He went away, and Hetty watched him as he crossed the farmyard; her cheeks were flushed, and her heart beat high. She had made up her mind. She would drug the stout.
Vincent was neither a lazy nor a sleepy man; he worked hard from early morning until late at night, indulging in no excesses of any kind, and preferring tea as a rule to any other beverage; but stout, good stout, such as Hetty had in the little cask, was his one weakness; he did like a big draught of that.
"He shall have a sleep," said Hetty to herself. "It'll do him a power of good. The first time I swallered a few drops of aunt's toothache cure I slept for eight hours without moving. Lor! how bad I felt afore I went off, and how nice and soothed when I awoke. Seemed as if I couldn't be cross for ever so long. George shall sleep while I'm away. I'll put some of the nice black stuff in his stout—the stuff that gives dreams—he'll have a long rest, and I can go and return and he'll never know nothing about it."
She made all her preparations with promptitude and cunning. First, she opened the cask, and threw away the first glass she drew from it. She then tasted the beverage, which turned out, as she expected it would, to be of excellent quality. Hetty saw in imagination her husband draining off one or two glasses. Presently she heard his step in the passage, and ran quickly to the pantry where the stout was kept, concealing the little bottle of laudanum in her pocket. She poured what she thought a small but safe dose into the jug, and then filled it up with stout. Her face was flushed, and her eyes very bright, when she appeared in the kitchen with the jug and glass on a tray. Vincent was hot and dead tired.
"Here you are, little woman," he cried. "Why, if you ain't a sort o' ministering angel, I don't know who is. Well, I'm quite ready for that ere drink o' your'n."
Hetty filled his glass to the brim. It frothed slightly, and looked, as Vincent expressed it, prime. He raised it to his lips, drained it to the dregs, and returned it to her. She filled it again.
"Come, come," he said, smiling, and half-winking at her, and then casting a longing glance at the stout, "ain't two glasses o'er much."
"Not a bit of it," she answered. "You're to go to sleep, you know."
"Well, p'raps I can spare an hour, and I am a bit drowsy."
"You're to lie right down on the settle, and go off to sleep. I'll wake you when it is time."