“We’d best end Logie now,” said Long Murgatroyd—“Logie and its mucky pride.”
A wolfish growl answered him, though still some dread of Hardcastle held them. He had gone like “a ghost-guarded man” through these last weeks of all that Garsykes could bring to his undoing. They were many—but they lived in a country haunted by trolls and mine-goblins, and superstition was in their slackened fibres.
A breeze got up, quick and merry, from the top of swart Pengables Hill. The clouds overhead were riven apart, and the eager moon leaped through. It maddened the Garsykes Men afresh to see Hardcastle standing there straight to his height and waiting silently for what might follow.
Widow Mathison, still clutching her boy as if she feared to let him go again, ran suddenly in front of Hardcastle and loosened her tongue on the rabble.
“Where’s your shame, you hulking wastrels? Do as you like to Hardcastle when you can catch him fair—but not when he’s on this sort of errand. Ned’s all I have, and can’t you see by the drip of him that he’s been saved fro’ drowning?”
“What do we care?” muttered Long Murgatroyd. “Ned’s no bairn of ours.”
“That makes him the likelier lad,” said the widow, tartly. “And now you can all pack home, for I willun’t have you touch the man.”
Appealed to singly, there were men here who would have been pricked by shame; but they were a mob out of hand, beast-like and robbed of what wits they ever had.
“Who’s the widow to come hectoring it over us?” snarled one.
“Quit talking,” shouted another. “Let drive at Hardcastle instead.”