Jessup rushed forward a step or two, then came back, as if ashamed of the action.
"Nay, there is no need. I'll not help you belie my own child."
"Belie her, is it? I say, Bill Jessup, not half an hour ago, I saw Ruth, your daughter, with her head on the young master's bosom, and her mouth red with his kisses. If you don't believe this, go and see for yourself."
The florid face of William Jessup turned to marble in the moonlight, and a fierce, hot flame leaped to his eyes.
"I will not walk a pace quicker, or be made to spy on my girl, by anything you can say, Dick; not if it were to save my own life; but I like you, lad—your father and I are fast friends. We meant that, by-and-by, you and Ruth should come together."
Storms flung up his head with an insulting sneer.
"Together! Not if every hair on her head was weighed down with sovereigns. I am an honest man, William Jessup, and will take an honest woman home to my mother, or take none."
Before the words left his lips, Richard Storms received a blow that sent him with his face upward across the forest path; and William Jessup was walking with great strides toward his own cottage.
It was seldom that Jessup gave way to such passion as had overcome him now, and he had not walked a dozen paces before he regretted it with considerable self-upbraiding.
"The lad is jealous of every one that looks at my lass, and speaks out of range because she is a bit offish with him. Poor darling, she has no mother; and the thought of marrying frightens her. It troubles me, too. Sometimes I feel a spite toward the lad, for wanting to take her from me. It makes me restless to think of it. I wonder if any living man ever gave up his daughter to a sweetheart without a grip of pain at the heart? I think it wasn't so much the mad things he said that made my fist so unmanageable, for that come of too much drink, of course; but since he has begun to press this matter, I'm getting heartsore about losing the girl."