“I can’t help ’em. I’d lend master a hand if I could. Squire Rodney’s no fool neither—’twill e’en be fight dog, fight bear—and there’s two stout lads wi’ him will make short work o’t.”
“Ye don’t think he’s like to be hurt, do ye?”
“Well, ye know, they say fightin’ dogs comes haltin’ home. He’s as strong as two, that’s all, and has a good nag under him. Now gi’e me my beer.”
“’Twon’t be nothin’, Tom, don’t you think, Tom? It won’t come to nothin’?”
“If he comes up wi’ them ’twill be an up-and-down fight, I take it. ’Twas an unlucky maggot bit him.”
“Bit who?”
“What but the Divil brought Squire Rodney over here?”
“Who knows?” answered the dame, fumbling in her pocket for the key of the beer-cellar—“I’m goin’ to fetch your beer, Tom.”
And away she went, and in a minute returned with his draught of beer.
“And I think,” she said, setting it down before him, “’twas well done, taking that beast to her right place, do it who might. She’s just a bedlam Bess—clean out o’ her wits wi’ wickedness—mad wi’ drink and them fits she has. We knows here what she is, and bloody work she’d a made last night wi’ that poor young lady, that’ll never be the same again—the old limb—and master himself, though he’s angered a bit because Justice Rodney did not ask his leave to catch a murderer, if ye please, down here at the Grange.”