Joe thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tried to assume an air of ease; but he did not feel at home with the situation.
"Well, here I stand, my masterful lady; I'm hearkening."
"You have a wife who is a hundred times too good for you; she falls ill through no cause whatever but your treatment of her, and then—you drink the wine which I brought to strengthen her."
"It's a lie!" cried Joe, his face blackening.
"Is it a lie, Joe Strangeways?" said the old lady, that merciless eye of hers driving his own under shelter.
There was a pause; then, "Who telled ye?" he blurted out. "War it Kate?"
"No, it was not Kate. You think me mad, you people hereabouts—oh yes, I know all about it—but, let me tell you, I can see as far as my neighbours into the heart of a stone wall. I am not a fool, my man, and I guessed well enough what would happen if a drunkard and a bottle came together."
Joe's face grew blacker than ever. He half removed one hairy fist from his pocket.
"An' who are ye, I'd like to know, to come telling a man he's a drunkard?"
Mrs. Lomax straightened herself and grasped her stick by the middle.