“What have you done?” she cried aloud. “Tell me the worst of it, an’ how gert a thing he’ve got against you.”
“Bide quiet,” he answered. “I’ll tell ’e, but not on the public road. Not but he’ll take gude care every ear has it presently. Shut your mouth now an’ come up to our chamber arter breakfast an’ I’ll tell ’e the rights of it. An’ that dog knawed an’ could keep it close all these years!”
“He’s dangerous, an’ terrible, an’ strong. I see it in your faace, Will.”
“So he is, then; ban’t no foxin’ you ’bout it now. ’T is an awful power of waitin’ he’ve got; an’ he haven’t bided his time these years an’ years for nothin’. A feast to him, I lay. He’ve licked his damned lips many a score o’ times to think of the food he’d fat his vengeance with bimebye.”
“Can he taake you from me? If not I’ll bear it.”
“Ess fay, I’m done for; credit, fortune, all gone. It might have been death if us had been to war at the time.”
She clung to him and her head swam.
“Death! God’s mercy! you’ve never killed nobody, Will?”
“Not as I knaws on, but p’r’aps ban’t tu late to mend it. It freezes me—it freezes my blood to think what his thoughts have been. No, no, ban’t death or anything like that. But ’t is prison for sure if—”
He broke off and his face was very dark.