“Feyther,” said David, huskily, “one day yo'll drive me too far.”
Chapter XX. THE SNAPPING OF THE STRING
THE spring was passing, marked throughout with the bloody trail of the Killer. The adventure in the Scoop scared him for a while into innocuousness; then he resumed his game again with redoubled zest. It seemed likely he would harry the district till some lucky accident carried him off, for all chance there was of arresting him.
You could still hear nightly in the Sylvester Arms and elsewhere the assertion, delivered with the same dogmatic certainty as of old, “It's the Terror, I tell yo'!” and that irritating, inevitable reply: “Ay; but wheer's the proof?” While often, at the same moment, in a house not far away, a little lonely man was sitting before a low-burnt fire, rocking to and fro, biting his nails, and muttering to the great dog whose head lay between his knees: “If we had but the proof, Wullie! if we had but the proof! I'd give ma right hand aff my arm gin we had the proof to-morrow.”
Long Kirby, who was always for war when some one else was to do the fighting, suggested that David should be requested, in the name of the Dalesmen, to tell M'Adam that he must make an end to Red Wull. But Jim Mason quashed the proposal, remarking truly enough that there was too much bad blood as it was between father and son; while Tammas proposed with a sneer that the smith should be his own agent in the matter.
Whether it was this remark of Tammas's which stung the big man into action, or whether it was that the intensity of his hate gave him unusual courage, anyhow, a few days later, M'Adam caught him lurking in the granary of the Grange.
The little man may not have guessed his murderous intent; yet the blacksmith's white-faced terror, as he crouched away in the darkest corner, could hardly have escaped remark; though—and Kirby may thank his stars for it—the treacherous gleam of a gun-barrel, ill-concealed behind him, did.
“Hullo, Kirby!” said M'Adam cordially, “ye'll stay the night wi' me?” And the next thing the big man heard was a giggle on the far side the door, lost in the clank of padlock and rattle of chain. Then—through a crack—“Good-night to ye. Hope ye'll be comfie.” And there he stayed that night, the following day and next night—thirty-six hours in all, with swedes for his hunger and the dew off the thatch for his thirst.
Meanwhile the struggle between David and his father seemed coming to a head. The little man's tongue wagged more bitterly than ever; now it was never at rest—searching out sores, stinging, piercing.