The gloaming filtered through leafless branches and showed him a gaunt, six-foot body turning and twisting on a rope. The body still groaned, but with lessening vigour; and there was something pitiful in the feet that trod helplessly on air, seeking firm ground.
Hardcastle got out a knife and ripped the cord across. The body tottered and swayed for an instant, and afterwards it needed all his strength to check it in its fall and lower it into the withered brackens, Then he loosed the frowsy shirt and watched the dull purple steal from the man’s face, giving way to a pallor as of death.
The slow return of life was terrible to be alone with, and Hardcastle welcomed the plea for water that came by and by. The stream lay below them, and he had no vessel of any kind; so he shouldered the half-lifeless body, carried it to the bank and ladled water in his palms as best he could.
“That’s better,” gurgled the man, when at last his choking throat contrived to swallow a few drops.
The farm-dog and the yapping fox had roused every house about the fells by now. From Pengables to Crake Beacon, dogs gave tongue, loud across the still night-air. And close at hand, in answer, came a scampering of wild things through the undergrowth. Field voles twittered, and overhead the flitter-mice cried thinly as they vanned to and fro.
In the midst of this stealthy terror of the woodland folk, the man propped against the stream’s bank began to drink greedily and to good purpose, till Hardcastle denied him more. Then they two looked at each other, in the light of a moon that shone wanly through the naked tree-tops.
“It’s you, Hardcastle o’ Logie?”
“Yes, Long Murgatroyd—and the devil of a time you’ve given me.”
“That’s good news.” The man’s slow-witted hatred, nursed in health, leaped out in this hour of weakness and release from death; “but it’s naught to what’s waiting for you up at Logie.”
A madness came on Hardcastle. The sweat of trouble he had given this lout, dangling between earth and sky awhile since, asked for a word or two in another key. His hands were itching for the throat that he had saved.