"Tut, what's it to thee?"

"Ay, but it _is_ something to me, say I."

"Tush, thou'rt yan of the wise a.s.ses."

"If these constables," lurching his head, "if they come back, as they say, to take Ralph, I'll have no hand in't."

"And why did ye help them this turn?" said Mrs. Garth, with an elevation of her heavy eyebrows.

"Because I knew nowt of what they were after. If I'd but known that it were for--for--_him_--"

"Hod thy tongue. Thou wad mak a priest sweer," said Mrs. Garth. The words rolled within her teeth.

"_I_ heard what they said of the warrant, mother," said Joe; "it were the same warrant, I reckon, as old Mattha's always preaching aboot, and it's missing, and it seems to me that they want to make out as Ray--as Ralph--"

"Wilt ye _never_ hod yer bletheren tongue?" said Mrs. Garth in a husky whisper. Then in a mollified temper she added,--

"An what an they do, laddie; what an they do? Did ye not hear yersel that it were yan o' the Rays--yan o' them; and what's the odds which--what's the odds, I say--father and son, they were both of a swatch."

At this moment there came from the inner room some slight noise of motion, and the old woman lifted her finger to her lip.

"And who knows it were _not_ yan on 'em--who?" added Mrs. Garth, after a moment's silence.

"Nay, mother," said Joe, and his gruff voice was husky in his throat,--"nay, mother, but there _is_ them that knows."

The woman gave a short forced t.i.tter.

"Ye wad mak a swine laugh, ye wad," she said.

Then, coming closer to where her son now stood with a "lash" comb in his hand before a scratched and faded mirror, she said under her breath,--

"There'll be no rest for _him_ till summat's done, none; tak my word for that. But yance they hang some riff-raff for him it will soon be forgotten. Then all will be as dead as hissel', back and end. What's it to thee, man, who they tak for't? Nowt, _Theer's nea sel' like awn sel', Joey_."

Mrs. Garth emphasized her sentiment with a gentle prod of her son's breast.

"That's what you told me long ago," said the blacksmith, "when you set me to work to help hang the tailor. I cannot bear the sight of him, I cannot."

Mrs. Garth took her son roughly by the shoulder.

"Ye'd best git off and see to t' horse and car. Stand blubbering here and ye'll gang na farther in two days nor yan."

There was a step on the road in front.

"Who's that gone by?" asked Mrs. Garth.

Joe stepped to the window.

"Little Sim," he said, and dropped his head.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE DAWN OF LOVE.

Though she lost the best of her faculties, Mrs. Ray did not succ.u.mb to the paralytic seizure occasioned by the twofold shock which she had experienced. On the morning after Ralph's departure from Wythburn she seemed to awake from the torpor in which she had lain throughout the two preceding days. She opened her eyes and looked up into the faces that were bent above her.

There were evidences of intelligence surviving the wreck of physical strength. Speech had gone, but her eyes remained full of meaning. When they spoke to her she seemed to hear. At some moments she, appeared to struggle with the impulse to answer, but the momentary effort subsided into an inarticulate gurgle, and then it was noticed that for an instant the tears stood in her eyes.

"She wants to say, 'G.o.d bless you,'" said Rotha when she observed these impotent manifestations, and at such times the girl would stoop and put her lips to the forehead of the poor dear soul.

There grew to be a kind of commerce in kind between these two, dest.i.tute as the one was of nearly every channel of communication. The hundred tricks of dumb show, the glance, the lifted brow, the touch of the hand, the smile, the kiss,--all these acquired their several meanings, and somehow they seemed to speak to the silent sufferer in a language as definite as words. It came to be realized that this was a condition in which Mrs. Ray might live for years.

After a week, or less, they made a bed for her in a room adjoining the kitchen, and once a day they put her in a great arm-chair and wheeled her into her place by the neuk window.

"It will be more heartsome for her," said Rotha when she suggested the change; "she'll like for us to talk to her all the same that she can't answer us, poor soul."

So it came about that every morning the invalid spent an hour or two in her familiar seat by the great ingle, the chair she had sat in day after day in the bygone times, before these terrible disasters had come like the breath of a plague-wind and bereft her of her powers.

"I wonder if she remembers what happened," said w.i.l.l.y; "do you think she has missed them--father and Ralph?"

"Why, surely," said Rotha. "But her ears are better than her eyes.

Don't you mark how quick her breath comes sometimes when she has heard your voice outside, and how bright her eyes are, and how she tries to say, 'G.o.d bless you!' as you come up to her?"

"Yes, I think I've marked it," said w.i.l.l.y, "and I've seen that light in her eyes die away into a blank stare or puzzled look, as if she wanted to ask some question while she lifted them to my face."

"And Laddie there, when he barks down the lonnin--haven't you seen her then--her breast heaving, the fingers of that hand of hers twitching, and the mumble of her poor lost voice, as though she'd say, 'Come, Rotha, my la.s.s, be quick with the supper--he's here, my la.s.s, he's back?'"

"I think you must be right in that, Rotha--that she misses Ralph,"

said w.i.l.l.y.

"She's n.o.bbut a laal bit quieter, that's all," said Matthew Branthwaite one morning when he turned in at Shoulthwaite. "The dame nivver were much of a talker--not to say a _talker_, thoo knows; but mark me, she loves a crack all the same."

Matthew acted pretty fully upon his own diagnosis of his old neighbor's seizure. He came to see her frequently, stayed long, rehea.r.s.ed for her benefit all the gossip of the village, fired off his sapient proverbs, and generally conducted himself in his intercourse with the invalid precisely as he had done before. In answer to any inquiries put to him at the Red Lion he invariably contented himself with his single explanation of Mrs. Ray's condition, "She's n.o.bbut a laal bit quieter, and the dame nivver were much of a talker, thoo knows."

Rotha Stagg remained at Shoulthwaite in accordance with her promise given to Ralph. It was well for the household that she did so. Young as the girl was, she alone seemed to possess either the self-command or the requisite energy and foresight to keep the affairs of the home and of the farm in motion. It was not until many days after the disasters that had befallen the family that w.i.l.l.y Ray recovered enough self-possession to engage once more in his ordinary occupations. He had spent the first few days in the room with his stricken mother, almost as unconscious as herself of what was going on about him; and indeed his nature had experienced a shock only less serious.

Meantime, Rotha undertook the management of the home-stead. None ever disputed her authority. The tailor's daughter had stepped into her place as head of the household at the Moss, and ruled it by that force of will which inferior natures usually obey without question, and almost without consciousness of servitude. She alone knew rightly what had to be done.

As for the tailor himself, he had also submitted--at least partially--to his daughter's pa.s.sive government. A day or two after Ralph Ray's departure, Rotha had gone in search of her father, and had brought him back with her. She had given him his work to do, and had tried to interest him in his occupations. But a sense of dependence seemed to cling to him, and at times he had the look of some wild creature of the hills which had been captured indeed, but was watching his opportunity of escape.

Sim rose at daybreak, and, wet or dry, he first went up on to the hills. In an hour or two he was back again. Rotha understood his purpose, but no word of explanation pa.s.sed between them. She looked into his face inquiringly day' after day, but nothing she saw there gave hint of hope. The mare was lost. She would never be recovered.

Sometimes a fit of peculiar despondency would come upon Sim. At such times he would go off without warning, and be seen no more for days.

Rotha knew that he had gone to his old haunts on the hill, for nothing induced him to return to his cottage at Fornside. No one went in pursuit of him. In a day or two he would come back and take up his occupation as if he had never been away. Walking leisurely into the court-yard, he would lift a besom and sweep, or step into the stable and set to work at st.i.tching up a rent in the old harness.

w.i.l.l.y Ray can hardly be said to have avoided Sim; he ignored him.

There was a more potent relation between these two than any of which w.i.l.l.y had an idea. Satisfied as he had professed himself to be that Sim was an innocent man, he was nevertheless unable to shake off an uneasy sentiment of repulsion experienced in his presence. He struggled to hold this in check, for Rotha's sake. But there was only one way in which to avoid the palpable manifestation of his distrust, and that was to conduct himself in such a manner as to appear unconscious of Sim's presence in the house.