"She's been saved all along by her devotion to one thing, her family—her father and two brothers. She must have given her father up pretty completely by now, seeing that it was hopeless; but her small brothers—why, they are the key to the whole thing! If it weren't for them she wouldn't be where she is to-night, and, as I have said, if the elder one had known anything about it he wouldn't have allowed it, but he's away on a foreign station and Bobby's too young to understand.
"She was always very independent in the village, keeping to herself. Not being rude to people, you understand, but making no real friends. She simply lived for those two boys, and she had to work so hard that she had no time for friends. She knew that I loved her—I had told her often enough. She saw more of me than of any one else, and she would allow me to do things for her sometimes, but even with me she kept her independence. To-night is the very first time in both our lives that she has begged me to do anything!"
He stopped for a moment. "By God!" he cried, "if I can't help her to-night I'll finish myself; there'll be nothing left in life for me!"
"We will help her," Harkness said. "Both of us. But go on. Time's advancing. I mustn't miss my appointment."
"No, by Jove, you mustn't," said Dunbar. "Everything hangs on that. Well, to get on. It didn't take me very long to see what Crispin was doing to her father, and one day she went up to see him alone and begged him to be merciful. She says that he was charming to her and that she hated him worse than ever.
"He promised her that he would stop her father's drinking, and, of course, he didn't keep his promise, but made Tobin drink more than ever.
"It was round about Christmas that these things happened, and just about this time all sorts of stories began to circulate about him. He suddenly left, came over to Treliss, and took the White Tower where you're going to-night. After he had gone the stories grew in volume—the most ridiculous things you ever heard, about his catching rabbits and skinning them alive and holding witches' Sabbaths with his Japs—every kind of fantastic thing. And all the women who had gone to see his pretty things and raved about him when he first came said they didn't know how they 'ever could have seen anything in him,' and that he deserved imprisonment and worse.
"It was now that I discovered that Hesther was desperately worried. I had known her all my life and had never seen her worried like this before. She lost her colour, was always thinking about other things when one spoke to her, and, several times, had been crying when I came upon her. Naturally I couldn't stand this, and I bullied her until I got the truth out of her. And what do you think that was? Why, of all the horrible things, that the younger Crispin had asked her to marry him, and that all the time her blackguard of a father was pressing her to do it.
"You can imagine what I felt like when I heard this! I cursed and swore and blasphemed and still couldn't believe that she was in any way taking it seriously until, when I pressed her, I found that she was!
"She was always as obstinate as sin, had her own way of looking at things, made up her own mind and stuck to it. She didn't hate the son as she hated the father, although she disliked the little she'd seen of him well enough; but, remember, she knew very little about marriage. All her thoughts were on those two boys, her brothers.