"A terribul man he be—in his wrath, fit to kill anyone belike!" she said. "All tore it be, all tore and wrenched and broke apart—powerful fingers he must hev! Ill would it go wi' man or maid that angered he and did him hurt!"
Down the road in a tempest of passion went Abram Lestwick, swinging his arms and muttering to himself like a madman, and yet at Farmer Patchams, where he worked, they counted him as a man of an even and equable temper. A foreman, he never cursed and swore at those under him. Little things moved him not; his grim, glum, gloomy face never darkened with rage. A polite tongue he had, though a slow one, a steady man and quiet, and yet he himself knew of the tempest of unbridled passion, the mad tumult that his brain was capable of.
Rarely did his passions master him before others. They had to-night, before Mrs. Hanson, but he had her wishes, he was safe with her.
"If any man did look at she wi' wishful eyes," he repeated, "by God's Heaven I would kill him!" He clenched at the air with his nervously working hands. "Get my hands on his throat and kill him, grip and crash it till the life were gone out o' he, I would!"
He stopped suddenly, bathed in perspiration, but the fury gone. She stood before him in the gloaming of the evening.
"I be come from your house, Betty," he said, and his voice was mild as a voice may be. "A pleasant half hour I did have along wi' your grandmother, Betty!"
"I hope 'ee enjoyed yourself, Abram," she said with a little contemptuous laugh.
"Aye, I did in a way, for I were talking about 'ee, Betty!"
She frowned.
"Betty!" He felt as if he were suddenly choking, he lifted those working, restless hands of his to his own throat. They made as to tear open his shirt, so that he might breathe the more freely.