"My Mark wasn't much more than a picture hung on a wall to some people. Perhaps he wasn't much more to me. But you miss the picture if 'tis taken down. I never thought of such a thing happening. I didn't know or guess all that was hidden bottled up in him. I thought he was getting over it; but, lover-like, he couldn't think she'd really gone. Then something—the woman herself, I suppose—rubbed it into him that there was no more hope; and then he took himself off like this. For such a worthless rag—to think! And I suppose she'll hear his bell next Sunday without turning a hair."
"Don't say that. She's terribly cut up and distressed. And I'm sure none—none will ever listen to his bell like we used to. 'Twill always have a sad message for everybody that knew Mark."
"Humbug and trash! You'll be the first to laugh and crack your jokes and all the rest of it, the day that girl marries. And the bell clashing overhead, and the ashes of him in the ground under. Let me choose the man—let me choose the man when she takes a husband!"
Nathan perceived that his brother did not know the truth. It was no moment to speak of Cora and Ned Baskerville, however.
"I've just come from the inquest," he said. "Of course 'twas brought in 'unsound mind.'"
"Of course—instead of seeing and owning that the only flash of sanity in many a life be the resolve and deed to leave it. He was sane enough. No Baskerville was ever otherwise. 'Tis only us old fools, that stop here fumbling at the knot, that be mad. The big spirits can't wait to be troubled for threescore years and ten with a cargo of stinking flesh. They drop it overboard and——"
His foot slipped and interrupted the sentence.
"Take my arm," said the innkeeper. "I've told Gollop that Mark will lie with his mother."
The other seemed suddenly moved by this news.
"If I've misjudged you, Nathan, I'm sorry for it," he said. "You know in your heart whether you're as good as the folk think; and as wise; and as worthy. But you catch me short of sleep to-day; and when I'm short of sleep, I'm short of sense, perhaps. To lie with his mother—eh? No new thing if he does. He lay many a night under her bosom afore he was born, and many a night on it afterwards. She was wonderful wrapped up in him—the only thing she fretted to leave. How she would nuzzle him, for pure animal love, when he was a babby—like a cat and her kitten."