"But what is he shouting?" asked Myra, as the mare's hoofs struck and slid on the cobbles and the cart seemed to spring forward beneath her. She clutched her brother as they swayed past mooring-posts, barrels, coils of rope, and with a wild lurch around the tollman's house at the quay-head, breasted the steep village street. "What's he shouting?" she demanded again.
Jim made no answer, but, letting the reins lie loose, flicked Actress smartly with the whip. Even a child could tell that no horse ought to be put at a hill in this fashion. Faces appeared at cottage doors—faces Myra had never seen in her life—gazing with a look she could not understand. All the faces, too, seemed to wear this look.
"What has happened?"
At the top of the hill, on a smoother road, the mare settled down to a steady gallop. Jim Tregay turned himself half-about in his seat.
"From battle and murder and from sudden death—good Lord, deliver us!"
"Oh, Jim, be kind and tell us!"
"Your grandfather, missy—the old maister! They found 'en in the counting-house this mornin' dead as a nail!"
Myra, with an arm about Clem and her disengaged hand gripping the light rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put forth all her fleetness?
"Who sent you for us? Susannah?"
"Susannah's no better than a daft woman. Peter Benny sent me. He took down the news to Mrs. Purchase, and she told him where you was gone. He called out the horse-boat and packed me across the ferry instanter."