Now he knew that it was so, but he bore his pain bravely and silently. He went out from the chalet alone, down a rugged stony slope, with the snow deep on either side, and the green ice glistening at his feet. He was thinking of the woman he loved—now when he knew he loved her, when he knew she was utterly lost to him—with strange, even pathetic tenderness.
“I have not thought much of women nor love before,” he was reflecting. “She has been the only one,” and he drew his firm lips closer, “and the only one she shall remain.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
ILL-WILL.
The ill-will between Tom Henderson and his groom Reid did not diminish as time went on. For one thing, to raise a sum like two thousand pounds was not an easy matter to the young squire of Stourton Grange; for another, Reid’s manner when alone with his master grew almost intolerable.
He was insolent and overbearing, and bought horses and sold them, often actually using the stables at Stourton for his own purposes. In vain Henderson stormed and swore.
“I’ve the whip hand of ye, ye know, master,” Reid would say in reply, with a significant look, and Henderson swore to himself many a time that this state of things should not go on.
And there was another element in his life—a dark, threatening dread—of which Henderson was only too conscious. This was the bitter animosity that the landlord of the Wayside Inn, James Wray, was said to nourish against him. Reid had warned him of this, for Henderson’s life was too valuable to himself not to be taken good care of, and with brutal frankness the groom had told Henderson of his danger.
“I say, master, ye had best look out,” he said. “I’m told, and the fellow who told me knew what he was about, that old Wray swears he’ll ha’ a shot at ye the first time ye cross his way. And they say he carries his pistols about wi’ him wherever he goes.”
Henderson made no reply to this piece of information. But it came to him also from another source, for one day he received an ill-written, badly-spelt letter from Alice, the barmaid of the Wayside Inn, warning him “for God’s sake not to go near their place, as master has sworn to have your blood if ever he sets his eyes on you, and this would make more trouble than has already been.”