“It’s desolate, sir, but it’s safe enough. You’ve no call to fear the Lugg, surely?”
“Why, no, the bank’s all right!” Lanty answered, with a smile. “There’s never anything my father did but holds good to this day. But, all the same, I don’t want you at the Pride.”
“Ay, but all the same you’ll let it me, sir! It’s this way, Mr. Lancaster. Your father, when he’d made sure the Lugg was standing, he’d just time to build yon lile cot afore he died. He’d framed for a many more, but they had to bide. An’, near about the last time he was down, he says to me (I’d been a deal with him up an’ down the marsh, and he was the best friend I had, but yon’s an old story you don’t need to hear), he says to me: ‘Wolf,’ says he, ‘yon’ll be just the spot for you if ever you come to quit the farm. I’ll have been in my grave many a year by then, but my bank’ll see to you for me. I’d like to think of you in the little house, for there’s never a stone nor a plank but will call me to mind. Not but what I know you’ll not forget. I’ll never really die while the Lugg stands and Wolf Whinnerah’s over sod!’ You’ll not say no after that, sir?”
“Well, I’ll think it over,” Lanty answered reluctantly. “By the way, I haven’t had a word yet with the girl. Perhaps I’ll catch her as I go back, though I doubt it’s no use. Good-bye, and I wish to goodness you’d change your minds all round!”
He left him at the yard gate, and strode off along the road. On the other side of the Let the tide lapped tenderly. Deep in frowning thought, he was startled by a voice speaking his name, and, looking up, saw Francey Dockeray on the grassy barrier above him.
CHAPTER V
THE TOOL
He saw her for a moment poised against the brooding sky, and then she dropped down the bank to his side. They stood alone on the desolate strip of road twisting whitely between black peat, green mound, and brown sand. Midway from farm to farm they met—a fitting point, it seemed to him, for the peculiar arbitration he had in hand.
“Rowly’s at the boat, sir, if you’re wanting him,” she said politely, and he answered with a curt word of thanks. Then—“They’re in a bad way at Ninekyrkes,” he began, without preamble. “They seem gone to pieces altogether, both Wolf and his wife. It’s hard on an old couple, of course, when it comes to losing both their home and their only child.”
She looked away to the crag behind, and made no reply.
“I’ve just been round the place with the old man,” he went on, “and it was pitiable to see how he kept forgetting he’d got to go. It was like turning the knife in the wound to keep reminding him how things were. It’s hard, as I said. He might have had his last days in peace.”