“Zounds!” whispered the latter to his silent inquiry. “The beggar is half off his head with life-long brooding over his grievance. The loss occurred in ’76, when I was a child—a brat of two or so. He was a young man when his father died, and I had the story fifty times from Ned here before I was out of my teens. His long face is one of my first remembrances. The families were connected, and he played off the privileges of cousinship upon me to the hilt, by Gad!”
“He spoke of me as a neighbour.”
“And that he is, in a way. He settled, when he retired from the service, in Winchester, where his regiment used to lie. And there he eats out his heart, like Sir Thingumbob in the Tower, planning what he would have done if the old stone had rounded off his jointure. It was valued at £70,000, if you can believe him.”
“A melancholy story. How the wind rises!—And who was the gallows-bird he referred to?”
CHAPTER XIV.
Sir David ladled out into fresh glasses from the dregs of the jorum.
“A toast!” said he, the leaping candle-light making a shifting grotesque of his wholesome young face. “Here’s to the memory of the last tenant o’ ‘Delsrop,’ and the health of the new one!”
“With all my heart. How was the beggar called? He hath entailed me a legacy of weeds. Was he the gallows-bird?”
The visitor spoke in jest, and was surprised to have, “Aye, that he was,” for answer.
“Great heavens!” he exclaimed.