“Hark to the dear lad, Wullie! Listen hoo pleasantly he addresses his auld dad!” Then turning on his son, and leering at him: “What is it, ye ask? Wha should it be but the Black Killer? Wha else is there I'd be wushin' to hurt?”
“The Black Killer!” echoed the boy, and looked at his father in amazement.
Now David was almost the only man in Wastrel-dale who denied Red Wull's identity with the Killer. “Nay,” he said once; “he'd kill me, given half a chance, but a sheep—no.” Yet, though himself of this opinion, he knew well what the talk was, and was astonished accordingly at his father's remark.
“The Black Killer, is it? What d'you know o' the Killer?” he inquired.
“Why black, I wad ken? Why black?” the little man asked, leaning forward in his chair.
Now David, though repudiating in the village Red Wull's complicity with the crimes, at home was never so happy as when casting cunning innuendoes to that effect.
“What would you have him then?” he asked. “Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?”—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily beneath that dim, persistent stare.
“Well?” he said at length gruffly.
The little man giggled, and his two thin hands took up their task again.
“Aiblins his puir auld doited fool of a dad kens mair than the dear lad thinks for, ay, or wushes—eh, Wullie, he! he!”