CHAPTER XIII
WILL O’ WISP
I
Near dusk of the quiet November day a man came into Widow Mathison’s inn at Garsykes and called for a quart of home-brewed.
“Can you pay?” asked the widow, with her buxom, loose-lipped smile.
For answer the man took a handful of silver from his pocket and laid it on the table.
“That’s right enough, and no offence meant. Time was when I chalked the tally up on my door—but I tired o’ that.”
“You would—from all I hear of Garsykes.”
“Oh, they’re free enough with their money when they have any. It’s just that they seldom have.”
The widow, after bustling to serve him, went on with her interrupted dusting of the china dogs on the mantel, till curiosity got the better of her.
“Have you travelled far, like?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Not so very,” chuckled the stranger, “though I came near to going a very far way.”
“You don’t say, now.”
“Aye, but I do say.”
“And where might it be you nearly went?”
“Well, as you ask me—hell.”
The stranger chuckled afresh as he buried his head in his pewter-pot. And Long Murgatroyd came striding in.
“Dry, Murgatroyd?” asked the widow.
“Like a kiln.”
“I never knew a man so punctual, as you might say, to a thirst. Tend it, you do, as a woman tends her babby.”
Long Murgatroyd was in one of his better moods, and gave as much as he took in the way of banter before settling himself in the corner by the ingle-nook. Then he glanced at the stranger.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“Bless me, the landlady was putting that same question to me a minute since.”
“Aye,” snapped the widow, “and all the answer I got for my trouble was that he’d nearly journeyed further than he relished—journeyed to——”
“You needn’t be squeamish. Hell was what I said—if there is such a place.”
Murgatroyd turned on him with a sudden snarl. “There is. I don’t need to travel, for I’m in it.”
The door was pushed open again, and two more Garsykes Men came in, bringing the smell of a soft, wet breeze across the stale sawdust of the tavern floor.
They in turn glanced curiously at the stranger, but he forestalled them.
“I’m going to be first with a question this time. Is it true that such as me is safe in Garsykes?”
“That all depends,” said Murgatroyd, recovering his good humour. “Have you done aught again the law?”
“A tidy bit in my time.”
“Such as?” growled one of the late comers.
“Well, the last thing I did, as I said, was to come nearer Kingdom Come than ever I’d been in my life. A running post-boy was due, not a hundred miles from where we’re sitting, and I wanted what he’d got.”
“That was no more than reasonable, as you might say.”
“He’d got more than I bargained for—a pistol and a spirit of his own. I closed with him just in time—and here’s the mark of the bullet where it grazed my neck.”
They saw the red weal he turned to them, then glanced at the silver he had thrown on the table.
“Was that all you got for your trouble?” asked Murgatroyd. “You’re not safe here, my lad, if you show the silver and keep the guineas hid.”
The stranger got up, and clapped his empty pockets, and bade the men search him; but his rueful smile made it clear that he was hiding no ill-gotten gains.
“I was searching for the guineas when a man galloped over the hill—a big man—and spat a pistol at me as I ran. That bullet, too, touched me—on the leg this time. So I took cover, and headed straight for Garsykes.”
The three men laughed, and so did Widow Mathison.
“You did right,” said the widow. “By what you say, it was our masterful Man o’ Logie rode at you; but even he durst not come seeking you in Garsykes. We’re seeking him instead.”
“Carried a pistol, did he?” grumbled Murgatroyd. “Well, there’s one boast gone from Logie. The Master said he’d face us all with no more than his two fists and a stick to help him.”
The stranger called for bread-and-cheese and another pot of ale.
“Why are you seeking him?” he asked lazily.
“Because he’s too big for his boots, and always was. So now he’s got all Garsykes against him.”
“Then he’s wise to carry a pistol, I should say.”
“He swore he wouldn’t.”
“Aye, but I’d have found a quick change o’ mind myself—if Garsykes pressed me.”
Murgatroyd eyed him with sombre doubt. “What’s you’re name when you’re at home, my lad? You seem to know a lot about Garsykes.”
“I haven’t a home. That’s why I’m known as Will o’ Wisp.”
“The Master of Logie touched you with a bullet—and you sit grinning there as if he’d given you ale and crumpets.”
“I never cry over spilled luck. That’s what the road teaches a free-striding man. Besides, there was comfort met me on a little, grey brig o’ stone.” The man’s eyes twinkled with random, inborn gaiety. “I never saw such a lass in my life—slim and like a posy, and she was weaving a basket.”
Long Murgatroyd stirred restlessly, but his neighbour kicked him by stealth and whispered in his ear.
“That would be Nita,” said the widow—“Nita, the basket-maker, as we call her. Poor bairn, she was left an orphan——”
“That doesn’t trouble her now,” broke in Will o’ Wisp, with his heedless laugh. “She smiled so kindly as I went by that I asked the way to Garsykes. And it ended with my sitting on the brig beside her.”
“It does,” said Murgatroyd, heavily. “It always ends like that.”
Again his shin was kicked, and Widow Mathison took up the tale they were spinning round the stranger like a web.
“She’s of the better sort, you see, and our Garsykes Men are rough. No wonder that she smiled at the likes of you. I’d have done as much myself when I was younger.”
“The widow’s right. Nita’s too trim a lass for such as us. That’s why she looks over our heads when we think o’ courting.”
“You don’t court properly, then,” said Will o’ Wisp, with a wink of infinite zest and roguery. “There’s three ways of courting a pretty wench, and only three.”
“Oh, aye?”
“The first is, be sure of winning. So’s the second. And the third——”
“What’s the third?” prompted Widow Mathison.
“Be sure of winning,” Will o’ Wisp chuckled, and buried his face in the pewter-pot.
He was so pleased with the hum of laughter that answered his idle pleasantry—pleased to be safe among Lost Folk again after hunger and thirst among the righteous—and his tongue wagged freely.
They plied him with strong ale that night, and Murgatroyd, when he left him sleeping on the long-settle, went laughing out of the tavern door. He would watch another go through what he had suffered—would watch, and gloat.
Murgatroyd glanced up the grey fells, as he swayed unsteadily for a moment when the breeze found the ale in him. Then he strode up to his cottage under Scummer Rigg.
“Will o’ Wisp courts Will o’ Wisp,” he muttered, with a big, joyous hiccough. “The devilment there’ll be in Garsykes.”