“Maybe you’re no fool after all. I’ve let fresh air into a grief that was festering inward, and praise the dear God for that. They say you met three of the Lost Folk yesterday,” she went on, turning to Hardcastle after a restless silence.
“Three at the pinfold—yes. They took tribute.”
“Not of the sort they asked?”
“Not of the sort they asked,” snarled Hardcastle.
And now again Causleen knew that she had come into a haunted country and to a haunted house. They were sorrowing for their dead, slain foully, Rebecca and the Master—were tending some feud-fire kindled generations since—and the girl was wrapt away to the Highlands, where pipes were playing gallantly about the hills and moaning in the glens of slaughter. They played now about this house of Logie, but with a difference. Up yonder the strife was ended long since—the forlorn hopes that had tilted against merchantry, and bribes, and guile. They could only grieve for what could never come again. But here was a fight in the making. Hardcastle was resolute for some quarrel close at hand; and she had learned enough of the Lost Folk, as they went through their evil country, to know what the strife must mean in the coming days.
“Would you have the tale, pedlar?” said Rebecca. “I’ve need to excuse tears shed in sight of any stranger.”
“Aye, tell it.”
“I had a man of my own once—a straight lad to his height, and good at the wooing. We’d had a lover’s tiff, and me too proud to do aught but send word by roundabouts that he might come and be sorry for his lout’s ways.”
Rebecca fought with her grief again, and conquered it. The rooks cawed fitfully from overhead. A bat fluttered up and down the moonlit courtyard, and Wharfe River sang old ballads of the peaceful days under her time-worn bridge. But there was no peace, here at Logie—only the rasp of Rebecca’s voice as she went on with her tale.
“Instead of my man, there came news to the gate. Two of the Lost Folk had met him by the way, and asked tribute. He said he was Hardcastle’s man, and wouldn’t budge. And they killed him for it.”