The Nether Millstone

by Fred M. White

"You sometimes forget yourself, Slight," she said. "It is a failing of old and privileged servants. Your place is over at the Hall. What are you doing here? You were ever a man to do strange things in a strange way. Have you some secret here?"

"We have had many secrets together, my lady, and we may take most of them to the grave with us," said Slight coolly. "I have been too long a friend of the family to be treated like this. And your ladyship must just come back to the house at once. You are in pain."

"Pain or not, I am not going back yet, Slight. I came here for something that I had left in one of the cloister chambers, and I heard your voice. I should have thought little of that, for you are permitted to come and go as you like. But you were not alone, you had a companion with you. And I heard his voice, too, Slight."

The withered old servant looked slightly confused. Then his dry face grew hard and dogged.

"I am not going to deny it, my lady," he said. "A--friend of mine, who----"

"Is a gentleman. No mistake about that, Slight, And the voice was so like that of my poor dead boy that I almost died of the sound of it. What does it mean, Slight; who are you hiding up there? I am going to see."

"Indeed, your ladyship is not going to do anything of the kind," said Slight hastily. "Besides, my friend has gone. There is another way from the cloister chamber, remember. And your ladyship has just got to come back to the house."

Lady Dashwood sighed impatiently. Slight had been her own servant for nearly forty years, and she knew the dogged obstinacy of the man. She knew his sterling honesty, too, and how faithful he could be to a trust.

"Very well," she said. "If there is anything to tell me, you will tell it in your own way. But that voice startled me--it was like a voice from the grave. It was as if my boy had come back to me once more. Slight, if you are deceiving me----"

"I'm not deceiving anybody," Slight said in an aggrieved voice. "I leave that to my betters. If your ladyship will lean on my arm, I will try to ease your foot as much as possible. The shortest way is to cut across the grass."