He looked up anxiously at the clock, at intervals, and seemed to be impatient for the noon hour to arrive. He thought Ralph would come then to his dinner. He wondered that the boy should go away and leave him for so long a time alone in his illness.
The noon hour came, but Ralph did not come.
Andy Gilgallon returned and tried to divert the man's mind with stories of the fire, but the attempt was in vain.
At one o'clock they made a pretence of sending Mrs. Maloney's little girl to look for Ralph, in order to quiet Bachelor Billy's growing apprehension.
But he remained very anxious and ill at ease. It struck him that there was something peculiar about the conduct of the people who were with him when Ralph's name was mentioned or his absence discussed. A growing fear had taken possession of his mind that something was wrong, and so terribly wrong that they dared not tell it to him.
When the clock struck two, he sat up in the bed and looked at Andy
Gilgallon with a sternness in his face that was seldom seen there.
"Andy," he said, "tha's summat ye're a-keepin' fra me. If aught's happenit to the lad I want ye s'ould tell me. Be he hurt, be he dead, I wull know it. Coom noo, oot wi' it, mon! D'ye hear me?"
Andy could not resist an appeal and a command like this. There was something in the man's eyes, he said afterwards, that drew the truth right out of him.
Bachelor Billy heard the story calmly, asked about the means being taken for the boy's rescue, and then sat for a few moments in quiet thought.
Finally he said: "Andy, gi' me ma clothes."