“Becca’s a beast,” put in Tod. “And I hope Stephen will have his neck stretched.”
Eunice Gibbon was nowhere to be seen below. The premises were deserted. She had made a rush to her brother’s, the gamekeeper’s lodge, to warn Becca of what was taking place. We started for Dyke Manor, Frank in our midst, leaving the Torr, and its household gods, including the cackling fowls and the dinnerless pigs, to their fate. Mr. Brandon met us at the second field, and he took Frank’s hand in silence.
“God bless you, lad! So you have been shut up there!”
“And chained to a stake in the wall,” cried the Squire.
“Well, it seems perfectly incredible that such a thing should take place in these later days. It reads like an episode of the dark ages.”
“Won’t we pay out Master Radcliffe for ’t!” put in old Jones, at work with his imaginary handcuffs again. “I should say, for my part, it ’ud be a’most a case o’ transportation to Botany Bay.”
Frank Radcliffe was ensconced within Dyke Manor (sending Mrs. Todhetley into hysterics, for she had known nothing), and Duffham undertook the task of breaking it to Frank’s wife. Frank, when his hair should have been trimmed up a little, was to put himself into a borrowed coat and to follow on presently.
Pitchley’s Farm and Pitchley’s roses lay hot and bright under the summer sunshine. Mr. Duffham went straight in, and looked about for its mistress. In the sitting-rooms, in the kitchen, in the dairy: he and his cane, and could not see her.
“Missis have stepped out, sir,” said Sally, who was scrubbing the kitchen table. “A fearful headache she have got to-day.”
“A headache, has she!” responded Duffham.