SHAMELESS WAYNE (continued 6)

"Tush, bairn! Thou canst remember nigh as well as any of us now. And thou'rt right about Bents Farm; I should have gone there yestermorn, but was prevented. There! Find out yond friendly Sexton of thine, and show him how this fair spring weather is warming thee back to memory."

"Thou'lt not forget to walk with me after dinner?" she said.

"Not I.—The stream's over-wide for thee, is't? Well, that is soon reckoned with."

Laughing, he picked her up and leaped across the babbling water; then set her down, and turned to wave farewell as he swung round the corner of the path.

"Half her wits have come home from wandering. What when they return altogether?" he muttered. "Nay, she had better be as the bairns are. Our wits do naught for us save teach us that life rings cracked and hollow as a broken bell.—I could swear the sun moves at racing-speed," he broke off, glancing toward the south. "'Twas well I told them to set dinner back a full two hours."

The Lean Man, standing in the Wildwater courtyard, was likewise looking toward the south, as he rated three of his kinsfolk into the saddle.

"Ye lie-abed, hounds!" he roared. "Does Wayne of Marsh come riding to meet us every day, that ye mean to let noon go by? Up with the stirrup-cup, Janet, and I'll drain it once again to an errand that is all of thy making."

"'Tis scarce past the time for wild geese, sir," put in Red Ratcliffe drily, "and Janet knew it, methinks, when she sent us on this chase."

"Marry, why should'st doubt Wayne's coming?" snapped Nicholas. "But thou wast so from thy birth, lad, so I'll not rate thee for thy clownishness."

"I doubt for reasons that I'll tell you afterward," said the other, nettled by his comrades' laughter.

"What, when I return with Wayne's head at my saddle-flap?"

"If mares build nests, and lay gold eggs in them, we shall bring back Wayne's head to-day," growled Red Ratcliffe, and pricked his horse forward out of reach of further gibes.

"The young cockerels crow while the old birds fill their crops," laughed Nicholas. "Forward, lads, and mind well that none is to lay hand on Shameless Wayne till I have done with him."

Janet watched them move up into the moor, their figures, riding one behind the other, dark against the white, wind-hurried clouds.

"A fair journey, sirs!" she cried, soon as they were out of eyeshot. "A fair journey, and fair tempers when ye come back from slaying Wayne of Marsh."

Dangers were waiting in plenty for Ned, she knew; but it was enough that he was safe from the peril of the moment, and her heart sang blithely as she told herself that, but for her aid, the Lean Man would have gone to meet him yesterday—and would have found him. What she should say when they returned from their bootless errand, she knew not, nor whether her grandfather would suspect the truth of all the tale she had told him when he found one flaw in it. It did not matter; some way she would coax him back to good humour, as she had done four days ago.

Restless in her gaiety, which had a certain fierceness in it, she wandered up and down the house, and out into the garden, and thence to the stables in search of her favourite roan mare. The roan had been ailing lately, and this morning she turned a sadly lack-lustre eye on Janet in answer to the girl's caresses.

"'Tis time a leech looked to thee," said Janet, stroking the beast's muzzle. "Yet it is thankless of thee, when all is said, after the pains I've taken. I all but lost the fingers of one hand awhile since in giving thee a ball, and thou'rt not a whit the better for it. Well, we must see if Earnshaw, yond idle rogue from Marshcotes, can do thee any good; he's cunning at horse-physic, so they say."

Glad of the excuse for a scamper, but finding none of the farm-hands about the yard, she saddled the mare that stood in the next stall, led her to the horsing-steps that stood this side the gateway, and soon was galloping over the heather as if the chestnut had no knees to be broken, nor she a neck to lose. And half the way her thoughts were of the Ratcliffes, riding to meet a foe who would not come; and half the way she thought of Wayne's splendid doggedness, when she had met him at Hazel Brigg, and he had turned a deaf ear to her warning.

Mistress Wayne, meanwhile, had found the Sexton at work on a new grave and had enticed him to the flat stone which had grown to be their seat on all occasions when they foregathered for a chat. Thinner than ever was the Sexton, as if the past winter had dried the little flesh that had once made shift to clothe his bones; his eyes were dreamier, but the old kindliness was in them as they rested on this frail comrade who listened with such goodwill to all his thrice-told tales of fight and fairies, of Barguest and the Brown Folk.

"Ay, they live under th' kirkyard, do th' Brown Folk, as weel as farther out across th' moor," Witherlee was saying. "They're deepish down, but time an' time, when I'm nearing th' bottom of a grave, I can hear 'em curse an' cry at me, for they like as they cannot bide mortal men to come anigh 'em."

"Art thou never afraid of them, Sexton?" asked Mistress Wayne, her wide, questioning eyes on his.

"Nay, I niver get ony harm, as I knaw on, fro' th' little chaps,—though I do shiver whiles, for their curses is summat flairsome to hearken to. Howsiver, curses break no bones, as th' saying is, so I just let 'em clicker, an' I win forrard wi' my digging."

The little woman shivered. "They are cruel, these Brown Folk. They snatch children from the cradle, and carry them down and down, deep under the peat, to work the gold for them. I like the slim ghosties better. Sexton, talk to me of them,—the ghosts of those who lie asleep here; thou hast seen such often?"

"Ay," said the Sexton softly. "I've learned th' feel an' th' speech an' th' throb o' th' kirkyard, Mistress, till I'm friends wi' ivery sleeper of 'em all. Lord Christ, how sweet it is to sit here on a summer's eve, wi' th' moon new-risen ower kirk an' graves—to feel this feckless body o' mine crumple an' shrink, while th' inward fire grows fierce, and bright, and steady. 'Tis then th' ghosties come and slip their thin hands into mine; for th' naked souls o' men are friendly, and 'tis only our lumpish shroud of clay that frights th' sperrits from us. Ay, there's scant room, I'm thinking, for us poor mortals, what wi' Brown Folk below, an' White Folk up aboon."

"Once thou said'st 'twas only the unwed lassies walked. Is it so, Sexton?"

"Nay, there's men-folk, too. I say to myseln, small wonder that th' ghosties stir up and down, time an' time, when them as lig under sod fall to thinking o' th' unquiet things that hev happened just aboon their heads. Look ye, Mistress, how black yond kirk-tower looks at us; 'twas there a Wayne fought, in an older day, agen Anthony Ratcliffe wi' five other Ratcliffes to back him—fought wi' his back to th' tower-wall, and killed four out o' th' six that made agen him, an' sore wounded Anthony an' another. Ay, an' ye mind how Shameless Wayne took toll a while back i' this same spot? An' how Dick Ratcliffe paid his reckoning on th' vault-stone yonder?"

Mistress Wayne shrank from the Sexton as if he had struck her. "Dick Ratcliffe—Dick—what should I know of him?" she murmured. Again the still intensity of face, as she sought the key to that dim past of hers.

But the Sexton was deep in his own reverie; he was thinking, not of the woman to whom Dick Ratcliffe had given an unclean love, but of the new feud that had come to gladden these latter days.

"Is not th' place like to be restless, wi' sich as these lying bedfellows?" he went on, nodding his head in greeting at the lettered stones. "Ay, restless as I am restless, heving followed my trade, through sun an' gloaming an' mid-winter midnight, amang th' wild folk that niver found peace till they came on their last journey to Marshcotes kirkyard.—Theer, theer, Mistress!" he broke off, as the little woman's cry broke sharply into his musings and half awoke him. "I flair ye, but ye need think nowt on 't; an owd chap mun hev his spell o' dithering in an' out amang th' fierce owd tales that tangle and trip up th' one t' other. Yet I praise God that, after all these weak new days, young Wayne o' Marsh hes shown th' owd stuff a-working."

"Sexton, Sexton!" The woman's eyes, fixed on the vault-stone below, were sane now, and her voice not like at all to the childish pipe which Witherlee had grown to love. "I have tried so hard to understand—and now I know—and would God I could forget again."

Witherlee made as if to put an arm about her, so wishful of comfort she seemed; but he withdrew, feeling that her grief was over-terrible for such rough consolation as he had to offer. Instead, he filled his pipe and lit it, and waited till she found more to tell him.

They rested so for a long while, with only the song of birds and the moan of a rainy breeze to break the silence. Then,

"I see it all, Sexton," she said quietly—"the evening when Wayne of Marsh, my husband, found me with my lover in the orchard—Wayne's death—the flight with Dick Ratcliffe of Wildwater. We gained the wicket up above there—we could hear the harness rattling of the chaise that was to carry us to safety—and then—" She stopped and hid her face awhile.

"'Tis ower an' done wi' long sin'," murmured the Sexton; "ower an' done wi,' Mistress."

"'Twill never be over and done with. Dick was killed—but I—I was not given death, only a merciful little spell of sleep."

"Nay, I wish th' poor body wod cry her een out," thought the Sexton, watching the bright eyes and tragic face. "I niver held wi' a crying woman myseln, but I could thoyle tears better nor this stark, dry grief o' hers."

But Mistress Wayne was far from tears as yet. A great load was on her heart, crushing the misery inward; it was long before she could shake off the least part of it, but at last—after the Sexton had waited with a patience that was all his own—she crept nearer to him, and laid a hand on his, and began to talk with a quiet and settled gravity.

"I was not at all to blame, Sexton," she said. "I think, if he knew all, even dead Wayne of Marsh might look with pity on me. I was so young when he brought me out of the sweet, warm South up into these dreary mountain-tops—so young, and the folk here were so harsh, and I hated them when they mocked me for my foreign ways. Wayne was kind, so far as he knew how to be, but I feared him—feared his sternness, and his hard dark face. The storms that only brought him ruder health were killing me, and the wind at nights, as it moaned about the chimney-stacks, was like a dirge. And Nell could not forgive me for coming a second wife to Marsh. I had no friend at all, save Shameless Wayne; they despised him as a drunkard and a reveller, but I never had aught but kindness and goodwill from him. Sexton, was it not hard——"

Witherlee did not answer. His glance, roving to the far side of the graveyard, had fallen on his goodwife, who was nearing him with a brisk, decided step; and he, who feared no ghost that ever walked light-footed through the grasses, shrank from the tongue which was wont to fall like a flail on him.

"Ay, I said how 'twould be!" cried Nanny, while still a score yards off. "Frittering thy time away, while th' wife is wearing herseln bone-thin for thee. Here th' dinner hes been cooked this half-hour, an' th' dumplings as cold as Christmas, an' I allus did say th' most worritsome trick a man could hev war coming late to his victuals."

"I'm coming, fast as legs 'ull tak me," said Witherlee, scrambling to his feet. "An' as for th' dumplings—I'd as lief hev 'em cold as warm; it's all one when they've gone down a body's throat."

"Hearken to him! All one, says he—he'll be telling me next there's nowt to choose 'twixt to-day an' yesterday. Is't all one whether tha'rt warm, or cold as one o' yond coffin-chaps under sod?—Ay, an' now there's Earnshaw coming. Well, well, if him an' thee once get together, there'll nowt less than a thunderstorm skift ye, an' that I'll warrant."

Earnshaw, coming up from the Bull tavern, met them as they turned the corner of the pathway. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and he wore his usual air of shiftless cheeriness.

"Blowing rain, I fancy," said Earnshaw, standing square across the path.

"Blowing fiddlesticks," snapped Nanny, who was in one of her worst fratching moods. "Get out o' th' gate, Earnshaw, an' let busier folk pass by. It's weel to be thee, or Witherlee here—nowt to do save put hands i' pockets, an' tak 'em out again."

"Nay, now, tha'rt allus so bustling, Nanny. Tak life at a fair, easy pace, say I, an' ye'll noan need Witherlee's pick an' shovel this side o' three-score years an' ten. Hast heard th' news, like?"

The Sexton's wife could not resist that simple query. "News? What's agate?" she said, half turning about.

"Why, th' Wildwater farm-lads is getting past all. There's no day goes by now, so Hiram Hey telled me, but what they come to words or blows wi' th' Marsh lot. It means summat: like master, like man, an' I warrant they've ta'en example fro' th' Lean Man hisseln. What mak o' chance lies Shameless Wayne, that's what I want to knaw?"

"Tha wert up at Wildwater thyseln awhile back?" said the Sexton, still with one eye on his wife.

"Ay, for sure. I war in an' amang 'em while I war doing yond walling job for th' Lean Man; an' they war allus clevering then about what th' Ratcliffes war bahn to do, an' allus striving to pick a quarrel wi' ony o' th' Marsh lads 'at came handy. I tak no sides myseln——"

"I'll warrant tha doesn't. He'd nearly as lief wark as fight, wod slack-back Earnshaw," put in Nanny.

"Well," cried Witherlee, "yond lad at Marsh is making as grand a fight as ony Wayne that's gone afore him, an' we're all fain, I reckon, to see him win i' th' end.—What say ye, Mistress?" he broke off, turning to the little woman who sat apart, hearkening to their gossip but taking no share in it.

"He will win, Sexton," she answered quietly. "Dost doubt it?"

Nanny softened for a moment, as she, too, glanced at Mistress Wayne. "Not wi' ye beside him. By th' Heart, Mistress, but I'd be flaired for Shameless Wayne if he'd no friend sich as ye to keep him fro' ill hap."

"Nay, I can do naught—save sit with hands in lap sometimes, and read the future, and see Ned moving safe through bloodshed and through glint of swords."

"Do nowt?" echoed the Sexton's wife. "Ye said as mich when Bet Earnshaw axed ye to go an' touch her bairn. Did ye do nowt that day, Mistress, or is it thanks to ye that th' little un mended fro' th' minute ye set hand on her?"

"'Tis something that goes out of me—I know not what," murmured the little woman. "It is strange, is it not, that such as I should have the gift of healing when wise men have failed?"

"Book-learning never cured a cough, as they say i' Marshcotes," put in Nanny.—"Who's that at th' moor-gate? Why, if it isn't Mistress Ratcliffe herseln! My sakes, it's a full kirkyard this morn. What mud she be after, think ye? She's hitching her horse to th' gate-post, mark ye—an' now she's coming down wi' that long, lad-like stride o' hers, as if she war varry full o' some business.—I'd rarely like to know what brings her so far afield."

Janet stopped on seeing the chattering group of rustics, with Mistress Wayne sitting quiet and motionless behind them; then, finding that Earnshaw was among the gossips, the girl went down to him. The Sexton's wife eyed her narrowly as she approached, and nodded her head with a gesture which said, more plainly than words could have done, that beauty and a free carriage were dust in the balance when weighed against the damning fact that she was born a Ratcliffe.

"Earnshaw, I want thee to come and doctor that roan mare of mine," said Janet.

"Doan't axe him to do owt he could call wark, Mistress," cried Nanny, missing no opportunity to gibe. "Call it laking, an' he'll come like a hare; but reckon it's wark, an' ye may whistle a twelve-month for him."

"Thee hod thy whisht, Nanny," Earnshaw interposed. "If there's a horse to be physicked, Mistress Ratcliffe hes come to th' right man, choose who hears me say 't."

"There's them as says tha wert born i' a stable, Earnshaw, an' I can weel believe it; bred an' born, I reckon, for tha'd walk further to see a horse nor to sup a quart of ale—an' that's saying a deal. Now, Witherlee, art coming, or shall I hev to sweep thee indoors wi' a besom?"

Nanny, her temper no wise improved on learning that Janet's errand promised so little mystery, carried off Witherlee without more ado. Earnshaw could find no good excuse to linger after he had discussed the roan mare's ailments with Janet; and he, too, passed up the graveyard and out at the top gate. The girl was about to follow him and ride home again, when Mistress Wayne called to her.

"Come hither, Mistress. I have somewhat to say to thee," she cried, motioning the girl to the seat beside her.

Janet, who had last seen her, a wind-driven waif, come wailing into the Wildwater hall, was startled by the change in her—by the wild grief in her blue eyes, and the resolution in her baby face. Without a word she took the proffered seat, wondering what Mistress Wayne could find to say to her.

"I saw you come in at the wicket, and I knew you," said the other presently. "It is so strange, girl; all has come back to me in a wave, and I remember faces—dead faces, some of them; and some again are living, and beautiful like yours. I want to talk with you of Ned—him they call Shameless Wayne."

Janet glanced at her in surprise. A faint colour crept over her brow. "You—you know, then?" she murmured.

"Yes, I know. Often—in the days when I could only half understand—Ned talked of you to me; and I recall now that, before the troubles came, you used to meet him up by the kirk-stone. Dear, I cannot let you both go into the pitiless marshes, as I have done. He loves you——"

"Ay, a little less than he loves his pride," said Janet bitterly.

"Some day he will love you more." She clutched the girl's arm eagerly. "None knows but I how bitter the struggle has been for him. He is mad, mad, to let good love slip from him while he grasps at shadows. I had a man's love once, girl, and I threw it aside, and—God pity all who let the gift go by."

Tears were crowding thick to the eyes of Mistress Wayne—warm, heart-healing tears which had been denied her until now. A sudden compassion seized Janet, and under the pity a gladness that Wayne of Marsh had found the struggle bitter as she could have wished it.

"He loves me, say you? Say it again, Mistress; 'tis the pleasantest speech I've heard these long days past," cried the girl.

"He is wearying for you—wearying for you. Hark ye, dear! I cannot let you drift apart. Come with me back to Marsh, and I'll make all smooth between you—ay, though Ned strives with all his might against us."

Janet smiled and shook her head. "That is a little more, methinks, than the most love-sick maid would do. Bring him to me, and I will welcome him——"

"Nay, life is so short, so very short. See, I'm but a child yet, and impatient, and all my heart is set on giving Ned his happiness, because he cared for me when there was none else to befriend me. I'm sure 'twill all come right: Ned has gone riding up the moor, but he'll be home by now, and we can——"

"Up the moor, say ye?" cried Janet, with sudden misgiving. "Which road took he, Mistress?"

"To Bents Farm, I think he said. He was to have gone yesterday, but was hindered."

Janet sprang to her feet and stood looking down on Mistress Wayne. This, then, was the end of her wise scheme; this was the fruit of all her care for him. And in her recklessness she had bidden the Lean Man take three other Ratcliffes to meet him by the way.

"What is't?" asked Mistress Wayne, wonderingly.

"What is't?" cried Janet, with a hard laugh. "Naught, Mistress—save that I've murdered one who was dearer to me than my own body."

Turning, she ran up the path, and out at the wicket, and tugged at her horse's bridle, which she had fastened to the gate-post, so hard that it broke between her hands. And fast as they galloped across the moor, toward Bents Farm, the pace seemed sluggish when measured by her thoughts. Was it too late? Was Wayne already lying face to sky, with lids close-shut over the eyes that would see neither sky nor moor again? Nay, it should not be, it must not be.

Gallop. She would ride into the thick of them, and somehow pluck him from between their blades; they dared not strike a woman, one of their own kin, and while she held them off Wayne might compass his escape. Yet she knew it was too late, and again the picture came before her, clear in its every detail, of the quiet body and the upturned face that would be lying somewhere on this same road to Bents. Each turn of the way was a hell to her, because of what might lie beyond, each turning safely past was heaven. Gallop. There was yet time.

She neared the dip of Hoylus Slack and heard the sound of hoof-beats in the hollow. It was done, then; the strain was over, and there was no room for hope. Was this Red Ratcliffe, come to bear news to Marsh that its Master was dead? If so, she would gallop her horse against his, and snatch for his weapon as they fell together. The horseman was half up the hill now, and a great cry broke from her as she saw the blunt, rugged face with the kerchief tied across the brow. Pulling her beast back almost on to his haunches, she stood and waited till the horseman topped the rise and came to a sudden halt at sight of her.

"Ned, Ned, art safe?" she cried, reining in close beside him.

Wayne of Marsh eyed her soberly. "Safe? Ay. Wilt sorrow or be glad of it, Mistress Janet?"

"Cease mockery!" she pleaded. "See, I would think shame to confess it at another time, but all the way from Marshcotes I have sickened at thought of—God's pity, Ned, what might have chanced!"

"Well, enough has chanced, I fancy, for one morning's work. If a ripped forehead, that scarce will let me see for bleeding through the kerchief——"

"Stoop, Ned. Thou hast tied it ill, and my fingers are better at the work."

She was glad of the least labour she could do for him; he might be churlish, he might accept her service as if it were a penance, but he was safe, and free to treat her as he would. Shrinking a little when the bandage was loosened, she glanced at the wound and noted its discoloured look.

"Bide awhile," she said, slipping to the ground. "Thou'lt have trouble with it, Ned, unless I lay fresh peat on it to drive out the bad humours."

"'Twill heal of itself; I would not trouble thee," he muttered. It was a nice, bewildering point of honour to Wayne of Marsh, this acceptance of aid from Ratcliffe hands, and he spoke with scant civility.

But Janet was back already with a handful of the warm red mould, and she bade him get down from saddle that she might the better fasten on the bandage.

"Now tell me. How didst come through it, Ned?" she asked, tying a second knot in the kerchief.

"That is what I cannot tell thee. They met me, four of them, where the road is narrow up by Dead Lad's Rigg."

"Ay, four of them. God give me shame," murmured Janet.

"I heard the Lean Man bid them stand aside and leave us to it, and after that I knew no more till he and I were lunging each at the other. He knocked my sword up at the last, and lifted his own blade to strike——"

"Yes, yes, go on. What then, Ned?"

"Nay, I told thee I could give no right answer. Just as I had given all up—with a thought, it may be, of one who had been forbidden—the Lean Man's arm dropped to his side, and he sprang back in the saddle, all but unseating himself."

"But, Ned, I cannot credit it. Didst thou make no movement to drive him back?"

"None, for 'twas all done in a flash, and he might have split my skull in two if he had brought down that great blade of his."

"Was there naught, then, to occasion it?"

"Naught that I could see, yet he backed as if the fiend were at his throat. His own folk were no less puzzled than I, but his terror ran out to them and held them; and when I made at him afresh not one rode forward."

"Didst—didst not kill him?" she said. Any but the Lean Man he might slay, but her grandfather—nay, she could not brook that when faced so suddenly with the chance of it.

"I did not," answered Wayne grimly—"for the reason that he fled."

Again she stared at him. "Fled? Grandfather fled, say'st thou?"

"Did I not say that there was Ratcliffe pride in thee? Ay, plain in thy voice, and in thy little faith that the Lean Man could flee. Yet so it is, Janet; and I made after him almost to the gates of Wildwater; and if his had not been the better horse——"

"Then whence came this ugly gash of thine? 'Tis all a puzzle, Ned, and my late fear for thee has dulled my wits, I think."

"Why, his folk came after me in half-hearted fashion, and I had to ride through the three of them when I turned back for Wildwater. I took this cut in passing, and he who gave it me will go lame for the rest of a short life; and then they, too, made off, daunted by the old man's panic, and I was left to wonder what goblin had come between Nicholas Ratcliffe's blade and me."

"He has been strange of late—ever since the night when he came down to burn thee out of Marsh. Some illness has taken him; it was the fire that did it, may be, when he fell face foremost into it."

They stood awhile, neither breaking the strained silence. Then Janet touched the bandage lightly, and smoothed it a little over the close-cropped hair, and, "Ned," she whispered, "thou said'st something just now. With a thought of one who had been forbidden. Who was it, Ned?"

Very grave he was; not rough now, nor uncivil, but sad with the sadness that old hatreds, formed before his birth, had woven for him.

"Who should it be but thou, Janet? I told myself in that one moment how well I loved thee—and I was glad. And then some strange thing warded death from me—and, see, the feud stands gaunt as ever between us two."

The reaction from her late dread was stealing over Janet fast, and with it there came the memory of how she had brought him into this desperate hazard, from which a miracle alone had saved him.

"Ned," she cried, "who bade the Lean Man take three of his folk against thee, think'st thou? Who told them thou would'st ride to Bents Farm to-day?"

"Red Ratcliffe, at a venture."

"Nay, it was I. Thinking to keep thee safe, I said thou would'st go to Bents to-day instead of yestermorn. So thy wound, Ned, was all of my giving, and—why dost not hate me for it?" she finished, with a passion that ended in a storm of tears.

Wayne set both arms about her then, and strove to comfort her; angry he had seen her, and scornful, but this sudden grief, so little like her, and so unexpected, loosed all the harshness that he was wont to set between them as a barrier when they met.

"Nay, Janet, never cry because of what might have chanced and did not," he whispered. "'Twas no fault of thine, lass, that I went to Bents to-day."

A sour face showed over the wall that bounded the left hand of the highway, and presently a pair of wide shoulders followed as Hiram Hey began to climb over into the road.

"What in the Dog's name art doing here, Hiram?" cried his Master, starting guiltily away from Mistress Janet.

"Nay, I like as I hed to look after some beasts i' th' High Pasture. 'Tis fine weather, Maister—but a thowt past mating-time, I should hev said."

"Thy ears are big, Hiram, but my hands will cover them."

"Now, look ye! It hes been a failing o' mine wi' th' gentry iver sin' I war a lad; I may speak as civil as ye please, an' I get looks as black as Marshcotes steeple. An' all th' while I war nobbut thinking o' two fond stock-doves that I fund nesting a three-week late up i' Little John's wood."

Janet waited for no more, but beckoned Wayne to lift her to the saddle and touched the roan mare with her whip.

"Is there danger for thee at Wildwater?" he whispered, clutching her bridle. "If there be—I tell thee I'll not let thee go."

"Danger? Nay, if thou hadst failed to go to Bents, there might have been; but now they'll think I warned them in good faith."

"But what of the bargain, Janet? The last time we met thou told'st me of some bargain, made by the Lean Man, which touched thy welfare."

She paused, eager to toll him all; but a second glance showed her that he was in no fit state just now to have more troubles thrust on him. Even the effort of lifting her to saddle had blanched his face; the cloth was reddening, too, about his forehead, and he swayed a little as he held her rein. She must find a better time to tell him; for if he learned what that grim bargain was which pledged her to his murderer, he would run headlong against her folk, weak as he was, and find himself outmatched.

"The bargain was of little consequence," she said. "There was a price named for my hand—but such a price as none at Wildwater, I think, will ever claim. There, Ned! Let go my bridle, for that hind of yours is watching all we do."

Still he was not satisfied; but his hand slackened for a moment on the rein, and Janet started forward at the trot. Once she turned, at the bend of the road, and waved to him; and then the moor seemed emptied of its sunlight on the sudden.

Wayne stood looking up the highway long after she had gone, and turned at last to find Hiram's quiet grey eyes upon him.

"Well, Hiram? What art thinking of?" he said, with something between wrath and grudging laughter in his voice.

"Nowt so mich, Maister. 'Twould be a poor farmer as 'ud frame to sow Hawkhill Bog wi' wheat; that war all I hed i' mind. Soil's soil, choose how ye tak it, an' ye cannot alter th' natur on 't. Theer! My thowts do run on farming till I've getten no room seemingly for owt else; an' I niver axed ye how ye came by this red coxcomb o' yourn."

Wayne glanced over Hiram's question as he put his foot in the stirrup. He read the old fellow's meaning clear enough, and it angered him that his love for Janet should be hinted at under cover of this slow farming-talk.

"Soil's soil, Hiram," he said, "and I had as lief sow corn on yond stone wall as look for any crop of kindliness from that dried heart of thine."

"Begow, he knows nowt about me an' Martha," chuckled Hiram, as his Master rode down the highway. "My heart's as soft as butter nowadays; but I wodn't let young Maister guess it.—Martha, now. I believe i' going slow, an' that's gospel, but I'm getting flaired she'll slip me. There's shepherd Jose, th' owd fooil, dangling at her apron-strings, an' I'd be main sorry to see a lass like Martha so senseless as to wed him just for spite.—Well, Martha's noan a Ratcliffe, thanks be, an' that's more nor th' Maister can say o' yond leetsome wench fro' Wildwater. She'll bring him trouble yet, as sure as I shall mow th' Low Meadow by and by."

CHAPTER XVII

THE DOG-DREAD

A soft wind was fluttering from the edge of dark. The moon lay like a silver sickle over Dead Lad's Rigg, watching the fading banners of the sunset go down beneath the dark red-purple of the heath. No bird piped, save the ever-moaning curlew; the reeds whispered one to another, nodding their sleepy heads together; the voice of waters distant and of waters near at hand sobbed drearily. Over all was the masterful silence of the sky, that dread and mighty stillness of the star-spaces where the hill-gods stretched tired limbs and slumbered. Full of infinite sweets was the breeze, and the scent of heather mingled with the damp, heart-saddening odour of marsh-weeds and of bog-mosses.

The Lean Man, prone in the heather with his eyes on the dying sunset, felt every subtle influence of the hour. His life's grand failure had been compassed, the first and last deep terror had laid its grip on him; the wide moor, which had spoken of freedom once, was narrowed now to a prison, whose walls of sky were creeping close and closer in upon him. Man-like, he clothed his own dead passions—his love of fight, his pitiless lust for vengeance—with all the majesty of larger nature; man-like, he thought the moor's face darkened for his own tragedy, that even the curlews thrilled with something of his own intimate and tearless sorrow. What was this ghoul that had come, naught out of nothingness, and chilled the life-blood in him? It was a phantom, yet a hard reality—a thing of unclean vapours, yet stronger than if it had plied a giant's sword with more than a giant's strength of arm.

Near must all men come, once in their lifetime, to that deep horror of brain and heart when they stand, less and greater than their manhood, at the gulf-edge which lies between them and the space that fathered them. The Lean Man was peering over the gulf to-night, and the soul of him was naked to the moor-wind. No groan, no little muttered protest escaped him; for throat and lips were powerless, and the body that they served stood far off from Nicholas Ratcliffe.

"The night wears late, grandfather. Will you not come home to Wildwater?" said a low voice at his side.

He did not hear till the words had been twice repeated; then, starting as if a rude hand had wakened him from sleep, he began to moisten dry lips with a tongue as dry.

"Janet, what brings thee here?" he said hoarsely.

"Care for you, sir. You have been out of health, and I feared to leave you so late on the moor lest sickness——"

He laughed brokenly. "Sickness—ay. I have been—not well. 'Twas rightly spoken, girl."

His mood changed presently. The nearness of this girl, who alone had touched his heart to deep and selfless love; the drear sympathy of the gloaming heath; the swift and over-powering need of fellowship; all made for the confession which he had kept close locked these many days.

"Sit thee down beside me, Janet. Thou'lt take no hurt from the warm night. There, lass. And let me put an arm about thee—so. God's life, how real thou art, after the boggart-company I've kept of late."

Her cheeks burned at thought of the poor requital she had given his love; but she would not remember Wayne of Marsh, and she waited, her grey eyes pitiful on his, until he should find words to ease his trouble.

"We'll start far back, Janet," he said, slowly, "in the old days before my father, or his father's father before him, had seen the light. Ratcliffes were at feud then with Waynes, and both were busy sowing the crop which generation after generation was to reap. The tale is old to thee, but thou'lt not grudge to hear it all again?"

"Not that tale to-night, grandfather—any tale save that," pleaded the girl.

But Nicholas did not hear her. "The tale," he went on, "is of how one Anthony Ratcliffe, dwelling at Wildwater, rode down to Marsh to slay Rupert Wayne. He found there only Wayne's young wife, and asked where her goodman was. She would not answer; so Anthony Ratcliffe bade his men heat a sword-blade in the fire till it was white, and had the lady of Marsh stripped mother-naked, and marked a broad red scar all down her body between each question and each refusal of an answer. But she would not tell where Wayne had gone—not till she heard the steel hiss for the fifth time on her tender flesh. And then she told that he was riding home over Ludworth Slack; and they left her dying of her wounds."

"Hush, grandfather! I cannot bear it. Hark to the rushes yonder—and the curlews—they've heard your tale, methinks."

"'Tis grim, lass, but what I have to tell thee is grimmer still, so bide in patience. They got to horse again, Anthony Ratcliffe and his men, and they met Wayne of Marsh on the road, riding home with his favourite hound for company. They made at him, and the hound sprang straight and true at Anthony's throat"—the Lean Man halted a moment and wiped the sweat-drops from his forehead—"and nipped the life out of him. One of his folk thrust a spear then through the dog's heart, and the rest fell upon Wayne of Marsh and slew him."

Janet thought of another Wayne of Marsh who had lately been met in just such a fashion up by Dead Lad's Rigg. "Go on, grandfather," she whispered, in an awe-stricken voice.

"Mark well the end of the old tale, girl. A company of Wayne's kinsfolk, riding near to Ludworth Slack soon after the Ratcliffes had set off again for home, heard a hound's baying from across the moor; they followed and the baying went on before them till they reached the spot where Wayne lay dead—and beside him Anthony Ratcliffe, with teeth-marks at his throat—and, a little way off, Wayne's hound, fast stiffening."

The girl had heard the tale not once nor twice before; but it came with a new force to-night, for every mention of the hound brought a spasm of mortal anguish to the Lean Man's face, and in a flash she guessed his secret.

"The hound was dead, mark ye," went on Nicholas, as if compelled to dwell on details that he loathed; "yet the baying never ceased. No round and honest bay it was, but ghostly, wild and long-drawn-out; and it would not let them stay there, but took them on and on until they saw the Ratcliffes far up ahead of them, climbing the hill toward Wildwater. They galloped with a will then, and overtook them at a score yards from the courtyard gate, and left but one alive, who won into safety after desperate hazard."

The moon was silver-gold now and her rays fell coldly on the Lean Man's head, on his twitching mouth and haunted eyes. The curlews never rested from complaint, and the note of many waters seemed, to the girl's strained fancy, the voice of the hound who had bayed, long centuries ago, on Ludworth Slack.

"The one left alive took on the Wildwater line," said Nicholas, after a long pause; "but he had the Dog-dread till he died, and his children had it after him, and his children's children. For he, too, had heard the dead hound baying up the moor, and its note was branded on his heart."

"And that is Barguest, grandfather," said Janet, creeping closer to him.

"That, lass, is Barguest. That is why the Marsh folk take Wayne and the Dog for their cry. The hound that slew old Anthony has dwelt with the Waynes ever since; no peril comes nigh them, but he must warn them of it: and sometimes he—" The Lean Man stopped, and put a hand to his throat, and glanced at the fingers as if he looked for blood on them.

She gathered a little courage from his lack of it. "The tale is old as yonder hills, and Barguest walks in legends only. Is it not so?" she said, but with a tremour in her voice.

"I said as much, Janet, for nigh on three-score years. I cast out the old dead fears, and laughed at the Waynes and their guardian hound—and thou see'st to what I have come at last. It began when I nailed the hand above the Marsh doorway; when Nanny Witherlee—God curse her—told me I had crossed Barguest on the threshold. Still I laughed, though she has the second-sight, they say; but the fear even then ran chill through me. Thou know'st the rest, girl—how I have fought it, and cast it off, and been conquered in the end. But none knows—not even thou, dear lass—what sweat of terror has dripped from me by nights."

"I have guessed," she answered softly, "and have grieved for you more than ever I told you of."

He was quiet for a space; then rose and began to walk up and down the heather; and after that he dropped sullenly again to Janet's side. "Not long since I met Shameless Wayne on Dead Lad's Rigg, and fought with him," he went on. "I all but had him—my blade was lifted high to strike—and then—out of the empty moor a great brown hound leaped up at me. His jaws were running crimson froth, and his teeth shone white as sun on snow, and he bayed—once—and then he had me by the throat."

"Sir, 'twas your fancy! I tell you, it was fancy," cried Janet wildly. "Did Wayne see it, or Red Ratcliffe, or——"

"None saw it save I. Dost mind the tale of how my father died, Janet? For dread of the Dog. 'Tis the eldest-born that sees it always, and none beside.—Hark ye, he's baying across the marshland yonder! Fly, girl—fly, I tell thee, lest he set his seal on thee in passing."

She stifled her own dread and pleaded with him—quietly, sanely, with the tender forcefulness that only her kind can compass. He grew quieter by and by, and set himself with something of his old force of will to tell the tale to its end.

"I shall never shake it off again, Janet," he said. "Each day it has a new sort of dread in waiting for me. Sometimes I am athirst and dare not drink—the sound of water is frenzy to my wits——"

"Have any of the Wildwater dogs turned on you of late?" she asked, with a sudden glance at him.

"Nay, lass! There's no key to the trouble there."

"Are you sure, sir? You recall how one of the farm-dogs ran mad a year ago, and a farm-hand, trying to kill him, was bitten on the arm—and again on the hand as he tried to snatch a hair as a cure against the mad-sickness? He, too feared water——"

"Ay, and died of a sickness of the body, plain to be felt and known. But what of me, girl? 'Tis a mind-sickness, this—a dumb, soft-stepping, noiseless thing that flees if one stands up to it, only to come back, and snarl, and grin, the moment the heart fails for weariness. Come, we'll get us home, Janet. It has eased me a little to tell thee of it—haply thou'lt help me make a last big fight."

"God willing, sir," she murmured, as she turned to walk beside him.

Once only he broke silence on the way to Wildwater. Stopping, he bared his throat to the moonlight, and bade her look well at it, and watched with anxious eyes as she obeyed.

"Canst—canst see the teeth-marks there?" he whispered.

"'Tis smooth, sir, without a scratch on 't."

"Pass thy hand over—lightly. I can feel the deep wound burn and sting—surely thy fingers can feel the pit."

"There is no wound, grandfather—no wound at all."

He drew his breath again, and laughed, and, "Tell me again, dear lass," he said, "that it is fancy—naught but fancy."

"It is altogether fancy," she answered.

"Art tricking me?" he said with sudden suspicion. "Let me see thy fingers, lass—the fingers that touched my throat."

She held her hand out to him. "There's no stain on them, sir. Have I not told you?" she cried, striving to keep the terror from her voice as best she could.

"Why, no," he whispered; "no stain at all. And yet——"

And after that they spoke no word until Wildwater gates showed dark in front of them.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FEUD-WIND FRESHENS

It was high summer now on Marshcotes Moor. Everywhere the farm-folk were full of the busy idleness which comes when ploughing and sowing are over and the crops are not yet ready for the scythe or sickle. The lads found time to go a-courting in shaded lanes or up by the grey old kirk-stone; their elders did much leaning over three-barred gates, with snuff between a thumb and forefinger, while they talked of hay-harvest, of the swelling of corn-husks in the ear, of the feud which had been so hot in the spring and which now seemed like to die for want of fuel.

For a strange thing had chanced at Wildwater. The Lean Man, once dauntless, had grown full of some unnamed terror; and, though his arm seemed strong as ever and his body full of vigour, his brain was sapless and inert. His folk came to him with fresh plans for slaying Wayne of Marsh; and he turned a haunted eye on them, and said that naught could kill the lad. The cloud which had hung over Marsh House had settled now on Wildwater, and even the hot youngsters were chilled by a sense of doom. If the Lean Man had given up hope, they said, what chance had they of snaring Shameless Wayne?

And so the days went on, and the feud slumbered, and Janet was torn between sorrow for her grandfather and gladness that his malady left Wayne free from ambush or attack. Each day, indeed, seemed to bring fresh trouble in its train; for Red Ratcliffe, dumbfounded as he had been when their errand to Bents Farm had proved no wild-goose chase, was yet distrustful of his cousin. She had spoken a true word that day, and they had met Wayne; but there was some devilry hid under it, and haply she knew enough of the Black Art which had saved her lover to be sure no harm could come to him. Laugh at superstition as he might, Red Ratcliffe had not been cradled in the winds and reared among the grim wastes of heath for naught; he and his fellows were slow to acknowledge witchcraft and the boggarts that stepped in moorside tales, but the seed, once planted, found a rich soil and a deep in which to come to leaf. Little by little he was growing to believe that Janet was the cause of each discomfiture at Wayne's hands; and, while he let no chance pass of railing on her for a witch, he uttered many a scarce-veiled threat that soon he would throw all to the winds and hold her without leave of the Lean Man or the Parson.

As for Shameless Wayne, he had ceased to wonder that no fresh attack was made on him. He would die when Fate ordained, and nothing could alter that; but the farm-work, meanwhile, at which he laboured as distastefully and keenly as of old, was going grandly forward, and not sour Hiram Hey himself could say that the land had gone backward since he took the charge of it. Janet had been right when she named pride his strongest passion; and even his love for her, self-thwarted, could not rob him of a certain sober joy in raising crops in face of Ratcliffe sword-points and the keen-toothed winds. It was all uphill nowadays for Wayne of Marsh; and each new difficulty overcome gave him hard and sure content such as no wild frolic of his earlier days had brought.

Yet the summer bore hardly on him when he thought of Janet. No farm-hind but was free to couple with his mate; only the Master, it seemed, was doomed to go lonely through these spendthrift days of sun and warm south winds and ripening meadow-grass.

"Art gloomy, Ned, of late. Is it because the Ratcliffes scruple to come down and fight with thee?" said his sister, as they sat in hall one evening and watched the stir of bees among the roses that clambered up the window-panes.

"Nay, for I am always fighting one of them—and never more than after a week's idleness."

Her voice grew cold. "'Tis time thou didst turn from that—and time Marsh had a mistress. Are there no maids, save one, about the moorside?"

"None for me, nor ever will be. Besides, Marsh has its mistress; thou'rt not going to leave us, Nell?"

"By and by I must. Rolf is getting out of hand, and will take the old excuse no longer. Faith, I begin to think he loves me very dearly, for every day he thwarts me more and more."

"Thy place is with him, after all, and I'm a fool to think to keep thee here forever.—Where are the lads, Nell? Hunting still, I'll warrant."

"Ay. They are restless since they fought the Lean Man; each morning they seem to start earlier for the chase, and sundown rarely sees them home again."

"Well, it is making men of them. They are learning a shrewd turn of fence, too, and when their time comes they will know how to parry Ratcliffe cuts.—We wash the sheep to-morrow, Nell; wilt ride with me and watch the scene? If a red sunset be aught to go by, we shall have a cloudless day."

"To-morrow I cannot. 'Tis churning-day, Ned, and the butter is always streaked when I leave those want-wit maids alone with it."

"It is better that thou should'st not go," said Wayne, after a pause. "I was a fool to speak of it, Nell, for the washing-pools lie over close to Wildwater, and 'twould be unsafe for women-folk."

"Unsafe?" she echoed, with a quick glance at him. "Then 'tis unsafe for thee, Ned, and I'll not have thee go to the washing at all."

"That is folly, lass. I have a sword, and I carry less risks than a maid would.—A rare holiday the men would have, my faith, if I left them to wash the sheep at their own good pleasure."

"Take the lads with thee, then, if thou must go."

"I promised them they should go hawking until dinner-time, and after that they must come up; but why spoil a morning's pastime for them?"

"The old tales fret at times," she answered gravely, "and to-night I'm sad a little, Ned, like thee. The washing-pools lie near to Wildwater, as thou say'st, and thou know'st how Waynes and Ratcliffes first fell out."

"Tut! If I give heed to women's fancies, when shall I find an hour to move abroad in? The Ratcliffes have got their fill for a good while to come, and they'll keep well on the far side of the pools, I warrant. What, Mistress? Thy wanderings have brought thee supperless indoors," he broke off, as his step-mother opened the door softly and set down a basket of marsh-marigolds among the dishes and platters that cumbered the great dining-table.

Nell rose with no word of greeting and left them; and Mistress Wayne, glancing in troubled fashion after her, crossed to the window and leaned against it.

"I had better have stayed as I was, Ned," she said, smiling gravely. "Nell was growing kind—but that has passed now I have found my wits again."

He winced; for he knew that he, too, had felt less kindliness toward her since her helplessness had gone. Looking at her now, frail against the mullioned casement, he could not but remember that it was she, in her right mind as she was now, who had fouled the good fame of his house.

"Ay, and thou hast a touch of her aloofness, too," she went on. "I can read it in thy face, Ned.—Listen. I've had in mind to tell thee something these days past, but have never found the words for it. I wronged thy father—but not as deeply as thou think'st. Ned! Canst not think what it meant to me—the dreariness, the cold, the hardness of this moorland life? And when Dick Ratcliffe came, and promised to take me out of it——"

"See, Mistress, there's naught to be gained by going over the old ground," he interrupted harshly.

"But, Ned, there is much to be gained. Am I so rich in friends that I can let one as staunch as thou go lightly? Thou'rt midway between hate and love of me, I know, and if—Ned, if I were to tell thee I was less to blame—" She stopped and eyed him wistfully.

It was not in Shameless Wayne to resist this sort of pleading from one who had shared with him the bitter months of disfavour and remorse. They had been comrades in adversity, he and she; and was he to turn on her now because she could no longer claim pity for her witlessness?

"Thou need'st tell me naught, little bairn," he said.

"Ah, but I need! I was dying, Ned—dying for lack of warmth. And Dick Ratcliffe promised to take me into shelter; and I clutched at the chance greedily, as a prisoner would if one came and offered him liberty. But the wrong that Wayne fancied of me, when he found us in the orchard, I had never thought to do—never, dear. I was a child, and loved Ratcliffe because he showed me a way out of trouble; and I meant to go away with him because—how shall I tell thee, so as to make thee credit it? I had not a thought of—Ned, I was not wicked, only tired—tired, till I had no eyes to see the straight road, nor heart to follow it. I was hungering for warmth; the ghosts were so busy all about Marsh House, and I wanted the happy valleys, out of reach of the curlew-cries and the shuddering midnight winds."

Wayne put an arm about her. "It was worth telling, bairn," he said quietly, "and father would lie quieter if he knew that his honour had not gone so far astray."

"Thou'lt still keep a friend to me?" she whispered.

The gloom settled more heavily upon his face. "Thou talk'st as if I were thy judge," he said. "'Twas only in seeming thou didst the worst wrong to father—but what of me? Did I look so carefully to his honour? Or was it his own eldest-born who darkened his last days, who made his name a by-word up and down the country-side, who drank while a kinsman fought the vengeance-fight for him? Not if I work to my life's end to wipe off the stain, will it come clean."

"'Tis cleansed already, Ned, twice over cleansed—and there's one waiting who will give thee thanks for it. I met her not long since in the kirkyard, and I never saw love so plain on a maid's face." Her voice was eager, and the words came fast, as if she had given long thought to the matter.

"Mistress Ratcliffe, thou mean'st?" said Wayne, after a silence. "What ails thee, bairn, to be so hot for this unlikely wedding?"

"Because she is straight and strong, and full of care for thee; because, when an ill chance led me once to Wildwater, it was she who took pity on me and showed me a safe road to Marsh. Ned, she is the one wife in the world for thee; why wilt thou cling to the old troubles?"

He shook his head. "The troubles are new that stand 'twixt Janet and myself—and any day may bring forth more of them."

"Thy folk will be her folk, if thou'lt take her," she broke in eagerly. "She lives among rough men—there's danger every hour for her."

Mistress Wayne had struck the right note at last. Half willing as he was to be convinced, and imbued with the sense that the fairy-kist could give no wrong advice, he would yet have held obstinately to his old path. But he took fire at the suggestion that there was danger to the girl at Wildwater. Now and then a passing fear of it had crossed his own self-poised outlook on the situation; but a hint of it from another roused all his smouldering jealousy and passion.

"Danger? Of what?" he cried.

But Mistress Wayne had no time to answer; for the door opened on the sudden and the four lads came tumbling into hall, piling the fruits of their long day's sport in a heap against the wall.

"A rare day we've had, Ned!" cried Griff. "Ay, we're late for supper, but thou'lt not grudge it when thou see'st how many other suppers we've brought home to larder."

Wayne looked at the heap of grouse and snipe, conies and hares and moor-cock. "Well, fall to, lads," he laughed, "and I'll save my scolding till ye're primed against it.—Are ye still bent on hawking to-morrow, after this full day's sport?"

"Ay, are we!" cried Griff. "We're but the keener set to have another day of it."

"Then go; but mind ye come straight up to the washing-pool after dinner. 'Tis time ye learned the ways of farming."

The youngsters made wry faces at this as they settled themselves to the mutton-pasty.

"We met the Lean Man again to-day," said one presently, in between two goodly mouthfuls.

"And what said he to you?"

"Naught. He wore as broken a look as ever I saw, and when we rode at him with a shout——"

"Lads, lads, fight men less skilled at sword-play than the Lean Man," put in Shameless Wayne, smiling the while at their spirit.

"But he fled from us, Ned—minding the night, I warrant, when we took him in the back with yond stone ball. Yet they say he's always like that now; Nanny Witherlee tells me he sees the Dog at the side of every Wayne among us, and flees from that, not from us."

"Nanny is a fond old wife, with more tales on her tongue-tip than hairs on her thinning thatch."

"Yet—dost mind what I saw, too, that night in the garden?" said Mistress Wayne. "Brown, blunt-headed—I can see him yet, Ned, as he fawned against thy side."

Wayne did not answer, though he paled a little, and soon he made excuse to leave them.

"Where art going, Ned? We've fifty tales to tell thee of the day's sport," cried Griff.

"But have I idleness enough to listen, ye careless rascals?" laughed Wayne from the door. "I must see Hiram Hey and make all ready against to-morrow's work."

"Thou'lt not find him, for he was going into the Friendly Inn with shepherd Jose as we passed through Ling Crag."

"Was he?" growled the other. "Hiram is a poor drinker by his own showing, and a man with no spare time on his hands—but he has worn many a tavern threshold bare, I'll warrant, since he first learned to set lips to pewter."

And, indeed, Hiram wore a leisurely air enough at the moment. Stretched at his ease on the wide lang-settle of the Friendly Inn, he was handling a mug of home-brewed and watching the crumbling faces in the peat-fire, while shepherd Jose talked idly to him from the window.

"There's somebody got four gooid legs under him," said Jose, as the racket of horse-hoofs came up the road.

"Ay, by th' sound. Who is't, Jose?" answered Hiram lazily.

"Why, Mistress Janet fro' Wildwater. She's a tidy seat i' th' saddle, hes th' lass," said the shepherd, pressing his face closer to the glass to see the last of her.

"A wench can hev a tidy seat i' th' saddle, an' yet be leet as thistle-down."

"Ay, but she hes a snod way wi' her, an' all. I've thowt, whiles, she hed more o' th' free, stand-up look o' th' Waynes about her nor her breed warrants."

"Well, there's some say that, if wishes war doings, she'd hev a Wayne name to her back," said Hiram, shifting to an easier posture.

"Nowt o' th' sort!" put in the shepherd warmly. "Th' young Maister may hev been a wild-rake, an' he may be wilful i' farming-matters an' sich—but he'd niver foul th' owd name by gi'eing it to a Ratcliffe."

"That's as may be. But young blood's young blood, an' she's winsome to look at, as nawther thee nor me can deny."

"There war summat betwixt 'em, now I call to mind, afore this last brew o' trouble war malted. I've heard tell o' their meeting i' th' owd days up by th' kirk-stone when they thowt nobody war looking. But that's owered wi'. Tha doesn't fancy there could be owt o' th' sort now, Hiram?—Theer, get thy mug filled up, lad, for tha needs a sup o' strong drink to brace thee for th' long day's sheep-weshing to-morn."

"I'll hev my mug filled, Jose, lad—though I'm no drinker—an' I'll keep my thowts about th' Maister an' th' Wildwater lass to myseln. But I've seen what I've seen—ay, not a three week sin'—an' if iver tha hears 'at two folk are courting on th' sly, doan't thee say I didn't tell thee on 't, that's all."

"What didst see, like, a three week sin'?" asked Jose the shepherd, his head tilted gossip-wise to one side.

"Nay, I war niver one to spread tales abroad, not I. But it warn't a mile fro' where I'm sitting now, on th' varry road 'at runs past th' tavern here, that I happened on two folk standing fair i' th' middle o' th' highway. An' one war fearful like the Maister, an' t' other warn't so different fro' Mistress Ratcliffe; an' they war hugging one another summat fearful."

"Now, come, Hiram! Gossip's gossip, but I'll noan believe that sort o' talk about th' Maister."

"That's as it pleases thee, lad. I nobbut said 'at th' couple I saw war like as two peas to him an' Mistress Janet. Ay, an' they'd getten dahn fro' their hosses, an' she war crying like a gooid un i' his arms. Well, 'tis as Nanny Witherlee is allus saying, I fear me—if a blackberry's nobbut out o' reach, ye'll find all th' lads i' th' parish itching for 't."

"Well, I mun tak thy word for owt to do wi' courting," said the shepherd drily. "Tha'rt framing to learn nowadays thyseln, so they tell me."

"An' what about thee?" cried Hiram, roused from the tranquil gaiety which his bit of gossip afforded him. "I'd think shame, if my hair war as white as thine, Jose, to turn sheep's eyes on a young wench like Martha."

Jose chuckled, as if he could tell much but would not, and Hiram Hey grew more and more disquieted as he wondered if, after all, he had gone too slow with the first and last great courtship of his life.

While Hiram sat nursing his mug, and while the shepherd kept a quizzing eye upon his moodiness, the inn door was thrown open and three rough-headed fellows stamped noisily into the bar. "It smells foul," said one, stopping at sight of Hiram and the shepherd, and holding his nostrils between a dirt-stained thumb and forefinger.

"Ay," said another, "it's th' Wayne smell—ye can wind 'em like foxes wheriver ye leet on their trail."

"Yond's Wildwater talk," said Hiram to the shepherd, not shifting his position on the settle. "They're reared on wind up yonder, an' it gets into their tongues, like."

"Thee shut thy mouth, Hiram Hey; tha'rt ower owd to gi'e lip-sauce to lusty folk," said the foremost of the Wildwater trio, coming to the back of the settle and leaning threateningly over the old man.

Hiram lifted himself slowly into a sitting-posture. "There's breed i' us owd uns," he said; "th' race weakened by th' time it got to sich as thee."

"We'll see about that," said his assailant, and stooped quickly, his hands toward Hiram's throat.

But Hiram shot out his arms with unlooked-for vigour, and gripped his man under the arm-pits, and pulled him like a kitten over the high back of the lang-settle. Then he got to his feet, still hugging the other close, and gave a steady swing, and landed him clean over his left shoulder on to the sanded floor-stones.

"If awther o' ye others hes owt to say, I'm noan stalled yet," said Hiram, dropping to his seat again.

The fallen man did not move for a space; and then he clapped a hand to one knee with an oath. "There's summat broken," he groaned.

"Likely," put in Hiram Hey. "I've hed chaps mell on me afore, an' it mostly ends th' same way."

The two who were still unhurt helped their comrade to the door, and turned for a sour look at Hiram. "Turn an' turn about," said one; "there's summat i' bottle for all ye Wayne chaps, an' I'll look to thee myseln, Hiram Hey, when th' chance comes."

"Summat i' bottle, is there?" said the shepherd, after they had gone. "Th' Lean Man hes been fearful quiet lately; I feared he war hatching weasel-eggs. Ay, an' his men hev been quiet, an' all; 'tis mony a week sin' we hed ony sort o' moil wi' 'em."

"Well, I'm stalled o' wondering what's to happen next," said Hiram, yawning with great content. "I war all a-shiver when th' feud first broke out, an' ivery day I looked to be shotten at th' least, if not sliced up wi' a sword at after. But th' days jog on somehow, an' there's nowt mich comes to cross th' farm-wark."

"Yond war a shrewd lift o' thine, Hiram," said the shepherd presently, seating himself at the other side of the hearth.

"I learned to lift, lad, when I war a young un; an' ye doan't loss that sort o' trick so easy. 'Tis weel enough for these lads to be all for fighting wi' their fists—but let me get to grips wi' a man when he means mischief, say I, an' he'll noan do me mich harm.—Now, Jose, art bahn to get another mug-full? I'm fain o' laziness to-neet, an' I could weel sup another quart, though I'm nowt mich at drinking myseln."

Janet, meanwhile, had ridden straight home to Wildwater after passing the window of the Friendly Inn, and had encountered Red Ratcliffe as she led her horse round to stable.

"Dost ride from Marsh?" he sneered, blocking the stable-door.

"From seeing a better man than thou? Nay. I have no dealings with Wayne of Marsh."

"Thou'lt have no chance of such dealings by and by."

"Indeed?" Lifting her brows a little, but disdaining to ask his leave to pass the door. "Indeed, Ratcliffe the Red? I thought—it might have been but fancy—that somehow thou didst shirk talk with Wayne of Marsh?"

"The Lean Man does—but there's younger blood than his to carry on the feud. We're sick of waiting for the call that never comes, and soon we mean to show Nicholas that what he has not wit to compass, we can."

"So eager to clinch the bargain?" she mocked. "Should I make thee a good wife, think'st thou?—There, take him to stall thyself," she added, putting the bridle into his hand. "I know thou canst stable a horse, if thou hast scant knowledge of how to woo a maid."

"'Tis a knowledge I may gather by and by—and thou shall teach me," he answered, meeting her eye with more than his accustomed boldness.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW WAYNE KEPT THE PINFOLD

The marshland beyond Robin Hood's Well was noisy this morning with the shouts of men, the sharp, impatient bark of dogs, the shrill bleating of sheep. A warm, lush-hearted day of June it was, with a yellow sun rising clear of the flaked strips of cloud that hung about the middle blue of heaven, and a low wind shaking the budding heather-tips and wrinkling the surface of standing pools; just such a day as fitted a sheep-washing, for wind and sun together would be quick to dry the fleeces.

The washing-pools stood a few yards away from the stream that ran through Goblin Ghyll, and were no more than deepish holes dug out of the peat, bottomed and walled with sandstone blocks and rendered water-tight in a measure by lumps of marl worked in between the fissures of the stones. A narrow channel, fitted with a sluice-gate at the upper end, connected the streamway with the pools. On the right hand of each pool was a walled enclosure, into which the flocks were driven from the moor; on the left, a similar pinfold received the sheep as they were washed, and kept them penned there until each batch was ready to be driven off by its own shepherd.

Altogether, what with vigour of the sun-rays, and leisurely haste of loose-limbed shepherd folk, and brisk to-and-froing of excited dogs, the scene was a stirring one, contrasting strangely with the eerie hush which was wont to hang over this land of marsh and peat. Hiram Hey was there, his old heart warmed by the abuse, commands and ridicule which he dispensed with a free tongue to all comers. Jose the shepherd was there, with a kindly eye and a word in season for each particular member of his flock. There were other shepherds, too, from outlying portions of the Wayne lands, and thick-thewed farm-lads, and youngsters no more than elbow-high who, under pretence of helping to collect the flocks from off the moor, tried sorely the tempers of the blunt-headed, sagacious sheep-dogs, whose manoeuvres were thrice out of four times defeated by the interference.

"Well, Hiram, hast getten owt to say agen th' weather?" said Jose, splashing into the pool.

Hiram grasped the first of the ewes securely by its fleece, and half pushed, half pulled it to the brink. "Owt to say agen th' weather? I should think I hev!" he cried.

"I thowt as mich, lad. Trust thee to hev thy grumbles, choose what," panted the other, as he took the sheep bodily into his arms and plunged it under water.

"'Tis varry weel for ye poor herding folk to thank th' Lord for all this power of sun. But us as hes likelier wark—tilling, tha knaws, an' sich like—it fair breaks a body's heart, that it does. There's yond Low Meadow war bahn to yield th' bonniest crop o' hay iver tha set een on, if we'd nobbut hed a sup o' rain; an' now 'tis brown as a penny-piece—ay, fair dried i' th' sap, it is. But ye poor, shammocky sheep-drivers think there's nowt save ewes an' tups i' th' world."

"Poor, are we, say'st 'a?" snapped the shepherd who was working alongside Jose in the pool.

"Ay, poor as rattens," answered Hiram. "I allus did say a sheep war th' gaumless-est thing 'at iver went on four legs."

"There's folk more gaumless goes on two," put in Jose; "an' tha's getten a lob-sided view o' sheep, Hiram Hey; tha's all for beasts, an' hosses, an' pigs, an' tha willun't see 'at sheep are that full o' sense——"

The shepherd got no further with his speech; for the ewe which was being pushed toward the brink took a wild leap on the sudden, and landed fair into his arms before he had got his feet well planted on the bottom; and sheep and man went under the grey greasiness that covered the surface of the pool.

"Ay, they're sensible chaps, is sheep," said Hiram drily, while he watched the shepherd rub the water out of eyes and hair. "A beast now—nay, I'm thinking a calf wod hev hed more wit nor that."

"Well, an' wodn't tha knock dahn ony chap that framed to souse thee?" retorted Jose, undaunted still. "'Tis nobbut one more proof o' their sperrit.—Theer, lass, theer! Jose noan wants to wrangle wi' thee—theer, my bonnie—" His voice dropped into inarticulate murmurs as he took a fresh hold of the sheep and fell to rubbing her wool with a long arm and a knotty.

"Will th' young Maister be coming up, think ye?" asked a farm-hand by and by.

"He will that, if I knaw him," said Hiram grimly. "He telled me last forenooin he war coming to see 'at ye all kept to it.—Now, lads, will ye frame, or mun I come an' skift ye wi' my foot? I niver see'd sich a shammocky, loose-set lot o' folk i' all my days. Tom o' Thorntop, get them ewes penned, dost hear? Seems tha'd like to keep me ut laking all th' day while tha maks shift to stir thyseln."

The work went steadily forward, and soon the pinfolds on the far side of each of the two pools were all but full of ewes, shivering in their snowy fleeces. Neither did jest and banter flag, nor the gruff oaths of the shepherds as they gathered their flocks together under Hiram's wide-reaching eye.

"We mun hev a bit o' dinner i' a while," said Jose at last; "I'm as dry as a peck o' hay-seeds."

"I'll warrant," growled Hiram, and for sheer contrariness went off to see that a new flock was penned ready for the washing.

He gave a glance at the sun as he turned, and another across the sweep of peatland. "Begow, but it's bahn to be a warm un, is th' day, afore we've done wi' it," he muttered. "Th' heat-waves fair dance again ower Wildwater way. An' yond grass i' th' Low Meadow 'ull be drying as if ye'd clapped it i' an oven.—What, there's more coming to wesh sheep, is there? They'll hev to bide, I'm thinking, for a tidy while."

"What's agate ower yonder, Hiram?" called one of the shepherds. "Tha's getten thy een on summat, by th' look on ye."

"There's a big lot o' sheep coming, though they're ower far off for me to tell who belongs 'em," said Hiram, shading his eyes with both hands.

Two or three left work and crowded about him. The flock came nearer, followed by a press of men on foot and men on horseback.

"By th' Heart!" cried one. "They're Wildwater sheep, yond; I can see th' red owning-mark on their backs."

"Ay. Lonks they are, if my een's gooid for owt," said Hiram.

No man looked at his neighbour, and none spoke of those who rode behind the sheep, though the red-headed horsemen, sword on thigh, were twice as plain to be seen as the breed of sheep they brought to washing. Silently Hiram and his fellows returned to work; silently the Ratcliffes rode forward to the pinfold walls, while their farm-folk followed with the sheep.

Red Ratcliffe peered over the wall-top of the nearer pin-fold, and affected vast surprise at sight of the busy stir within. "What is this, lads?" he cried, turning to his kinsfolk.

"'Twould seem there's more than one has marked how fair a washing day it is," answered another, showing a like surprise. "They're not content with one pool, either, but must use them both."

"Whose sheep should they be, think ye? They're sadly lean, once they are rubbed free of dirt," went on Red Ratcliffe, who seemed to be the leader of the band.

"Nay, if there's aught poor in breed, father it on a Wayne," said the other.

Red Ratcliffe fixed his eyes on Hiram Hey, who was watching the pool with that daft air of simplicity which was his staunchest weapon in times of peril.

"We want to wash our sheep," said Ratcliffe.

Hiram lifted his head. "Oh, ay? Well, we shall noan keep ye long—say till six o' th' afternooin," he answered, and resumed his contemplation of the pool.

"Six of the afternoon? 'Tis easy to be seen, sirrah, that thou hast a taste for jesting," said Red Ratcliffe.

"We've scant time for jests, Maister, an' I'm telling ye plain truth. Ay, we'll be done by six o' th' clock, for sure—or mebbe a two-three minutes afore, if these feckless shepherds 'ull bestir theirselns. Jose, what dost tha think?"

"Think?" echoed Jose, rubbing hard and fast at the fleece of an old bell-wether. "Well, mebbe we shall win through by half-after five—but there's niver no telling."

Red Ratcliffe curbed his temper; for he had known many moor folk in his time, and this trick of "shamming gaumless" was no new one to him. He changed his key accordingly, seeing that his own rough banter would stand no chance against Hiram's subtler wit.

"Clear the pens of yond murrain-rotted ewes; we've some whole-bodied sheep to wash," he said peremptorily.

"Clear th' pens?" said Hiram, scratching his head. "Well, we're framing to clear 'em, fast as iver we can. An' as for th' ewes—there's been no murrain among Wayne sheep these five year past."

"Cease fooling, thou lousy dotard! Dost think we've come all the way from Wildwater only to go back again because we find a handful of yokels, belonging to God-know-whom, fouling the water of the pond?"

"Honest muck fouls no pools, an' I thowt onybody wod hev knawn we belonged to Wayne o' Marsh. Ay, for ye allowed as mich a while back—seeing, I warrant, what well-set-up chaps we war."

"Begow, that's th' first we've heard on 't fro' owd Hiram," muttered Jose the shepherd, chuckling soberly as he dipped another ewe.

"Ay," went on Hiram placidly, "there's none denies 'at th' Wayne farm-folk can best ony others i' th' moorside."

"Tha lees, Hiram Hey! Man for man, ye're childer to us as warks at Wildwater," cried one of the Ratcliffe yokels, gathering courage from the armed force about him.

"Settle that quarrel as best pleases you," cried Red Ratcliffe sharply; "meanwhile 'tis work, not talk, and if yonder pool is not cleared by the time I've counted ten—well, there'll be more than sheep dipped in it."

Hiram looked at him with a puzzled air. "Theer!" he said. "Th' gentry mun allus hev their little jests, an' I'll laugh wi' th' best, Maister Ratcliffe, when I find myseln a thowt less thrang. But orders is orders, th' world ower, an' when young Maister says 'at a thing's getten to be done, it's getten to be done."

"Where is your Master?" snapped the other. "'Tis a poor farmer lies abed while his hinds play."

Hiram's glance was a quick one this time, quenched under his rough grey eyebrows as soon as given. "So ye thowt he'd be here this morn?" he said. "Nay, he's noan a lie-abed, isn't th' Maister, but he's getten summat else to do."

"Has he? And what might that be?" said Red Ratcliffe softly.

"Shall I tell him?" muttered Hiram, half audibly. Then, after a pause of seeming doubt, "He's cutting grass i' th' Low Meadow," he said.

"Cutting grass at this time of year?"

"Ay, for sure. Wildwater land ligs cold, an' ye're late wi' crops up yonder; but th' grass lower dahn is running so to seed that it war no use letting it bide a day longer. It 'ull be poor hay as 'tis, an' all along o' this unchristian weather."

"So he'll not come to the sheep-washing?" broke in Red Ratcliffe, with a glance at his fellows.

"I've telled ye so," said Hiram, "an' telling ye twice willun't better a straight tale."

"I'm thinking Hiram hes a soft spot i' his heart for young Maister; I've niver knawn him tell so thick a lee afore," muttered shepherd Jose, as he went forward with his work.

Red Ratcliffe, looking down the streamway and wondering whether it were worth while to insist on his claim to the pool, laughed suddenly and jerked his bridle-hand in the direction of a horseman who had turned the bend of the track below and jumped the stream.

"Shameless Wayne will come to the washing after all," he said, and waited, stiff and quiet in the saddle, till Wayne of Marsh should cross the half-mile that intervened.

"I war mista'en, seemingly. Th' Maister mun hev crossed straight fro' th' grass-cutting," said Hiram, putting a bold face on it to hide a sinking heart.

The old man turned his back on the Ratcliffes, and his face to the upcoming horseman, whose head was thrust low upon his shoulders as if some gloomy trend of thought were dulling him to all sights and sounds of this fair June day.

"I framed weel, an' I could do no more," he said to himself; "but sakes, why couldn't he hev bided a while longer? Th' Ratcliffes 'ud hev been off to th' Low Meadow i' a twinkling, if I knaw owt.—What's to be done, like? He's a wick un to fight, is th' Maister, but there's seven o' these clever Dicks fro' Wildwater, an' that's longish odds."

Hiram stood for awhile, puzzled and ill-at-ease, watching his master draw slowly nearer to the pools; and then his face brightened on the sudden as he shuffled across to where two shepherd lads were talking affrightedly together.

"Set your dogs on a two-three sheep, an' drive 'em downhill, an' reckon to follow 'em," he whispered. "Then ye'll meet Maister—an' a word i' his lug may save him fro' a deal. An' waste no time, for there's none to be lessen."

The lads, catching the spirit of it, had already got their dogs to work when Red Ratcliffe's voice brought them to a sudden halt; for Ratcliffe, mistrusting fellows of Hiram's kidney, had marked his whispering and guessed its purpose.

"Come back, ye farm louts!" he cried, and turned to Hiram with a sneer. "Art fullish of wit, thou think'st? Dost mind how once before we matched wits, thou and I?"

"I mind," said Hiram. "'Twas when I told ye where th' Marsh peats war stored—but ye didn't burn mich wi' 'em, Maister, if I call to mind."

Red Ratcliffe laughed at the retort; for his eyes were on the horseman down below, and his mood was almost playful now that his prey seemed like to come so tame to hand.

"I'm flaired for th' Maister this time, that I am," muttered Hiram, as he, too, glanced down the slope; "but being flaired niver saved onybody fro' a bull's horns, as th' saying is, so I mun just bide still an' keep my een oppen."

The Ratcliffes passed a smile and a jest one to the other as they saw Shameless Wayne draw near and marked the heavy gloom that rested on him; for it pleased them that the man they loathed should have bitterness for his portion during the few moments he had yet to live.

Wayne did not glance up the moor until he had ridden within ten-score yards of them. He half drew rein on seeing the seven red-headed horsemen waiting for him on the hill-crest; and Red Ratcliffe, thinking he meant to turn about, was just calling his kinsmen to pursue when he saw Wayne drive home his spurs and ride straight up to meet them.

"Bide where ye are," said Red Ratcliffe then. "He's courteous as ever, this fool of Marsh, and would not trouble us to gallop after him."

"'Tis like him; he war allus obstinate as death, an' wod be if th' Lord o' Hell stood up agen him," groaned Jose the shepherd, as he left the water and joined the knot of farm-folk who stood aloof, expectant, and doubtful for their own safety and the Master's.

"I give you good-day, Wayne of Marsh," called Red Ratcliffe.

"I shall fare neither better nor worse for the same. What would you?" answered Wayne, halting at thrice a sword's-length from the group.

"Why, we would wash our sheep, and yonder rough-tongued hind of thine refused us. So, said I, as I saw you riding up the slope, 'We'll ask the Master's leave, and of his courtesy he'll grant it.'"

Shameless Wayne would never stoop to the Ratcliffe frippery of speech. "My courtesy takes no account of such as ye," he answered bluntly.

"Think awhile!" went on the other gently. "These pools were made for Waynes and Ratcliffes both in the days before there was bad blood between us. 'Tis our right as well as yours to use it when we will."

"And when we will. First come, first served.—Come, lads, ye're loitering, and half the sheep are yet unwashed," he broke off, turning to the farm-men.

Red Ratcliffe's face darkened. "The old wives say, Wayne of Marsh, that the first feud sprang up at this very spot, because it chanced that the Marsh and the Wildwater ewes came on the same day to the washing. I would have no lad's blood on my hands, for my part, so bear the old tale in mind, and give us room."

Wayne had his sword loose all this time, and his eyes, even when they seemed to rove, were never far from Red Ratcliffe's movements. "Your talk, sir, wearies me," he said. "Ye mean to strike, seven against one.—Well, strike! I'm waiting for you, with a thought of what chanced once in Marshcotes kirkyard to keep my blood warm."

The Ratcliffes were daunted a little by the downright, sturdy fashion of the man; and for a moment they hung back, remembering how Wayne of Marsh had met them time and again with witchcraft and with resistless swordplay. One looked at another, seeking denial of the folly which could credit Wayne with power to match the seven of them.

"Where is the Lean Man to-day? 'Tis strange he comes not to the sheep-washing," said Wayne of Marsh, as still they halted.

"He would not trouble," snarled Red Ratcliffe. "'Twas butchery, he said, for a man of his years to fight with such a callow strippling."

Wayne smiled with maddening coolness. "That is a lie, Ratcliffe the Red. He dared not come. The last I saw of him, he was riding hard—with my sword-point all but in his back. Well? Am I to wait till nightfall for you, or are ye, too, minded to turn tail?"

Stung by the taunt, Red Ratcliffe spurred forward on the sudden, and his comrades followed with a yell; and even sour Hiram Hey sent up a half-shamed prayer that the Master might come through this desperate pass with safety. Hiram, as a practical man and one who dealt chiefly with what he could see and handle, was wont to use prayer as the last resource of all; and his furtive appeal was witness that he saw no hope of rescue—no hope of respite, even—for his Master.

But Jose the shepherd had not been idle during that brief pause between Wayne's challenge and the onset of the Ratcliffes. He had watched Hiram's attempt to send a warning down the slope; and while the storm grew ripe for breaking, he bethought him that there were those about Wayne of Marsh who might yet serve him at a pinch. To one hand of the Ratcliffes were the ewes, ten-score or so, which they had brought to give colour to their quarrel; about the shepherd's knees were his two dogs, the canniest brutes in the moorside. A few calls from Jose, in a tongue that they had learned in puppyhood, a sly pointing of his finger at the Ratcliffe sheep, and the dogs rushed in among the huddled, bleating mass. The sheep were for making off across the moor, but Jose the shepherd shouted clear above the feud-cries of the Ratcliffes, and worked his dogs as surely as if this were no more than the usual business of the day; in a moment the flock was headed, turned, driven straight across the strip of moor that lay between Wayne and his adversaries.

Quickly done it was, and featly; and just as the Ratcliffes swept on to the attack, the ewes ran pell-mell in between their horses' feet. The dogs, wild with their sport, followed after and snapped, now at the sheep, now at the legs of the bewildered horses. Two of the Wildwater folk were unhorsed forthwith; three others were all but out of saddle, and needed all their wits to keep their beasts in hand; and Shameless Wayne, watching the turmoil from the hillock where he stood firm to meet the onset, laughed grimly as he jerked the curb hard down upon his own beast's jaw.

"I thowt 'twould unsettle 'em a bittock," murmured Jose the shepherd, stroking his chin contentedly while he watched the ewes driven further down the hill, leaving clear room between his Master and the rearing horses of the Ratcliffes.

"Dang me, why didn't I think on 't myseln!" cried Hiram Hey. "It war plain as dayleet, an' yond owd fooil Jose 'ull mak a lot of his cleverness when next he goes speering after Martha. Ay, I know him!—That's th' style, Maister!" he broke off, with a sudden, rousing shout. "In at 'em, an' skift 'em afore they've fund their seats again."

Wayne had seen his chance, and taken it; and now he was riding full tilt at the enemy, over the pair of fallen horsemen. Red Ratcliffe cut at him in passing, and missed; the rest were overbusy with their horses to do more than raise a clumsy guard; Wayne galloped clean through them, swirling his blade to the right hand and the left, and in a breathing-space, so it seemed to Hiram and the shepherd, the free moor and safety lay before him.

"Now, God be thanked, he's through, is th' lad!" cried Hiram. "Lord Harry, he swoops an' scampers fair like a storm-wind out o' th' North."

But Wayne would not take the plain road of flight; partly his blood was up, and partly he feared for the safety of his farm-hinds if he left them to play the scapegoat to these red-headed gentry. He wheeled about, and the discomfited horsemen, seeing him bear down a second time, were mute with wonder. But their fury was keen sharpened now; they glanced at the two fallen riders, trampled beneath Wayne's hoofs; they heard one of their comrades cursing at a wound that Wayne had given him as he rode through; a moment only they halted for surprise, and then, with a deafening yell of Ratcliffe! they closed in a ring about him.

"Five to one now. Come, the odds lessen fast," cried Wayne, as he pulled up and seemed to wait their onset.

But he knew that flight was hopeless if he let the full company attack him front and rear. One glance he snatched at the open moor behind, and one at the walled enclosure where the sheep had lately been herded for the washing.

"God's life, I'll trick them yet," he muttered, and reined sharp about, outwitting them, and rode hard as hoofs could kick up the peat toward the shelter of the walls.

"Is he a Jack-o'-Lanthorn, this fool from Marsh?" growled Red Ratcliffe, foiled a second time.

He thought that Wayne was trusting to his horsemanship, that he would double and retreat and glance sideways each time they made at him in force, hoping to get a blow in as occasion offered. But Wayne of Marsh had no such idle play in mind; he was seeking only for sure ground on which to stand and meet them one by one. He had marked the opening in the pinfold through which the sheep were driven, and he knew that, if he could once gain the wall, the battle would narrow to a run of single contests.

They saw his aim too late; and as Red Ratcliffe swerved and swooped on him, Wayne backed his horse with its flanks inside the pinfold. He had four stout walls behind him now; the uprights of the gateway were no more than saddle-high, and above them he had free space for arm and sword-swing. It was one against five still—but each of the five must wait his turn, and each must fare alone against the blade which, to the Ratcliffe fancy, was a live, malignant thing in the hand of this witch-guarded lad of Marsh.

Again the red-heads fell back, while the Marsh farm-folk, roused by the Master's pluck, sent up a ringing cheer. And Shameless Wayne, who had chafed under long weeks of farming, laughed merrily to feel his sword-hilt grafted to his hot right hand again, to know that he had cut off retreat and that five skilled swordsmen were at hand to give him battle.

"God rest you, sirs. Wayne and the Dog are waiting," he cried, and laughed anew to mark how they shrank from the old battle-cry.

But Red Ratcliffe, seeing his brave scheme like to go the way of other schemes as promising, lost doubts and shrinking on the sudden. Man to man, he was Wayne's equal, and this time he would settle old scores—would go back to the Lean Man with his tale, and claim Janet as the fruit of victory. A thought of the girl's beauty ran across his mind, a swift, unholy sense that it would be sweeter to take her thus, unwilling and by force, than if she had consented to his wooing; and the thought steadied heart and nerve, while it lent him fierce new strength. No cry he gave, but made straight at Wayne and cut across his head-guard. Wayne shot his blade up, withdrew it, and thrust keenly forward; and Ratcliffe parried; and after that the fight ran hot and swift.