It was Hetty's turn to show a face of alarm. "What is it, dear? I thought—indeed I know—he had a notion about me—how I was behaving—and wrote a letter to father. But that cannot matter now. Is there anything worse? I understood he had merely an account against father; an ordinary bill. It is something worse—oh, tell me! Father is riding after him! I see it in your face. What is this trouble which I have added to?"
"The debt is paid, I believe," answered Mrs. Wesley; but she shook as she said it.
"Yet father is riding after him. What is the matter? Let me see your eyes!"
But her mother would not. In the long silence, looking at her, slowly—very slowly—Hetty understood. After understanding there followed another long silence, until Hetty drew herself up against the bole of the tree and shivered.
"Come back to the house, mother. You had best take my arm."
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Wesley slept that night at Lincoln, and rode back the next afternoon, reaching Wroote a little before nightfall. After stabling the filly he went straight to his study. Thither, a few minutes later, Mrs. Wesley carried his supper on a tray. He kissed her, but she saw at once from his manner that he would not talk, that he wished to be alone.
Hetty and Molly sat upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's forehead, who—crouching on the floor against her knee—drew down the nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and kissed them, thinking her own thoughts.
Downstairs a gloom, a breathless terror almost, brooded over the circle by the kitchen hearth. They knew of Hetty's probable fate— the sentence to be pronounced to-morrow; they had whispered it one to another, and while they condemned her it awed them.
Soon after nine Johnny Whitelamb came in from the fields where for two hours he had been walking fiercely but quite aimlessly. Great drops of sweat stood out on his temples, over which his hair fell lank and clammy. His shoes and stockings were dusted over with fine earth. He did not speak, but lit his candle and went off to his bed-cupboard under the stairs.