"Then promise me that you will wait one month, only one month: ask no questions; mention nothing to any living soul. And if, before that time, I do not bring you that belt back, send me to Bodmin Gaol, and let me bear my punishment."
"I promise," said Tom. And the two walked on again in silence, till they neared the head of the village.
Then Grace went forward, like Nausicaa when she left Ulysses, lest the townsfolk should talk; and Tom sat down upon a bank and watched her figure vanishing in the dusk.
Much he puzzled, hunting up and down in his cunning head for an explanation of the mystery. At last he found one which seemed to fit the facts so well, that he rose with a whistle of satisfaction, and walked homewards.
Evidently, her mother had stolen the belt; and Grace was, if not a repentant accomplice—for that he could not believe,—at least aware of the fact.
"Well, it is a hard knot for her to untie, poor child; and on the strength of having saved my life, she shall untie it her own way. I can wait. I hope the money won't be spent meanwhile, though, and the empty leather returned to me when wanted no longer. However, that's done already, if done at all. I was a fool for not acting at once;—a double fool for suspecting her! Ass that I was, to take up with a false scent, and throw myself off the true one! My everlasting unbelief in people has punished itself this time. I might have got a search-warrant three months ago, and had that old witch safe in the bilboes. But no—I might not have found it, after all, and there would have been only an esclandre; and if I know that girl's heart, she would have been ten times more miserable for her mother than for herself, so it's as well as it is. Besides, it's really good fun to watch how such a pretty plot will work itself out;—as good as a pack of harriers with a cold scent and a squatted hare. So, live and let live. Only, Thomas Thurnall, if you go for to come for to go for to make such an abominable ass of yourself with that young lady any more, like a miserable school-boy, you will be pleased to make tracks, and vanish out of these parts for ever. For my purse can't afford to have you marrying a schoolmistress in your impoverished old age; and my character, which also is my purse, can't afford worse."
One word of Grace's had fixed itself in Tom's memory. What did she mean by "her two?"
He contrived to ask Willis that very evening.
"Oh, don't you know, sir? She had a young brother drowned, a long while ago, when she was sixteen or so. He went out fishing on the Sabbath, with another like him, and both were swamped. Wild young lads, both, as lads will be. But she, sweet maid, took it so to heart, that she never held up her head since; nor will, I think, at times, to her dying day."
"Humph! Was she fond of the other lad, then?"