"Old chap 'av?" Tom's face, expressive as was natural to one who helped out his words with gesture, showed a deepening interest. "You don't mean it? Why do 'ee think so?"
Thus encouraged she plunged into her tale and, though she told it in rambling fashion, with discursions and superabundant detail, it was convincing. The interpretation Isolda put on Byron's sleep-walking was one Tom could accept. Simple and primitive, such a deed did not seem to him impossible. It was wrong, it was wicked, but it might happen and his wife told him that it had. Poor Sabina, and she had had no idea what sort of a man she was marrying and what she was bringing on herself! A black heart if ever there was one, but what could you expect? Tom was visibly moved. He punctuated his wife's tale with exclamations of ruth and horror but he did not feel it as deeply, as emotionally, as she. Mrs. Tom thought of Byron vindictively and with a personal animus. She would have been glad to see him taken to gaol, to have had him hanged; but to Tom he was still what he had always been—an intruder. The willingness to ''eave 'alf a brick' at his head had been there from the beginning and Tom was of those who wait and do not trouble but who, if the opportunity occurs, will seize it.
"Well, do seem funny, sure, mother," he said as his wife made an end. "Nothin' 'scapes your eyes, I knaw."
But Mrs. Tom wanted more than generalities. "What should you do?"
"If 'e done it, 'twas tarr'ble wicked of'n."
"Tarr'ble, sure."
"But 'tis done now," he said slowly. "Poor S'bina can't be fetched back."
She caught at the suggestion. "I only wish she could then. 'Twould be a great blow for'n."
"Iss, 'twould, and any'ow if 'e've done what you think 'e 'av, she'll surely haunt'n."
"I don't believe 'e'll care even if 'e is haunted." In her desire for tangible punishment she showed a waning faith in other influences.