"Take the highway; here is a key to the little park-gate; turn to the left, the wilderness lies that way. In its darkest place you will come upon a lake. There is an old summer-house on the bank: I will be there; if not, wait for me. You will not mind the walk?"
"No, no!"
"Good-night, then."
Storms said this and was gone. Judith went back to the public room. There the company had fallen into more confidential conversation.
"No wonder the young man is put about so," said one. "Old Jessup was as good as his father-in-law, and of course he feels it. Then there is a story going that the heir was over sweet on pretty Ruth, the daughter, and that, no doubt, has made more bitterness. For my part, I think the young man bears it uncommonly well."
"Uncommonly well," answered another. "This poaching in our cottages, whenever a young face happens to grow comely there, is a shame that no man should put up with. I shouldn't wonder if Jessup had made a stand against it, and got a bullet through him for interfering. Our young lords make nothing of putting an old man aside when he dares to stand between a pretty daughter and harm. But see how the law waits for them. Had it been Storms, now, he would have been in jail, waiting for the assizes. Yet who could have blamed him? The girl was his sweetheart, and a winsome lass she is. But Storms will never wed her now."
"Wed her—as if the young gentleman ever thought of it!" said Judith, breaking into the conversation. "There is your beer, man; let it stop your mouth till more sense comes into it."
The man laughed and cast a knowing glance at his companions. "Hoity-toity! Lies the wind in that quarter?" he said. "Well, I had begun to suspicion it."
This outburst was received with shouts of laughter, and a loud rattling of pewter. This was an ovation that the landlady liked to witness; for half the value of her new barmaid to the public house lay in her quick wit and saucy expression. Even the fierce passions into which she was sometimes thrown amused the men who frequented that room, and enticed them there quite as much as the beer they drank.
"One thing is sure," said Judith's tormentor, renewing the conversation with keener zest: "Storms has lost a pretty wife and a good bit of money by this affray."