“What d’ye see,” asked Rebecca—“what d’ye see, beyond that dratted cat o’ mine?”
“A leal friend, Rebecca.”
And with that she put a hand in Hardcastle’s, ready for whatever weather came to Logie. The end of the stark battle was not yet.
CHAPTER XXIV
A GAOL DELIVERY
The Wilderness Folk were aghast, in the days that followed, to see dead Hardcastle riding with Causleen, man and wife, across the uplands. Flesh and blood they could not be, for all Garsykes knew that they were buried in the cave. Yet flesh and blood they were, glad of each other and the hills.
Old superstition bred and festered in the Garsykes hovels. It was ill-luck and always had been, to run counter to a Hardcastle, whatever toll they took of those farming under him. Strange tales were bandied to and fro in Widow Mathison’s inn by greybeards of this Lost Village under the hills—tales of the ancient days, when one and another from Garsykes had held up a Master of Logie on the road and brought confusion on the settlement.
“They’ve the luck, these damned Hardcastles,” the tale would finish always. “It’s no use trying to meddle with Logie any more.”
Nita Langrish had shared their gospel for awhile. Then she had rallied from the shock of seeing Hardcastle ride home with the pedlar’s girl—the bridal-look about their faces, and both on horseback instead of lying under piled rocks yonder.
Each time she met them afterwards, her purpose hardened. She lay awake o’ nights no longer, wondering how they had won free of the cavern. It was enough to know that the pedlar’s brat was mistress now at Logie—reigning where she might have taken pride of place, instead of weaving baskets for up-Dale folk to buy. Through the weeks and months she waited, striving to put some sort of courage into her slack-set people, and telling them always that dead men of theirs cried out for vengeance against Logie. Memory of these deaths, and the way of them was too sharp at first; but fear lessened by degrees, and Nita fanned the dull embers of resentment into life.