“The lad will be at High Stellings, where you sent him an hour since. They’d never let him run a risk of dark o’er-taking him—open mines and what-all—so they’re keeping him till morn.”
“Aye. They’re keeping him. So let’s all get back to thy inn, widow, and chalk up more riches for thee on thy door.”
“There’ll be neither ale nor chalks till we’ve found Ned. I tell you he’s lost on the moor. I know it in my bones. And, whisht ye, what was that?”
Far-off she had heard the lad’s cry for his mammy, though they were deaf to its meaning.
“A peewit, widow—or a curlew, maybe. One of ours must be poaching up the fells, and started a wild-bird up.”
But soon the oft-repeated cry, as it came nearer, was plain to all, and their lanterns went bobbing up and down, each man thinking he knew where to find the sound, and each baffled constantly by the utter darkness.
Hardcastle made for the nearest light, and found himself face to face with Long Murgatroyd, who gaped at him as at a ghost and turned his lantern from the Master to Ned’s dripping figure. Then he gave a rough, unsteady chuckle.
“Here’s the big and little of it come to Garsykes, neighbours. You’ve got your lad, widow, and we’ve got summat, too, we wanted.”
The rest came crowding about Murgatroyd. The shivering waif had leaped at a bound into his mother’s arms, and Hardcastle found himself alone, confronting half the men of Garsykes. With peril came a sharp, useless sort of vision for all that made up this wild happening. The half-circle of lanterns—the scowling faces, part in light and part in shadow—the dumb, do-nothing darkness of the waste lands—they were part of a scene he looked on at, as if it were no concern of his.
That for a moment. Then he gathered his strength, as a man might pull a bow-string tight. Most of these folk were deep in liquor, and all were scathing with rancour that had grown by what it fed on since the day he paid no tribute.