Mark did not speak for a time. Then he turned his back upon the prisoner.
“Do you know who this is?” he said to the men.
“Oh yes, Master Mark, we know him. Don’t you? It’s young Darley, from below there. We was having a bit of a ramble ’fore going down in the mine, and we’d got the dogs, to see if there was any chance of a rabbit pie for supper; but they didn’t find one; they found his nabbs here instead. We had to hold the dogs’ muzzles to keep ’em quiet till he’d got by.”
“What was he doing?”
“Wading, and ketching our trout. We let him go right up to the deep water, down below where the narrows are, and we thought we’d trapped him; but somehow he managed to scramble up the side and get up here, so we set the dogs on, and they run him down. Look here, Master Mark; he’d got all these trout. Fine ’uns too.”
The man opened Ralph’s creel, and held it out for Mark to see, the lad nodding at the sight.
“Know’d where the good uns was.”
“And what were you going to do with him?” said Mark quietly.
“We had to ketch him first,” said the man, with a savagely stupid grin. “And he give us a lot o’ trouble, and we thought best thing to do was to tie a stone to his neck and pitch him in one of the holes. But Tom, here, said the master wouldn’t like it, and seeing he was a Darley, might like to make a sample of him, or keep him down in the mine to work. So we tied him tight, and was going to swing him between us, and carry him up to the gateway for the master to see. Then you come.”
Mark made no sign of either satisfaction or anger, but stood thinking for a minute or so, before turning again to where Ralph lay gazing straight up to the sky, waiting for whatever fate might be his, and setting his teeth hard in the firm determination to die sooner than ask for mercy from the cruel young savage who stood before him with what seemed to be a malicious grin upon his face.