"'Tis Bill Westaway!" she said. "He don't know as I've been away and no doubt he's found what he's pretending to search for. Slip in here, afore I let him come in, then you'll hear all about yourself."
There was a cupboard one side of the kitchen fireplace, and being quite big enough to take in Spider, he crept there, and his wife put home the door after him, but left a little space so as he could hear. And then she went to the cottage door and let in the visitor. 'Twas William sure enough, and his face was long and melancholy.
"A cruel time I've had—more in the river than out of it," he said. "I'm bruised and battered and be bad in my breathing parts also along of exposure and the wet. I dare say I've shortened my life a good bit; but all that was nothing when I thought of you, Jenny. And now I'm terrible afraid you must face the worst. I've made a beginning, I'm sorry to say." He drew a parcel from under his arm and laid out afore her the wreck of a water-sodden billycock hat, a rag of a dark-blue flannel shirt and one ginger-coloured sock in a pretty ruinous state.
"What d'you make of these here mournful relics?" he asked. "Without doubt they once belonged to your Spider, and where I found'em I'm afraid his poor little bones ain't far off."
"They be even nearer than you think, William Westaway," she said. "In fact, I've found'em myself."
"Found'em!" he gasped out, glazing with his shifty eyes at her and a miz-maze of wonder on his face.
"Found'em—not in the Dart neither; but at Meldon Quarry. Nicky is alive and well, and you know it, and you always knew it. And your day of reckoning be near!"
She paused. You might have thought she'd expect for her husband to leap out of the cupboard, but he didn't; he bided close where he was, like a hare in its form; and she knew he would.
Of course Bill Westaway felt a good bit disappointed. He cussed Spider up hill and down dale and poured a torrent of rude words upon him.
"That know-nought, black swine come back! And you put him afore the likes of me I You don't deserve a decent man," he finished up. "And the patience and trouble I've took, thinking you was worth it!"