Lucy felt that an uncompromising firmness was her only chance of escape from him, and that she must not even seem to yield one jot.
“Once for all,” said she, “I will not—I never will! and, if you follow me till I die, you’ll get no answer but that. I shall soon hate you if you harass and annoy me any more.”
Then Black Morris lost command of his temper, if, indeed, he could be said ever to have control of it, and said, with an oath,—
“I see how it is: that cursed young squire has played his cards too well for me. He’s a sly beggar; but I’ll be even with him. I hate him, as I hate his father. One robbed us of our farm, and the other has robbed me of you! Let him look out, for I’ll be revenged on him either with bullet or knife!”
Turning on his heel, and leaving Lucy as white as a sheet, he set off at a rapid pace towards Midden Harbour. By and bye he turned back, and overtaking her, glared in her face with a passion simply diabolical, and said,—
“That proud fool of a father of yours thinks a precious deal about you. I asked him, like a man, to let me court you, and he said he’d rather see you dead and in your grave. Tell him he may live to do it. Let him look out,” said he, stamping with rage. “Curse him! I’ll have my revenge;” and again he dashed away, this time in the direction of the Red Lion.
Lucy, more dead than alive, sped homeward on the wings of fear, and on reaching her threshold fell into a dead swoon in her father’s arms.
When she had recovered she told Nathan Blyth all the events of the night. He vainly wished he could recall his needlessly angry words to Black Morris, for he saw to what danger and trouble he had exposed his darling, from the hands of one who threatened to be such a reckless and implacable enemy.
That self-willed and headstrong young fellow found at the village alehouse a number of suspicious characters, with whom he had already had too great an intimacy. Just now he was ripe and ready for any extreme of lawlessness to which they could tempt him; so, after plying him with strong liquors, they promised to aid him in his revenge. The last remnant of his self-control was gone. He became the repository of criminal confidences from which in many a sober moment afterwards he found no way of escape. His descent was now rapid; his harsh and ungenial father often quarrelled with him; even his mother—the only being who had any moral control over him—was unable to exert any restraining influence, and Black Morris was fairly launched on that sea of depravity which, except for God’s miracles of mercy, will engulf all who embark on its treacherous flood.
By and bye his name began to figure often and definitely as one of a lawless gang. It was soon rumoured abroad that certain local deeds of outrage and wrong had Black Morris for an aider and abettor, and it is to be feared that there was, in some cases at least, sufficient ground for the report.