“Yes,” growled that worthy, “I’m not the most cheerful company, missy, but my other arm is strong enough to put that fellow of yours out o’ gear if he butts in on me ag’in. So just cool your pretty lil head, will you? I’m boss here, and if you rile me it’ll be sort o’ awkward for you.”
How Winifred passed the next few hours she could scarcely remember afterward. She noted, in dull agony, that the windows of the sitting-room she shared with Mick the Wolf were barred with iron. So, too, was the window of her bedroom. The key and handle of the bedroom lock had been taken away. Rachel Craik was her jailer, a maimed scoundrel her companion and assistant-warder.
But, when the first paroxysms of helpless pain and rage had passed, her faith returned. She prayed long and earnestly, and help was vouchsafed. Appeal to her captors was vain, she knew, so she sought the consolation that is never denied to all who are afflicted.
Neither Rachel Craik, nor the sullen bandit, nor the loud-voiced rascal who had dared to say he was her father, could understand the cheerful patience with which she met them next day.
“She’s a puzzle,” said Voles in the privacy of the apartment beneath. “I must dope out some way of fixin’ things. She’ll never come to heel again, Rachel. That fool Carshaw has turned her head.”
He tramped to and fro impatiently. His ankle had not yet forgotten the wrench it received on the Boston Post Road. Suddenly he banged a huge fist on a sideboard.
“Gee!” he cried, “that should turn the trick! I’ll marry her off to Fowle. If it wasn’t for other considerations I’d be almost tempted—”
He paused. Even his fierce spirit quailed at the venom that gleamed from Rachel Craik’s eyes.