"God, I'd clean forgotten the mare!" laughed Shameless Wayne.
"Did I ride hither, Jonas the fool? Well, then I'll not ride home again; rot me if I don't cross the moor afoot, to steady me. There's no horse like a man's own legs, when the world spins round and round him."
"Best bide here, an' wend home to-morn—ay, ye'd best bide here," said Jonas, with a line of perplexity across his big red forehead.
"What, to swell thy bill? Go to, thou crafty rogue—they'll be naming thee kin to the Ratcliffes of Wildwater soon, if thou goest playing fox-tricks with thy neighbours."
"Your bill wi' me is lang enow as 'tis, Maister, an' a full belly craves no meat," the host retorted drily. "Willun't ye hearken to what I tried to tell ye when first ye came here to-neet? Willun't ye be telled 'at your father ligs as cold as Wildwater Pool, wi' a Ratcliffe sword-cut i' his back? 'Tis noan decent 'at one i' your upside down frame o' body should go to a house o' death, bawling a thieves' song, likely, by way o' burying dirge."
Shameless Wayne thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and leaned against the wall, and laughed till the tears ran down his comely face. "Wilt never let the jest be, Jonas?" he stammered. "Because I've not been home these days past, and am returning thither full to the brim, thou think'st to scare me with a tale like yond?—And all the folk in the parlour are leagued with thee, thou ruffian," he went on, with a drunkard's cunning in his eyes. "When I first came in, they set their faces grim as Death's fiddle-head, and nudged each the other, and muttered, 'Ay, ay,' like mourners at a lyke-wake, when thou said'st that the old man was dead."
"Willun't ye be telled?" cried Jonas, groaning at his own impotence to drive the truth home. "Willun't ye fettle up your wits this once, an' hearken to one 'at hes a care for th' Waynes o' Marsh?"
"Naught will strengthen me till I have slept off thy liquor, Jonas—unless 'twere the chill look of the kirkyard as I pass through," said Shameless Wayne, blundering merrily down the passage.
"For th' love o' God, lad, bide where ye are this neet!" cried Jonas. But his guest was already out on the cobblestones that fronted the inn doorway.
Shameless Wayne came to a sudden halt as he gained the lower gate of the graveyard. For the minute bell, driving its deep note through the fumes that hugged his brain, carried a plainer message to the lad than any words of Jonas Feather had done.