"I must cross to Wynyates, I tell you, and I'm afraid of losing my way if I go alone. Can you find it with snow on the ground?"
"Well, I reckon I can. I've known it, man an' boy, these forty year."
"If money will persuade you, you can take my purse and welcome. I don't know how much there is in it, but if it isn't enough——"
"I don't want your money," growled the man. "I niver said a word to leäd ye to think I wanted that."
"Then you won't come?" she said impatiently.
He shuffled from one foot to another, continued his growls in an undertone, and finally started off in the direction of Wynyates.
"Ay, I'll come. Ye may be up to no godliness, but ye've got some sperrit in ye—an' that's saying a deal for a woman. Come on."
As Captain Laverack was playing whist in the drawing-room, and inwardly reviling his partner's experimental style of play, the butler came behind his chair and asked for a word with him.
"All right, Denman; it will wait till we've finished our rubber, I suppose?"