While Conal was there he would dominate, convert him into the shaking, shrieking thing McNab became when the fear of violence, or a violent death, took possession of him; but afterwards, when Conal was gone, his brain would get to work—that cunning brain of his, quickened by a sense of his injuries and his spluttering, passionate fear and hate of the man who had humiliated and thwarted him. Deirdre wondered how it would fare with Conal then, whether McNab would outwit him. He would try. He was made that way—McNab—to scheme out of holes and corners. If Conal would have to reckon with him in the end, she realised that it would have been better to let the reckoning be now, before any further mischief was done. Yet her mind shuddered at the thought. She knew that she had meant to delay it.
When Steve came shambling into the yard, blinking at the sunlight, she told him that Conal had returned and that he had gone down to the Black Bull, but would be back by the evening.
He exclaimed all the morning about Conal's coming, and had a thousand questions to ask. Where had Conal been? What had he been doing? Why was it he had gone off the way he did without saying a word to anybody? All of which Deirdre had not thought to ask. But they talked about Conal all the morning. Steve came in from cutting ferns for the cow-shed to ask if Conal was going to stay long. What was he going to do? Was he going up to the trial? Had she told him what McNab had said to them?
Deirdre wanted to be very busy all day so that the time would not seem long till Conal returned.
Steve with his questions made a little current of joyous excitement. Ordinarily the days were very still and empty. She swept and dusted, cooked their food, washed the dishes and sewed, with latterly only anxious thoughts to occupy her mind.
"How is he lookin'—Conal?" Steve asked, coming to the door when she was beating cream into butter in a delft bowl. He had come in as the idea for a new question occurred to him.
"Oh, well," she said, "but he'd been riding hard and was tired out. I think he's a bit thinner than he used to be, and he was awfully hungry."
"You gave him a drop of grog?" he asked, anxiously.
Deirdre nodded.
"He was wet through. I thought he'd have his death of cold to-day."