She took his face between her two hands and turned it towards the picture of the monk Anthony standing with crossed arms, a strange light round about him.
“It’s like some beautiful old legend,” she continued. “Sir Percival couldn’t have killed him. You know his body was never found. It was said that as he lay there, bleeding from his wounds, Saint Aldys had suddenly appeared and had lifted him up in his arms as if he had been a child and had borne him away. He has been asleep all these years in the bosom of Saint Aldys; and now he is come back. It must be he. The likeness is so wonderful and it is his very name, Anthony Strong’nth’arm. They were here before we came—the Strong’nth’arms—yeomen and squires. He is come to lift them up again. And I am going to right the old wrong by helping him and loving him.”
“Have you told all that to the guv’nor?” he asked with a grin.
“I’m not sure that I won’t,” she answered. “It’s all in Dugdale. Except about his coming to life again.”
“It’s his turning up again as a solicitor that will be your difficulty,” Jim suggested. “If he’d come back as a curate——”
“It wouldn’t have been true,” she interrupted. “It was the church that ruled the land in those days. Now it is the men of business. He’s going to make the valley into one great town and do away with slums and poverty. It was he who made the docks and brought the sea, and linked up the railway. He comes back to rule and guide—to make the land fruitful, in the new way; and the people prosperous.”
“And himself a millionaire, with a seat in the House of Lords,” quoted her brother.
“So did the old churchmen,” she answered. “As Anthony, the monk, he would have become a cardinal with his palaces and revenues. A great man is entitled to his just wages.”
Jim had risen, he was pacing the room.