"To be sure," cried Nicholas. "The chaise is to carry you and Dick to Saxilton. When will you be wedded, Mistress?"
"Oh, soon, very soon. And then, I think, I shall not fear Wayne of Marsh at all—his ghost cannot come between man and wife, can it? See, see!" she cried, running to the window. "A horse! But there's no post-chaise with it—how is that?"
The rider dismounted at the door and entered; and his likeness to Nicholas of the weasel face was plainer now than it had been when he talked with the Sexton in Marshcotes graveyard. Mistress Wayne ran up to him and put both hands on his shoulders, and laughed a little, roguishly.
"Did not my lover bid you bring a chaise?" she said.
Red Ratcliffe stared at her. "Your lover?—Ah, now I know you, Mistress. Well, no, he gave me no commands, for the best of reasons."
"I know," she said carelessly, moving to the window again. "He sleeps, and 'tis unkind of him when there is so great need for haste. Well-away, but I must keep watch at the window, or the chaise will pass us by."
"Dick was slain yesternight, grandfather," said the horseman, with a keen glance at Nicholas.
"Slain, was he?" snarled the Lean Man, "whose hand went to the slaying?"
"One of the Long Waynes of Cranshaw met him in the kirkyard and ran a sword through him. I had it just now from a farm-hand as I rode across the moor, and I turned back to tell you of it. Shameless Wayne was drinking at the time, they tell me."
"Well, we can spare fool Dick, my grandson, though I say it, and 'twill give us the chance of feud we've hungered for these years past. And Shameless Wayne was drinking, was he? He lost his chance of fighting his father's quarrel? That's bonnie news, lad, and news to be spread far and wide about the moor. 'Twill damp their pride, I warrant."