"Now I know where I stand," said the stranger. "I came this way three hours since. There rises Siward's Cross—is it not so?"
"Ess, your worship, 'tis so. An' this cot do belong to my gran'mother. 'Tis a poor hole for quality, but stormtight. You please to go in that door an' I'll take your hoss after 'e. Us do all live under the same thatch—folks an' beastes."
The boy took both bridles, then kicked open the door of the hut, and shouted to his grandmother.
"Here's a gentleman almost drownded. Put on a handful of sticks an' make a blaze so as he can catch heat, for he be so wet as a frog!"
A loud, clear voice answered from the inner gloom. "Sticks! Sticks! Be I made o' money to burn sticks at your bidding? If peat keeps the warmth in my carcase, 'twill do the like for him—king or tinker."
Maurice Malherb entered the cabin, then started back with an oath as an old woman rose and confronted him. She, too, exhibited the liveliest astonishment.
"Lovey Lee!"
"Ess fay, Lovey Lee it is," she answered slowly; "an' you'm Maurice Malherb or the living daps of him. To think! Ten years! An' all your curses haven't come home to roost neither by the looks of you."
"No," he replied. "They've hit the mark rather—or you are playing miser still and saving your crusts and tatters and living as you loved to live."
"I be an old, abused creature," she said. "I starve here wi' scarce a penny in the world, an' your faither's paltry legacy growing smaller day by day. I'll outlast it an' die wanting food, an' laugh at churchyard worms, since there'll be nought of me for 'em to breed in."