And then I got at him with the questions.
"The mother will be sitting all day and not greeting terrible," says he, "and Betty will be oching and seching like a daith in the house; and I came to be telling you—and he will have the thin sword with him."
And the lad lisped and boggled at the English, till I shook the Gaelic into him—and there was the story.
It would be two nights ago that Bryde McBride came into the loft where the halflin was sleeping, and bade him dress.
"He would be all in his good claes," said the lad, "and the sword on him," and he told me how the two of them had carried a kist through the hill and down behind the Big House—"there would still be a light in the young leddy's chamber," for Bryde McBride had stood looking at it, and talking in the Gaelic. "And," said the lad, looking over his shoulder half fearfully, "he said, 'If ever there is a word comes out of your mouth about this, Homish, I will be ramming three feet o' blue steel through your gizzard,' and we would be carrying the kist down to the herrin' slap (Bealach an agadan) and to the shore. There was a skiff lying there all quiet and three men waiting, and when we would be among them they took the kist, and wan of the sailors wass saying they would be in Fowey soon, but the master turned on me, and he had money for me.
"'You will be minding the place until I come back to you,' he said, 'or I'll reive the skin from you for a bridle,' and he made me go away from the rocks and to be going back, but I lay among the trees, and I would be seeing the men put the kist on board, and then they rowed away with the master sitting at the stern and looking back, for I would be seeing his face white in the moon," and at that the poor lad was so near the greetin' that I took him to the kitchen for a meal of meat, and it all came plain to me as I sat there among the serving bodies and the dogs.
I minded the way the boy had taken the sword from me, as he lay in his bed. "This will be clearing the way," he had said, and now he would be started to the clearing, and then there was Margaret.
"You will not be bringing her here again, for I am not strong enough lying here."
That would be at the time he would be lying with Hugh's sword-stroke in his thigh, and calling himself a misbegot, and not fit to be speaking to decent folk. And I minded the pride of him, and kent the very feelings that had sent him away, but I was wishing he could have stayed for all that, for his mother's sake.
At that time I had no word of what had happened at the ford of the burn at Lagavile, or that Mistress Helen in her rage had turned Margaret's words to her own purpose, but that I got later from Margaret herself.