CHAPTER XII
THE SHEEP-SLAYER
I
For a week the days went at Logie as if Garsykes had no feud with it. That was the way of the Wilderness Folk, and the nameless dreads that came at such waiting times began to patter up and down the house. Storm, after staying for a night and a day, had heard the wolf-call once again, and was gone. The Master rode much abroad, and would tire two horses out between dawn and gloaming. That was his way of stifling suspense. Rebecca’s was to quarrel with the brindled cat who was her shadow and familiar.
Donald was neither better nor worse, though both by turns; and Causleen, whenever she met Hardcastle, baffled him by her chill aloofness. It seemed to him that she would rather have died in the snow than owe her life to him.
Near the end of the week, Brant the shepherd came at nightfall, and knocked at the kitchen door, and came stamping in, a gun under his arm and quiet good humour in his face.
“Draw me a mug of ale, Rebecca,” he said, “for I’ve earned it.”
“Aye, all men fancy that, at any hour o’ day or night. What have you done, Stephen?”
“I’ve shot Storm at last. A son of Belial, I call him, and he skulked to the last—got away into the brackens, but his hind legs were trailing. I’d like to have found his carcase.”
Something hidden in Rebecca leaped into fury: Storm was dear to her, as to Hardcastle, whatever his backslidings. Jonah and he had been comrades in old days, the cat sitting on his back and playing pranks with him. She had fed him by stealth, when the Master brought him home to the cupboard under the stair, had rated him for the life he was leading these days—finishing with a “there, you can’t help it, like, and get sleep and victuals while you can.”