"The last effort—save one," he added when he gained the top of Barguest Lane.
CHAPTER XXVI
MISTRESS WAYNE FARES UP TO WILDWATER
A week had passed since the Lean Man came down to drink with Shameless Wayne, a week of bitter winds that brought rain and hail from the dark northern edge of moor. July, which should have been at middle splendour, had been flung back to March, for the thunderstorm, fiercer than any that had swept over Marshcotes in the memory of man, had quenched the sun, it seemed, and had harried the warm winds and lighter airs to hopeless flight. The heather, that had been budding fast, bent drearily to the peat and kept its flowers half-sheathed. The corn draggled limp and wet across the upland furrows.
Shameless Wayne, as he sat at meat this morning with his step-mother, turned his eyes from the window and the dripping garden-trees that stood without. Never had his chance of happiness shown clearer than it had done since the Lean Man came to drink the peace-cup with him; yet the weather chilled him with a sense of doom. Do as he would, he could not shake off the influence of moaning wind and black, cloud-cumbered skies.
"I'm a child, to sway so to a capful of cold wind—eh, little bairn?" he said.
The past week had set its mark on Mistress Wayne; her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness, and wore perpetually that haunted look which had been in them when she came from her bed to rid her of perplexing dreams.
"The children are wise sometimes, Ned," she murmured. "They sadden for storm and clap hands when the sun shines—and that is wisdom. Does the sky know naught of what is to come?"
"Nay, for it lifted when I was heaviest, and now that the tangles show like to be unravelled—see, the sky scowls on me."
"But it knows—and when disaster steals abroad it veils its face for sorrow.—Look, Ned, look! There's hail against the window-panes. Dost recall that night when thy—thy father—lay dead in hall here, and they killed Dick Ratcliffe on the vault-stone? 'Twas the edge of winter then, and now 'tis full summer; yet the hail falls, now as then, and the trees sough with the same heartbreak in their voices."