"I will go with you, Griff, if you'll let me. I have not seen your wife to-day."
Neither spoke till they were well out on the moor. Griff, striving hard to look ahead, not backward, began to talk of Kate.
"She is not strong, doctor, and this has been a sad blow to her. What are her chances?"
The doctor glanced at him nervously, and fumbled with the buttons of his great-coat.
"Oh, good enough, good enough! She'll pull through all right. It's not for a good while yet, you know, and there is time to get over all this before then."
"You sound shifty," said Lomax, curtly; "do you mean there is danger?"
"Well—we shall all of us have to be careful. She is not strong—never has been since the first year of her marriage. I have attended her off and on since she was a child. The healthiest woman I ever saw till she married. Her weakness is all owing to that brute Strangeways; he led her a dog's life for years."
They went on for another half-mile, till the doctor, anxious to turn his companion's attention from his troubles, struck off into another topic.
"By the way, talking of Strangeways, do you remember the night, not long ago, when you knocked me up to go to Sorrowstones Spring? Phew, it was a night, too! I blessed you pretty heartily on the way. The old hag was dead as a door-nail, and she might have waited for me till the morning without a touch of impatience. Joe, I fancy, is of the same breed; he has taken up his quarters in the maternal cottage."
"What is he doing?" asked Griff, more from a feeling that he had to say something than from any interest in the answer.