilly at his antics. She was in a mood to read omens into little matters, and her spirits had risen with a bound. The Garsykes Men were rats, and Jonah had just brought in the first fruits of some coming slaughter.
The rat began to stir fitfully, and Jonah, with a sudden, growling spring, was clawing him to bits when a shadow darkened the kitchen.
Rebecca glanced up to see a little figure standing in the porch, and her whole body stiffened, as a dog’s might. Danger had passed by Logie through the night; but every instinct told her it was on the threshold now.
“I want no baskets, Nita—leastways, none of your weaving.”
“Do not be always scolding little Nita,” pleaded the girl. “She has no baskets to sell this morning—but she has news to give.”
“I want no news, neither. Cannot you see I’m throng with my cooking?”
“My news is for the Master. Go tell him, Rebecca.”
Hardcastle had been stirring in his sleep before she came, and her voice seemed to probe him like a knife. He got to his feet, as if attacked. Dishevelled by the night’s vigil, gaunt with all that Garsykes had put on him since he said them nay, he stood glowering at this flower-fresh visitor.
“What news?” he asked.
“You are all so rough here. I meant it kindly—meant to warn you—but now I will not. Go find the pedlar’s brat if you can.”
He stepped forward, drew her indoors and held her there. “Where is she?”
“Have I fared very well at your hands, that I should tell you? Yet I was forgiving. I could not bear to think of her—where she is—and you to go mad when you heard it later.”
“She’s lying, the lile toad,” said Rebecca, with grim brevity. “She never had heart to think like that, save for one—herself.”
So Nita threw the mask off, and smiled at them. “I was lying when I said that I forgave. I came because I longed to torture Hardcastle of Logie.”
“Where is she?”
“If you shake the life out of me, how can I tell you—even if I would?”
He let her go free, and presently she glanced at him, her grey eyes wide with malice.
“Our Garsykes Men are not good at the fighting, so they hatched another plan. If they could take what Hardcastle holds dearest, and keep her till he paid tribute at long last——”
She halted, watching the sweat break out on the man’s haggard face.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
“Not in Garsykes. You might rouse even your chicken-livered Logie Men to ride through us. She’s in the caves behind our village.”
A gulf seemed to open at Hardcastle’s feet. If this were true—he would not have it true—and through his dazed sickness sounded Nita’s voice, gentle as a dove’s.
“They are long caves and deep. You knew them as a boy?”
“Yes, by God,” he said, towering above her with still and awful menace, “and now I’m going to know them as a man.”
She halted for one last thrust. “It may be too late for paying tribute. They may be out of hand, now I’m not there to whip them into order.”
Then she was gone, swift as an east-wind that had struck to the bone and stayed for no reprisal. The Master halted for a moment, gathering his strength.
“You’ll not go?” said Rebecca, her lean arm clutching him.
“Where she goes, I go, woman. Have you no wits to guide you?”
Rebecca, fear as she might for him, was glad to see him take the Logie way—straight to the open, though he went alone. It was only when he had stepped into the crimson flare of dawn, flooding the porch, that again she drew him back.
“Your two hands, and your head up to the stars, won’t carry far these days. You’d be the better for a gun in your hands, and a candle or two in your pockets. Caves are darksome places.”
He had wit left enough to get a fowling-piece and see to the priming, while she thrust candles and a tinder-box into his pocket.
Then Rebecca listened to his running stride across the cobble-stones to the wind that rose in shrill and bitter menace. There was only Jonah of the men-folk left. He knew it, and sprang to her shoulder.
“Aye, drive your claws in,” she snapped. “We’re all that’s left of Logie, you and me.”
Her glance wandered forlornly round the kitchen till it encountered the dead rat by the hearth. Then her unalterable strength in hardship found its token.
“There’s luck coming, Jonah,” she said, and got about her household tasks again.