"Hard!" she replied. "Aye, I's hard, but iron melts. I'd have melted like a bit of beeswax, if you'd been strong and true and wise enough to come to me with a straight story. It's them crooked ways of folk I can't abide. Why didn't you—eh?"
She pushed him suddenly away.
"You've a bad heart, Joel, though you've the face of your grandfather, and he was the handsomest man in the dales. You've got his name too—Joel Hart! Joel Hart! A young lass once thought it was the sweetest music in the world! Shame on you, shame on you for bringing a stain on it!"
"It was stained before I got it," he replied; he was not one to take his deserts meekly. "His own country shot him for a rebel!"
"That's an ill jibe," she cried, shaking her clenched fist at him, then fell back upon her pillows unable to continue, but glaring like a wounded wild thing.
He felt that some apology, some explanation must be made.
"I'm sorry, Mistress Lynn," he began, "I never meant, I didn't mean——"
"Well," she gasped, "is that all; you didn't mean—what?"
He straightened himself, looked the old woman full in the face. He was not a thief; he had wandered from the straight path; but the crooked way was not to his liking; it abounded in pitfalls, so he forsook it.
"I own I've done wrong," he said with manly sincerity. "I was mad. Life has made me mad. It has frustrated all my hopes; it has put all its bad eggs into my basket. I lost my head in a weak moment. But that's over now. I shall not stumble again. If you've any heart to understand a man, you'll let me go now and ask no more."