The old woman was so crazed with her secret that she would have spoken in the shadow of the gibbet. Ramblingly and incoherently, with many breaks for tears and protestations and self-accusation, she told her story.
‘I’ve killed her, Dick. But it was for your sake and hers as I done it. I reckon they’ll hang me, an’ it’ll serve me right.’ She besought him not to betray her, and, in the same breath, announced her intention to surrender herself at once to the parish constable; and, indeed, between fear and remorse and sorrow for the hopeless love she had striven to befriend, was nearly mad. Dick heard her with such amazement as may be best imagined, and suddenly, with a cry that rang in her ears for many a long day afterwards, ran from her and scaled the stairs to Julia’s room, led thither by the sound of Mrs. Mountain’s weeping. The old woman stared, as well she might, at the intrusion, with a wonder which for a moment conquered sorrow. He went straight to the bed, and leaned over the stark figure upon it.
‘She’s not dead yet,’ he said, more to himself than to the grief-stricken mother. Mrs. Mountain heard the words, and clutched his arm. He turned to her. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll save her.’ The wild hope in the mother’s eyes was terrible to see. ‘I love her,’ said Dick. ‘You will trust me? Do as I bid you, and you shall have Julia back in an hour.’
Samson Mountain meanwhile wandered in the same purposeless fashion about the farm, and held dumb converse with himself. He was a rough man, something of a brute—a good deal of an animal—but animals have their affections, and he loved Julia as well as it was in his nature to love anything. It was ingrained in him by nature and by years of unquestioned domination to bully and browbeat all defenceless people; but Julia, the most defenceless of his surroundings, had been treated always with a lighter hand. Childlike, she had taken advantyage of her immunity in many little ways, and though Samson had never forborne to bluster at her girlish insubordination, he rather liked it than not, and relished his daughter’s independence and spirit. Julia was the only creature in the household who dared to hold her own against him. He was proud of her beauty and what he called her ‘lurning,’ and, more or less grumblingly, petted her a good deal, and would have spoiled her had she been of spoilable material. But till this heavy blow fell he had never sounded the depths of his own affection for her. The suddenness of the blow stunned and bewildered him. He remembered his words to Dick during their stormy interview in the road, when he had said that he would rather see Julia dead than married to him. Had Providence taken him at his word? He did not say it, he did not even think it consciously, but he would have submitted to almost any conceivable indignity at the hands of Abel Eeddy himself, to have felt his daughter’s arms about his neck again. Little incidents of Julia’s past life were fresh and vivid in his memory. He had forgotten many of them, years ago, but they sprang up in his mind now, like things of yesterday.
He had wandered back to the front of the house, and sat upon the rustic bench beside the porch, with his elbows propped upon his knees, and his eyes hidden in his shaking hands, when a voice fell on his ear.
‘Neighbour!’
He raised his head. Abel Reddy stood before him.
With something of the old instinct of hatred he had believed to be unconquerable he rose and straightened himself before the hereditary enemy.
‘Neighbour,’ said Reddy again. The word was pacific, but Mountain’s blurred eyes, dim with pain and dazzled by the sunlight, could not see the pity in his old enemy’s face, and he waited doggedly. ‘It’s come to my ears as you’re i’ sore trouble. So am I. Your trouble’s mine, though not so great for me as it is for you, I was wi’ Dick when he heard o’ your daughter’s danger, an’ what I’d suspected a long time I know now to be the truth. I did my best to keep ‘em apart—it was that as Dick was going to London for. It seemed to behove me to come to you and offer you my hand i’ your affliction. I take shame to myself that I didn’t mek an effort to end our quarrel long ago. We’re gettin’ on in life, Mr. Mountain, and we’ve got th’ excuse o’ hot blood no longer.’
Therewith he held out his hand, and Samson, with hanging head, took it with a growl, which might have been anathema or blessing. And as the life-long enemies stood so linked, a window was suddenly opened above, and Mrs. Mountain’s voice screamed to her husband,