So it was generally presumed: and yet the charge of madness was very staggering; madness being, in the first place, indefensible, and everybody's enemy when at large; and Robert's behaviour looked extremely like it. It had already been as a black shadow haunting enthusiastic minds in the village, and there fell a short silence, during which Stephen made his preparations for filling and lighting a pipe.
"Come; how do you make out he's mad?"
Jolly Butcher Billing spoke; but with none of the irony of confidence.
"Oh!" Stephen merely clapped both elbows against his sides.
Several pairs of eyes were studying him. He glanced over them in turn, and commenced leisurely the puff contemplative.
"Don't happen to have a grudge of e'er a kind against old Bob, Steeve?"
"Not I!"
Mrs. Boulby herself brought his glass to Stephen, and, retreating, left the parlour-door open.
"What causes you for to think him mad, Steeve?"
A second "Oh!" as from the heights dominating argument, sounded from
Stephen's throat, half like a grunt. This time he condescended to add,—