"'No,' retorted the ruffian coolly. 'What is she to me? The drab has come to her thieving friends again, it seems—the more fool she; for there was more than one who had a fancy for her in town, and would have taken her off my hands.'
"My father's fingers mechanically sought the knife which lay beside his half-finished basket; but my uncle Morris stood up between him and the speaker, and thus replied:—
"Massingberd Heath, I sent for you to tell you something which concerns both us and you. Many months ago, you came to us, uninvited and unwelcome, and elected to be a gipsy like ourselves. This makes you smile very scornfully; yet if you did not mean the thing you said, you lied. However, we believed you. You were admitted into what, however wretched and debased it may seem to you, was our home, and all we had to offer you was at your service. You fell in love with that poor girl yonder, and she did not tremble at your voice, as now, but trusted to your honour. It is true, your position in the world was high, and hers was what you saw it to be. Still you wooed her, and not she you; that is so, and you know it. Do not slander her, sir, lest presently you should be sorry for it. Again and again, then, you demanded her hand in marriage—such marriage, that is, as prevails among our people—not so ceremonious, indeed, as with the rest of the world, but not less binding. This we would not grant, because we disbelieved your protestations on your honour and before your God; and disbelieved them, as it has turned out, with reason. Then we fled from you and your false solicitations to the north, hundreds of miles away; even thither you followed us, or else accidentally fell in with us; I know not which. You renewed your offers and your oaths. We found, all worthless as you are, that the poor girl loved you still, and, yielding to your repeated importunity, we suffered her to become your wife.'
"'Wife!' repeated the renegade contemptuously. 'Do you suppose, then, that I valued your gipsy mummeries at a pin's head? You might as well attempt to tie these wrists of mine with the gossamer from yonder furze.'
"'We knew that, Massingberd Heath, although the girl did not know it; she trusted you, although your every word was false.'
"'She is fool enough for anything,' returned the other brutally. 'But I know all this. Have you dared to bring me here merely to repeat so stale a story?'
"'A story with an ending that you have yet to learn,' pursued my uncle sternly. You were wedded by no gipsy mummeries, as you call them; you took Sinnamenta Liversedge, in the presence of many persons, solemnly to wife.'
"'Ay, and I might take her sister there, and marry her to-day after the same fashion, and no law could say me "nay."'
"'Yes, here, Massingberd Heath; but not at Kirk-Yetholm.'
"'And why not?' inquired the ruffian, with a mocking laugh, that had, however, something shrill and wavering in it.