“I will provide the money,” Ned said eagerly. “Abijah would lend me some of her savings, and I can pay her back some day.”
“Very well, Maister Ned. Oi expect as how he will take it as a loan. Moind, he will pay it hack if he lives, honest. Oi doan't think as how he bain't honest, that chap, though he did kill Foxey. Very well,” Luke went on slowly, “then the matter be as good as settled. Oi will send Bill down tomorrow, and he will see if thou canst let un have the money. A loife vor a loife, that's what oi says, Maister Ned. That be roight, bain't it?”
“That's right enough, Luke,” Ned replied, “though I don't quite see what that has to do with it, except that the man who has taken this life should give his life to make amends.”
“Yes, that be it, in course,” Luke replied. “Yes; just as you says, he ought vor to give his loife to make amends.”
That night Ned arranged with Abijah, who was delighted to hand over her savings for the furtherance of any plan that would tend to clear Ned from the suspicion which hung over him. Bill came down next morning, and was told that a hundred pounds would be forthcoming in two days.
Upon the following evening the servant came in and told Ned that a young woman wished to speak to him. He went down into the study, and, to his surprise, Mary Powlett was shown in. Her eyes were swollen with crying.
“Master Ned,” she said, “I have come to say goodby.”
“Good-by, Polly! Why, where are you going?”
“We are all going away, sir, tomorrow across the seas, to Ameriky I believe. It's all come so sudden it seems like a dream, Feyther never spoke of such a thing afore, and now all at once we have got to start. I have run all the way down from Varley to say goodby. Feyther told me that I wasn't on no account to come down to you. Not on no account, he said. But how could I go away and know that you had thought us so strange and ungrateful as to go away without saying goodby after your dear feyther giving his life for little Jenny. I couldn't do it, sir. So when he started off to spend the evening for the last time at the 'Cow' I put on my bonnet and ran down here. I don't care if he beats me—not that he ever did beat sir, but he might now—for he was terrible stern in telling me as I wasn't to come and see you.”
Ned heard her without an interruption. The truth flashed across his mind. It was Luke Marner himself who was going to America, and was going to write home to clear him. Yet surely Luke could never have done it—Luke, so different from the majority of the croppers—Luke, who had steadily refused to have anything to say to General Lud and his schemes against the masters. Mary's last words gave him a clue to the mystery—“Your dear feyther gave his life for little Jenny.” He coupled it with Luke's enigmatical words, “A loife for a loife.”