She passed a hand across her eyes, while Ratcliffe's fellows glanced at him with frank amazement.
"'Twas Nell, not I, he asked for?" she said. "Are you sure, sir, that my name did not pass his lips?"
"Sure, quite sure. Pish! We've taken trouble enough, and now we'll leave thee to it. Go thyself if it pleases thee—but thou'lt rob the dying of his last wish if thou dost not hurry straight to Marsh and bring his sister to the boundary-stone."
She halted a moment, then went with slow steps down the highway. And he who rode on Ratcliffe's left turned questioningly to him.
"What fool's game is this?" he asked.
"Nay, 'tis a wise man's game, thou dullard. I tell thee, Wayne may come straight home to Marsh, and meet us; we'll run no hazard that can be escaped. Nay, by God! This little want-wit will do our work for us, and bring Mistress Nell three parts of the way without our lifting hand or foot—and think how that will lighten one of our saddle-cruppers. We have Wayne safe, I tell thee, and we'll risk naught."
Mistress Wayne was out of sight now, carrying a heart that was heavier for the knowledge that Ned had no thought of her in his last hour. A strange jealousy had wakened in her; why should it be Nell, not she, who was to soothe him at the last? She had loved him, surely, better than any friend he had—and now it was Nell, Nell only, whom he wanted. Well, she would bring her.
Not for the first time did this frail woman wonder bitterly why she had been doomed to return to her right mind; yet never, amid all the remorse that had followed her awakening, had she felt one half the numbing sense of loneliness that went with her now.
"He is gone," she repeated for the twentieth time, as she went over Worm's Hill, and down Barguest Lane, and in at the Marsh gateway.
Hiram Hey, meanwhile, had returned from pursuit of the Ratcliffe farm-folk to find that his betters likewise had given up the chase as hopeless. The four lads, indeed, would have ridden to the gates of Wildwater had not Shameless Wayne compelled them to turn back; and now they were gathered round the washing pool, chattering like magpies, while the yokels straggled back in twos and threes, and the dogs returned to their masters with frolic in one eye and shamed expectancy of rebuke in the other. The moor was dotted white with sheep, some standing in bewildered groups, some browsing on the butter-grass that grew at the fringes of the bogs. Wayne of Marsh was eyeing his brothers with a fatherly sort of care, seeking for wounds on them before he dressed his own.