"We'd send him after you," snapped Nicholas, "for ye were the fittest couple ever I set eyes on. Go, baby, and wander up and down the moor, and tell all the folk you meet how you robbed Wayne of Marsh of honour."
"Wayne of Marsh?" she whispered, glancing over her shoulder and into every corner of the room. "Is he here, then? Here, too, when I thought I had got away from those great, staring eyes of his!"
"He's close behind you, Mistress. Run, lest he hold you by the throat!" laughed one of the youngsters, throwing wide the door for her.
A panic seized her, and without word or backward glance she ran out into the courtyard. Janet made as if to follow, for pity's sake, but the Lean Man called her back peremptorily.
"Does he not know," murmured the girl, "that 'tis madness to deal harshly with the fairy-kist? And she so pitiful, too, poor weakling."
"I go a-hunting, lads, soon as dinner is off the board," said Nicholas, stretching his legs before the peats.
Janet forgot her care of Mistress Wayne; for she knew that tone of the Lean Man's, and mistrusted it.
"Do we ride with you, father?" asked Robert from across the hearth.
"Not one of you. By the Dog, do ye think I would let any younger man rob me of the first blow? Ride in when that is struck, and welcome—but pest take whichever of you tries to tap Wayne blood before to-morrow."
"And what of the dead man, sir?" put in Red Ratcliffe. "Dick's body lies in the Bull tavern at Marshcotes, so they told me."