CHAPTER XIX
The Shepherd's Rest
Joel Hart sat on a bench, staring at the fire in the kitchen of the Shepherd's Rest. Timothy Hadwin was bending over a basket of moss and late mountain flowers, dissecting them with a small scalpel, while he held a magnifying glass in his left hand through which he continually peered. The good dame of the inn was spinning, and the whirr of the wheels' rapid turning made a pleasant hum in the room, like the buzzing of bees. Her good man had gone to the nearest market town on business.
Outside a cold white mist hugged the fells. Little could be seen but a patch of monotonous landscape in front of the inn, and nothing heard save the thunder of the beck which was in spate.
Joel was silent, preoccupied with his thoughts or else sunk in a melancholy mood. Timothy looked at him from under his mild brows, then took a pinch of snuff, and leaning back in his chair said:
"You'll soon be well enough to go home, Joel."
There was no answer. Either the young man had not heard, or he did not want to talk.
"Aye, he's gotten on gaily," said the inn-keeper's wife, a little woman with beady black eyes and a smile that could be both kindly and malicious. "He owes his life to you, Master Hadwin. You couldn't have treated him better if he'd been your own son. But he wants waking up now. Come, come, young gentleman, look as though you were glad to be sitting in Jamie Brown's warm kitchen, and not lying cold and stark in the kirk-garth."
Joel raised himself with an effort.
"I'm not sure," he replied, attempting a laugh, "that the kirk-garth wouldn't be a better place for me. This sickness has taken all the sap out of my limbs. I feel like a rotten tree, just waiting for the first wind that blows to fling it down."