Ben Walker and his mother exchanged glances and their faces fell, so I gathered courage and pushed my advantage.
“Go! aw tell yo’. Aw’ve known ’at yo’ tell’d him long sin’ all yo’ knew about me, an’ he put it aside. Aw’ve noan yo’ to thank ’at aw’m here to tell yo’ on it.”
“Who telled yo’?” gasped Ben, off his guard. “Mr. Radcliffe hissen,” I cried, with the ring of triumph in my voice, “an’ he towd me, too, if ever I fun out who’d peached, aw’d his permission to break every bone in his body, an’, by God, if yo’r not off this hillside before aw count twenty, aw’ll take him at his word,” and I strode with uplifted arm towards the craven that shrank away. He needed no second telling, and his mother followed him crest–fallen: and never but once again did Ben Walker, to my knowledge, set foot on the threshold he had trod so often as a tolerated if not a welcome guest.
“Whatever did ta mean, Ben?” said my mother to me, when she had watched the pair part way down the hill, to make sure, she said, they pocketed nought: “Whatever did ta mean?”
“Never yo’ mind, mother,” I replied. “There’s no good i’ talking overmuch about such things. Anyway, it’s been enough for yon’ lot an’ that should be good enough for you.”
“Aw do believe he made it,” said my mother to Mary, in a tone of admiration. And from that day she conceived a higher respect for my intellect than years of honest truth had been able to inspire.
Only once again, I say, did Ben Walker, to my knowledge, sot foot on our doorstep. He tarried in Huddersfield for some months and his money flowed like water. Then he disappeared, and it was said he had gone to America with a woman who was no better than she should be. Truth was, the Brigg was getting too hot to hold him. The men who had been in the Luddite business began to pluck up heart as the time went on and no more arrests were made. And one fine night the man who kept the toll–gate at the Brigg heard loud cries for mercy, and rushing out was just in time to see the heels of a dozen men and to drag a drowning wretch out of the cut. It was Ben Walker, and he was all but done for. Then, I say, he vanished, and for years I heard no word of him. Then one wintry night—November I think it was—Mary and I were sat in the house by the fireside, she in the rocking chair my mother had loved of old and knitting as I had seen her that was gone knitting so often that the thread seemed a very part of my own life’s warp; and I was sat smoking my evening pipe in the chair he that was gone had made to us more sacred than any monument in church or chapel, and the old clock was ticking steadily on to the bed–hour as sturdily as it had ticked for more years than I can tell. Only there was not to be heard through the rafters the heavy snoring of ’Siah as it had been heard in my father’s days. ’Siah was snoring, I doubt not, but in a bed and a house of his own, and the not too gentle breathing of Martha swelled the harmony of his own.
There came a knock at the door that gave us both a start. We had heard no footstep, and Vixen, a waspish daughter of the Vixen of other days, had not given tongue.
Who could it be?
“Does Mister Bamforth live here?” queried a voice that stirred a memory of I knew not what, but something painful, and my mind, without my willing it, was off on the scent.