“You were minded to spare the hangman trouble later on,” he said at last, “and so am I. But I’ll leave you to it.”
Murgatroyd began to laugh, and could not check himself for awhile. Then he put a hand to his throat, and laughed again, as a dotard might.
“I came near to hanging myself in Nita’s garter, as that terrible pranksome fellow, Will o’ Wisp, would say. And so did you, Hardcastle. What could I do but laugh? We might have been swinging together—me on one tree, and Logie’s high-almighty on its neighbour. We’d have made a bonnie picture—with Nita coming to look on.”
The farm-dogs yelped and barked across the wastes. Fear gained on the little people of the wood. The breeze sobbed and whimpered, and would not be still. And Hardcastle feared greatly, too—lest he could keep his hands no longer from Long Murgatroyd.
“Are you fit to be left, if I take your rope home with me?” he snapped.
Murgatroyd was recovering fast. “You needn’t take it. She maddened me so with her come-and-kiss, and her stand you off, and all the sick damnation of it, that I fancied a rope’s end more than Nita. That’s gone.”
“Gone, has it?” asked Hardcastle, with a sick kind of wonder.
“Aye. I’ll get my arms about her, soon or late. I promised her no less. So you run home to Logie, if there’s any Logie standing.”
“It’s stood against the Garsykes swine for years out of mind. I’m not for hurrying, Murgatroyd.”
Deep, sullen hatred showed in the man’s face, mottled with returning life. To Hardcastle it was as if he looked down into the pit of hell, seeing a lost man who would not be saved at any cost of trouble from helping hands above.