"Thy next suit will be thy coffin; thy next suit will be thy coffin, Griff! Griff, lad, I've getten thee at last; bide still an' wait for thy shroud." He paused to chuckle at the flavour of his little phrase, then repeated it again and again. "Thy next suit will be thy coffin."
After a while he found his seat a hard one, and knelt in the snow to see what it was that inconvenienced him. He felt in the man's breast-pocket, and brought out a large brandy-flask, three-parts full.
"Strong, by God! It'll be a merry neet an' a warm now," he laughed, as he reseated himself on the corpse, after an experimental pull at the flask. "Shut thy din, wilt 'a!" he cried to the horse, a moment later, as the poor brute shrieked in agony.
Then he turned to the brandy again, and drank it slowly, rocking himself to and fro on the body and setting to a kind of guttural chant his two-line hymn—"Thy next suit—next suit—next suit—thy next suit will surely be thy coffin and a shroud—coffin and—coffin and—coffin and a shroud."
Gradually his eyelids fell upon his cheeks, tried to lift themselves, and failed. He rolled off into the snow, and clasped his victim tight in his arms, snoring with drunken noisiness. But the horse cried and whimpered, whimpered and cried, till the hurrying snowflakes seemed to be running this way and that in search of aid.
Up the highroad from Cranshaw, Griff and Lassie were toiling heavily. They had had a hard cross-country night of it, and both were fagged out.
"All right, Lassie, all right, girl; just to Sorrowstones Spring, to see if he's back yet, and then home," murmured Griff.
He had stopped at every inn in Marshcotes and Cranshaw and Ling Crag, and only at the Bull had he found news of Strangeways. Surely he must be home by this time.
But Lassie had her head low down and her ears set back; she was shivering from head to foot, for that cry of one of her own race had reached her long before Griff was aware of it. Every forward step made her more restive, till at last they reached the two black splashes on the snow. Griff slid from the saddle, and stooped to examine the first splash. He found his father's foe, Laverack, locked tight in the arms of the enemy he sought. Into the gloom ahead, between the sentinel stoups, pointed a little, deep ravine, where the blood had melted the snow.
He stood up and cursed the Providence that had robbed him of his right of action. He turned Joe's body over with his foot. The snoring, that had grown fainter and fainter, ceased altogether; a dull kind of grunt was Joe's only acknowledgment of the attention.