"Thank you, Stephen, thank you," said the old woman, to whom he spoke--a quiet, resigned-looking person, with fine features, and large dark eyes, undimmed by time, though the hair was as white as snow, the skin exceedingly wrinkled, and the frame, apparently, enfeebled and bowed down with sickness, cares, or years; "I am sure you will do what you can, my poor lad; but still I cannot help feeling a little odd at having to move again at my time of life. I thought, when I and my poor husband, Davie Lamb, came up here to Tarningham, out of Scotland, it was the last time I should have to change. But we can never tell what may happen to us. I fancied, when I went to Scotland with stiff old Miss Moreton, that I was to be settled there for life. There I married Lamb, and thought it less likely than ever that I should change, when, suddenly, he takes it into his head to come up here to the place where I was born and brought up, and never told me why or wherefore."
"Ay, he was a close, hard man," said Stephen Gimlet; "he was not likely to give reasons to any one; he never did to me, but just said two or three words, and flung away."
"He was a kind husband and a kind father," said the widow, "though he said less than most men, I will acknowledge."
"He was not kind to his poor, dear girl," muttered Stephen Gimlet, in a tone which rendered his words scarcely audible; but yet the widow caught, or divined their sense clearly enough; and she answered:
"Well, Stephen, don't let us talk about it. There are some things that you and I cannot well agree upon; and it is better not to speak of them. Poor Davie's temper was soured by a great many things. People did not behave to him as well as they ought; and, although I have a notion they persuaded him to come here, they did not do for him all they promised."
"That's likely," answered the ci-devant poacher; "though I have no occasion to say so, either; for people have done much more for me than they ever promised, and more than I ever expected. See what good Sir John Slingsby has done, after I have been taking his game for this many a year; and Mr. Beauchamp, too--why, it was a twenty-pound note he gave me, just because he heard that my cottage had been burnt down, and all the things in it destroyed--but it was all owing to Captain Hayward, who began it by saving the dear boy's life, that lies sleeping there in t'other room, and spoke well of me--which nobody ever took the trouble to do before--and said I was not so bad as I seemed; and, please God, I'll not give his promises the lie, anyhow."
"God bless him for a good man," said Widow Lamb: "he is one of the few, Stephen, whose heart and soul are in doing good."
"Ay, that he is," answered the gamekeeper; "but I did not know you knew him, goody."
"No, I do not know much of him," answered the old lady, "but I know he has been very kind to my boy Bill; and before he went off for London t'other day, had a long talk to him, which is better, to my thinking than the money he gave him--but who is is this Mr. Beauchamp, you say is such a kind man, too? I've heard Bill talk of him, and he tells me the same; but I can't well make out about him."
"Why, he is a friend of Captain Hayward's," rejoined the gamekeeper; "he has been staying a long while at the White Hart, and just the same sort of man as the other, though a sadder-looking man, and not so frank and free."