“Ef he was in his right, why has the Lord drownded his hoss?” he demanded fiercely. “Do ye set down, yerself.” And he clutched her wrist with his bony hand.
“Let me go!” she cried. “There’s Mr. Skindle to be saved too.”
“There ain’t no danger for them—’tis your boat what ’ud come into colloosion with trees and cattle and fences and—why, just look at that!”
He dropped her hand to scrutinize the strange object awash. “Hallelujah!” he cried hysterically. “That’s the top o’ the coach! Dedn’t Oi say ’twas a funeral coach?”
She shivered, and a cloud, coming just then over the moon, seemed to eclipse her resolution to rouse the neighbours. The sudden pall of darkness made the old man clutch her again—his own evocation of the funeral coach had frightened him. “Oi won’t be left alone by night,” he quavered and wiped a watery eye. Jinny refused to take it as pathos. “You’ll blind yourself with that telescope,” she said sternly. But inwardly she felt he was not so wrong. In that dim fitful light there was more danger to the would-be rescuers than to the party so snugly gathered round some bedroom hearth in Frog Farm. That ruddy lamplight, still brighter by the extinction of the moon, beamed reassuringly over the waters. Skindle’s broomstick-rod might have represented merely an effort to break the monotony of imprisonment—it was no proof that they had been cut off from their larder. And with the waters now calmer, the house that had stood the gale was not likely to subside in the night. No, they were probably safer where they were than if “rescued.” She must wait till the morning.
A loud thumping at the kitchen-door shattered her speculations. Jinny’s heart beat almost as loudly. So the horseman had come at last, unheard in their excitement, choosing the back door as less of a surrender. Will had escaped then. He was not water-logged. She flew down the stairs three at a time. Poor Will! Poor Snowdrop—or was it Snowdrop that was saved and was now bearing his master to the heart that would give him compensation for all his shattered fortunes? Alas, no proud cavalier waited to bear her off clasped to his breast, no smoking steed—only a tatterdemalion before whose malodorous corduroys and battered beaver she recoiled in as much disgust as disappointment, though Uncle Lilliwhyte bore in his grimy claws a plump partridge, for which he demanded only twopence.
“But the season’s over,” she murmured.
“That’s onny the tother day and ’twarnt me as killed it,” he said. “The Lord don’t seem to care about they game laws; He killed even on Sunday.”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Jinny rebuked him. “We can’t understand His ways.”
“They do seem wunnerful odd,” admitted the nondescript. “Ever since Oi was a brat Oi’ve tried to puzzle ’em out, but it git over me. Same as a man now perished in this here flood, and went straight to hell. Wouldn’t that be a cur’ous change for the chap—like the Lord larkin’ with him!”