Jonah the brindled cat, crept into the room and leaped to Rebecca’s shoulder. He was no hearthside lover now, but wild and bridling.
“Even Jonah seems to know there’s trouble coming,” went on Rebecca. “Well, let it come, and we’ll outface it as we’ve always done.”
“There were fewer men in Garyskes then,” said the Master gloomily—“and more who were staunch for Logie.”
Rebecca glanced at him, and even her free speech was checked. She read his heart, as he could not. The odds against him had not brought this black mood, but fear for Causleen had. Awhile since she had been jealous of the girl, resentful of the gaining fear that her own reign at Logie might be ended soon. Now she feared lest Causleen’s playing with the Master should ruin all. It was no time “for furbelows and cantrips,” and how could a man fight his best with half of him wondering if his lass cared?
“You’ve been fretting to give that knee o’ yours a taste of the fresh air,” she said grudgingly. “Have your way, then, for it’s mending fast. And, of course, you’ll go a mile if I tell you the half is enough and to spare.”
Hardcastle went more than the mile. He was unused to the prison of four walls for days on end, and the wine of the crisp November afternoon got into his blood with every step he took. In all the years behind he had seldom seen Logie-land in its full breadth and splendour as he saw it now. The striding acres, wind-blown and lonely—the last sunset glow on old Pengables—the sombre forest getting to its sleep—all were like ancient friends who brought a new, swift welcome. They might be in the losing, but they were his as yet, and wonderfully dear.
One moorland track lured him on to another, till he reached the beech-wood that stepped down to Scawgill Water. Life had done this and that for him, but had not killed the boy’s romance that would linger always in this silent place of mystery, with its grave, round-boled trees, its red-russet drift of leaves that crinkled to the tread. Squirrels had their tree-top nests here, and badgers lived in the “earths” beside the stream. A great dreamer, in spite of his hardness, the Master still peopled the glen with all that country legend had to tell of water-nixies, trolls and goblins. It was so hushed a place, so instinct with underfret of the primeval life, that no man could linger here and fail to know its witchcraft.
A stifled cry sounded near at hand, and then a groaning, low and long-drawn-out. Hardcastle, startled out of his dreams, glanced sharply round. Long since a wandering tinker had come to a foul end here, and his ghost, they said, was restless time and time.
The pigeons ceased their crooning in the tree-tops. A cold and slender wind, prying to the bone, chilled Hardcastle. Far down Logie Dale a farm-dog yapped and barked, and a roaming fox took up the challenge.
Hardcastle glanced about him, and up a clearing of the wood saw a body swinging from a tree. All the boy in him took fright; but the man bade him go and see what this ghost of a suicide dead fifty years ago was made of.