“Coming to think,” he said, “of coourse ’t is clear as Grimbal must knaw my auld master. I seed his name raised to a Major in the Western Morning News a few year agone, an’ he was to Okehampton with a battalion when Hicks come by his death. So that’s how’t is; an’ I ban’t gwaine to bide Grimbal’s time to be ruined, you may be very sure of that. Now I knaw, I act.”
“He may be quite content you should knaw. That’s meat an’ drink enough for him, to think of you gwaine in fear day an’ night.”
“Ess, but that’s not my way. I ban’t wan to wait an enemy’s pleasure.”
“You won’t go to him, Will?”
“Go to un? Ess fay—’fore the day’s done, tu.”
“That’s awnly to hasten the end.”
“The sooner the better.”
He tramped up and down the bedroom with his eyes on the ground, his hands in his pockets.
“A tremendous thing to tumble up on the surface arter all these years; an’ a tremendous time for it to come. ’T was a crime ’gainst the Queen for my awn gude ends. I had to choose ’tween her an’ you; I’d do the same to-morrow. The fault weern’t theer. It lay in not gwaine back.”
“You couldn’t; your arm was broke.”