"Oh, does he? Folk who say it never do it. I should whip it out of him."
"He's never been the same since the lord's death that time. He's always frightened: gets fancying things, and saying sometimes he sees his shadder."
"Whose shadow?"
"His'n: the late lord's."
"Why does he fancy that?" came the question, after a perceptible pause.
Old Ripper shook his head. It was beyond his ken, he said. "There be only two things he's afeared of in life," continued the man, who, though generally called old Ripper, was not above five-and-thirty. "The one's that wild man Pike; t'other's the shadder. He'd run ten mile sooner than see either."
"Does Pike annoy the boy?"
"Never spoke to him, as I knows on, my lord. Afore that drowning of his lordship last year, Davy was the boldest rip going," added the man, who had long since fallen into the epithet popularly applied to his son. "Since then he don't dare say his soul's his own. We had him laid up before the winter, and I know 'twas nothing but fear."
Lord Hartledon could not make much of the story, and had no time to linger. Administering a word of general encouragement, he continued his way, his thoughts going back to the interview with Anne Ashton, a line or two of Longfellow's "Fire of Driftwood" rising up in his mind—
"Of what had been and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead."