“I’m not done yet,” he stammered, groping for the pipe that was his first and last stand-by. “What sort of fool should I be to give in just when I’m free of gaol?”
Long Murgatroyd snarled at Nita, the basket-weaver. “I told you how it would go,” he said, “when you sent three of us to take Hardcastle at the pinfold. And now here’s the token back. He knows he’s weathered the worst of us.”
“No,” said Nita sharply. “There’ll be worse to come—for Logie.”
The lean-limbed stranger roused himself. Fever glowed in his eyes and his voice was hoarse and wolfish. “There’s always worse to come,” he said, and fell back, the sweat pouring down his haggard face.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PLAGUE
Hardcastle had sent his challenge to Garsykes by the tramping man who met them on the Norbrigg road, and was quick to follow the new venture. The next day he rode with Causleen from farm to farm, and found his tenantry alert for battle. A changed mood had come to them. They knew how nearly these two had been lost for ever to Logie-side. They warmed to the hardihood of their escape from the Garsykes cavern, to their bridal-gallop over to Skipton and back and the keen, young mating look they carried. And shame was on them to remember how they had paid tribute to the skulking folk out yonder.
The last farm they came to was Michael Draycott’s, and they found him in the patch of garden fronting the house. He was leaning on a stick—a sick man and an old, till Hardcastle rallied him.
“Dying again, Michael?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say as much as that—though I fancied last night the end had come. My innards were that wambly you’d scarce believe till I settled them with a dose of barley-brew. And now I’m getting about again.”