“Hang the kid!” he retorted, harshly; “wrap it in a sack—anything. What! Do you mean as you’d waste a valuable thing like this on a brat?”
“Leave it alone,” she said, her voice changing from the pleading to the fierce. “Let go of it, Seth. You shan’t have it!” and her spare hand closed on it with the clutch—well, the clutch of a mother defending her child.
The man snarled and snatched at the fur, and in doing so turned up a corner and showed the lining of crimson silk. There was something embroidered on it in gold thread, and he bent down to look at it.
The design, whatever it was, had been partly picked out or cut away; but a portion of a crest and an initial still remained, and Seth’s eyes were glued to it for a moment.
Then, in a changed voice, he said:
“Who gave you this, Liz?”
“I don’t know,” she panted. “Let it go, Seth. You shan’t have it, if I die for it. Let me go with the child.”
“Hold your noise,” he said, between his teeth, and glancing round. “Who wants it? You may go to the devil, and the kid with you, for what I care. Just let me know where you got this skin, that’s all.”
“I got it from the gent as lives in the cottage in the hollow, Seth,” she said, drawing the fur from his hand. “He was good to me, he was——”
“He gave you money!” he said, sharply.