“And how my dear father grieved when that sad explosion came which killed poor Goodhugh, our best workman, through the folly of one who would smoke.”
“That be true enough. Yes, it be true, Mother Goodhugh.”
“You know all that,” cried Mace, with her handsome young face lighting up more and more, ignorant the while of Sir Mark’s admiring gaze. “You know all that,” she repeated, “but you don’t know that ever since that luckless day—”
“There, there, child, enough said,” cried the founder, as Mother Goodhugh stood muttering and mouthing in impotent malice at the speaker, who had robbed her of her audience for the time.
“Nay, father, dear, but they shall hear now,” cried Mace, speaking with energy, and her face flushing up with pride. “Judge between them all of you, when I tell you that from that dreadful day my father’s hand has always been open to this woman; his is the hand that has fed and clothed and sheltered her, when otherwise she must have gone forth a wanderer and a beggar upon the face of the earth.”
“Tut, tut, child!” cried the founder; “be silent.”
“Not yet, dear father,” cried Mace. “And for this,” she continued, “while he has fed her with bread, and had his heart sore with pity for her solitary fate, she has never ceased to shower down curses on his head.”
“Yes,” cried the old woman, breaking in again, “gives me bread to smother my curses,” and she shook her stick menacingly, “and I curse again. Give me back my boy—give me back my dear. When he does that, I will take back my curses and ill-wishings to myself, and bury them beneath the earth. Till then they will cling to him; and mark me, all, ill will come to this roof. It is builded on the sandrock,” she cried, pointing to how the house stood in a niche of the scarped rock, which ran right behind the building, towering up with the broom and gorse and purple heather, dotting the open spaces where the pine and hornbeam ceased to grow, a pleasant-timbered gabled house, where it seemed, with its climbing roses and blushing flowers, that sorrow could never come—“it is builded on the sandrock, but it shall be rent asunder, and dissolve in flame, and smoke, and ruin, and destruction, and then—then”—she cried hoarsely.
“Why then, Mother Goodhugh,” said the founder, “we’ll build it up afresh, for there’s stone and timber enough about for a dozen such houses, and close at hand.”
“Nay,” cried the old woman, “nay,” she croaked, for her voice had gone, and she spoke now in a hoarse whisper; “listen, all of you: the very stones of the ruins will be cursed, and all the trade, and no man shall lay hands upon them to build again, lest he be accursed himself.”