CHAPTER XI
VENOM
Nita Langrish, later in the day of Hardcastle’s home-coming with the pedlar’s girl, took her way up to Logie between the melting drifts. Straight and slim she went, and an old tinker who met her on the road stood and gaped at her.
“Begosh, I wish I was younger,” he chuckled. “I’d go a-courting.”
Nita laughed at him, as if her heart were light as his, and turned once—in vanity—to be sure that he was watching her go down the hill. Then she thought of Hardcastle, of what she had heard just now in Garsykes; and an evil mood got into her blood.
She came to Logie Brigg and looked down at Wharfe River, swirling in high flood between the slender arches. Half-frozen packs of snow were riding here and there above the peat-brown waves. Under her feet the fierce waters roared and sang their Viking call of kill and spare not.
It was all in tune with her heart, as she climbed the steep rise to Logie. The trees were so thick about the house that she could not see yet whether its walls gaped wide and blackened. The man she had sent to fire it had not returned with news. He had perished in the storm likely—after he’d done his work, she hoped.
When she topped the rise, and came to Logie’s gate, blue wood-smoke was curling up from peaceful chimneys, and Rebecca stood there talking with Brant the shepherd.
“There’s a friend of yours in the Long Pasture yonder.” Rebecca’s voice was grimly bantering. “The snow has cleaned his face for him, but I’d have known he came from Garsykes all the same. It couldn’t take the rabbity smell o’ the man away.”
Again a little wind of dread stirred at Nita’s heart, as it had chilled her when Long Murgatroyd had spoken of death for one or other of them.