"Well, I for one, Nell, am fain to see the end of all this blood-letting," cried her husband.
"And art thou fain," she answered bitterly, "to see him wedded to this Ratcliffe girl?"
"Ay, even that I'd welcome, though 'tis not long since I thought ill of it. But it should help to heal the feud—and, besides, they say she is no Ratcliffe in her honesty."
"Have it as ye will. Mistress Janet is leagued with her kin, doubtless—but men do not believe these matters when their logic is a bonnie face."
"Mistress Janet is well enough; all the moorside has a kindly word for her," put in one of the Waynes of Hill House; "but what if the Lean Man has not done yet with his accursed trickeries?"
"Then we are armed, and in full force," said Shameless Wayne. "Would the Lean Man have bidden all of us to the feast, think'st thou, if he had meant trickery?"
"Ned is right," put in Rolf; "we will go to the lyke-wake, and if the feud is to be staunched above his body, there'll many a wife go happier to bed than she has done since the spring came in."
Nell held out against them still; but they overruled her, and one by one the malcontents agreed to follow the counsel of those they counted as their leaders.
"He'll not last through the day, so Janet told me," said Shameless Wayne. "Best come with me to Marsh forthwith, and wait the messenger."
"So thou'lt marry this daughter of the Ratcliffes?" said Nell, as she stood at the gate and watched her brother get to horse.