“Shoot a fox? Why not? I’m a farmer now, and I’d kill best auld red Moor fox as ever gave a field forty minutes an’ beat it. You was whinin’ ’bout the chicks awnly this marnin’. I’ll sit under the woodstack a bit an’ think ’fore I starts. Ban’t no gude gwaine yet.”
Will’s explanation of his deed was the true one, but Phoebe realised in some dim fashion that she stood within the shadow of a critical night and that action was called upon from her. Her anger waned a little, and her heart began to beat fast, but she acted with courage and promptitude.
“Let un be to-night—auld fox, I mean. Theer ’m more chicks than young foxes, come to think of it; an’ he ’m awnly doin’ what you forget to do—fighting for his vixen an’ cubs.”
She looked straight into Will’s eyes, took the gun out of his hands, climbed on to a chair, and hung the weapon up again in its place.
He laughed curiously, and helped his wife to the ground again.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now go an’ do what you want to do, an’ doan’t forget the future happiness of women an’ childer lies upon it.” Her anger was nearly gone, as he spoke again.
“How little you onderstand me arter all these years—an’ never will—nobody never will but mother. What did ’e fear? That I’d draw trigger on the man from behind a tree, p’r’aps?”
“No—not that, but that you might be driven to kill yourself along o’ having such a bad wife.”
“Now we ’m both on the mad road,” he said bitterly. Then he picked up his stick and, a moment later, went out into the night.
Phoebe watched his tall figure pass over the river, and saw him silhouetted against dead silver of moonlit waters as he crossed the stepping-stones. Then she climbed for the gun again, hid it, and presently prepared for her father’s return.