"I think so."
"Then I'll be after the fellow."
"No, no; you must not attempt it. You must lie still awhile. But I don't understand it at all! That cottage used to be a mere hovel, without door or window! It can't be you live in it?"
"Ay, that I do! and it's not a bad place either," answered Joseph. "That's what I went to Yorkshire to get my money for. It's mine—bought and paid for."
"But what made you think of coming here?"
"Let's go into the smithy—house I won't presume to call it," said Joseph, "though it has a lean-to for the smith—and I'll tell you everything about it. But really, miss, you oughtn't to be out like this after dark. There's too many vagabonds about."
With but little need of the help Mary yet gave him, Joseph got up, and led her to what was now a respectable little smithy, with forge and bellows and anvil and bucket. Opening a door where had been none, he brought a chair, and making her sit down, began to blow the covered fire on the hearth, where he had not long before "boiled his kettle" for his tea. Then closing the door, he lighted a candle, and Mary looking about her could scarcely believe the change that had come upon the miserable vacuity. Joseph sat down upon his anvil, and begged to know where she had just been, and how far she had run from the rascal. When he had learned something of the peculiar relations in which Mary stood to the family at Durnmelling, he began to think there might have been something more in the pursuit than a chance ruffianly assault, and the greater were his regrets that he had not secured the miscreant.
"Anyhow, miss," he said, "you'll never come from there alone in the dark again!"
"I understand you, Joseph," answered Mary, "for I know you would not have me leave doing what I can for the poor man up there, because of a little danger in the way."
"No, that I wouldn't, miss. That would be as much as to say you would do the will of God when the devil would let you. What I mean is, that here am I—your slave, or servant, or soldier, or whatever you may please to call me, ready at your word."