She started and bent over him, leaning more heavily upon his shoulder.
She seemed puzzled for the moment, and then flushed up redly in the dusk.
“He was terrified of Dan. They pressed him at Portsmouth for the king’s navy. We heard it from a peddler who had seen the lad marched off.”
They were both silent for a while, Richard’s eyes turned towards the window, Bess’s hand still on Jeffray’s shoulder. The same thoughts were in either heart. By some strange flash of sympathy Jeffray and the girl seemed to understand each other.
“Are you afraid of your cousin?” he asked, suddenly.
“I shall carry a knife,” she said, with peculiar significance. “I am a match for Dan—”
Then came the pattering of Dame Ursula’s slippers across the flagged floor of the kitchen. The door opened and Bess of the Woods was called away.
Isaac Grimshaw was something of a sylvan diplomat, a suave, sweet-voiced old sinner, who could bleat texts or snarl out fantastic oaths as the emergency required. He had sworn at Dan for laying his hands on one of the gentry and risking his bull neck for a wench’s lips, and had driven his giant of a son cowering from old Ursula’s cottage. Then he had entered in and preached to the dame in the ingle-nook, wagging a long forefinger and brushing his white hair back from his forehead. Squire Jeffray must be appeased, tickled into a good temper. That was the mark towards which Isaac winged his words.
In due course he took the two candles in the brass sticks from the mantle-shelf, and lighting them with a fagot from the fire, bade Ursula open the bedroom door and call Bess out. The patriarch went in mincingly, set one candle on a table by the bed, and the other on an oaken press. He stood very humbly before Richard Jeffray, his white hair waving over his forehead, his clean-shaven mouth sweet and benignant as the mouth of some tender-souled old priest.
“I trust your honor is feeling comfortable.”
“Not much the worse, Grimshaw, for your son’s stick.”
Isaac rubbed his palms together and beamed.
“I have come to ask your honor’s pardon, sir.”
The patriarch sniffed pathetically, and fidgeted as he stood with limp humbleness beside the bed. How could Jeffray appear angry with such an old fellow whose soul was overwhelmed in contrition for his son’s misdeeds.