“I will ask him. He is with the captain yonder.”
“Why, it loathes me; but I have a shadowy idea, and I must act the part of an honest man, though it were to give the stone a new lease of devilry. And Dennis is there, you say?”
“In the coach-house, where the sad captain lies, and Mr. Brander over against him by the further wall.”
“And where are the rest?”
“The maids and Miss Royston are in the loft. She sleeps on the straw, the pretty tired lady, like a flower that has fallen with the cut corn. And the lord, for he would not have nay, has a stall below to himself.”
“He is fitly housed; and have you filled him the manger with dead thistles? Go, Betty, go—for I shall never be at peace till this about the bag is resolved.”
When he was alone once more, he sank back and yielded himself to bewildering dreaming. Here, it seemed, the second phase of his life ended and the third was to begin. What should be its nature? He could not, nor would he, contemplate the possibility of a self-resurrection to conditions similar to those he had left behind. Indeed, he had no doubt whatever that his circumstances were totally inadequate to a rebuilding of his ruined property, and what would a houseless estate be worth to him or to any one else? But, apart from that question, he felt himself quit of all desire to re-accommodate his innate wildness to the humdrum existence of a country squire. Rather a hundred times would he settle with his dear mate in some remote pasture by woods and waters, and dig his own potatoes and bake his own loaves for the little mouths that should nibble at them by and by. To reverse a familiar image, he had been a butterfly, he had been a grub; and now he would fain be a caterpillar, feeding on the green leaf, and taking the sun and the rain as his animal prerogatives. Then he found himself with an ardent longing to repudiate for once and for all his father’s scornful bequest; to heal him of his wound, and shake the dust of “Delsrop” from his feet, and, holding his love’s hand, to set his face to the wind and to the hills, and walk on and away. But how, then, could he rent his cot, or how feather it for those prospective nestlings? It all worried and confused his weakened brain. He would put it to Betty—Betty, upon whose sympathy he was learning to depend as something very sweet and personal to himself.
He opened his eyes to find her standing beside him, that very pink and white bag that had caught his attention at the lodge, swung in her hand.
“He brought it in last night,” she said, “and here it is untouched. He asked me very humbly when he might see you, for he is lost and broken, though he does his duty like a man.”
“With such a constitution, to act as he hath acted is to outman us all. Good Lord! is the thing stuffed fit to burst with the poor creature’s curiosities? Whatever her mishaps, she must save those, it seems. Empty them out, Betty, on the floor—here, pellmell, beside me; and I will test the value of my surmise. Bah! frogs and sloughed skins and bones! A loathsome collection; and she was like a flaming Dryad of the woods. Here is a rat’s skull, and here——”