"I'll swear to keep quiet enough, my dear woman. And 'tis your sense, not your thimble of liquor, makes you want to talk to me. If not me, who? I'm the sort that knows how to keep a secret, like the grave knows how to keep its dead. I'm a friend to you and Mr. Baskerville both—his greatest friend, you might say."
"In a word, 'tis natural that young Lintern—you swear, Jack—on your Bible you swear that you won't squeak?"[[1]]
[[1]] Squeak—break silence.
"I ain't got one; but I'll swear on yours. You can trust me."
"'Twas natural as Lintern got vexed down there then, and you was lucky not to feel the weight of his fist. For why—for why? He's Nathan's son! Gospel truth. They'm all his: Cora, t'other girl, and Heathman. The mother of 'em told my master in so many words; and I heard her tell him. I was just going into the room, but stopped at the door for some reason, and, before I could get out of earshot, I'd catched it. There!"
"Say you was eavesdropping and have done with it," said Mr. Head. He took this startling news very quietly, and advised Susan to do the like.
"The less you think about it, the better. What's done be done. We don't know none of the rights of it, and I'm not the sort to blame anybody—woman or man—for their private actions. 'Tis only Nathan's public actions I jumped on him for, and if Heathman was twice his son, I'd not fear to speak if 'twas a matter of justice."
"I didn't ought to have told you, but my mind's a sieve if there's a drop of gin in my stomach. I had to let it go to-night. If I hadn't told you what I knowed, so like as not I'd have told Mr. Baskerville hisself when I got back; and then 'twould have comed out that I'd listened at the door—for I did, God forgive me."
Susan became lachrymose, but Jack renewed his promises and left her tolerably collected. The confession had eased her mind, calmed its excitement, and silenced her tongue also.
Jack tried to learn more of the thing that interested him personally, but upon that subject she knew nothing. She believed the general report: that Mr. Masterman, by secret understanding with the lawyer, was relieving the poorest of Nathan's creditors; and she inclined to the opinion that her master had no hand in this philanthropy.