“Off where?”
“Somewhere out of Timberdale.”
“Off for what?”
“I don’t know, sir. Jelf accused me of having carried tales there, and called me a jackass for my pains. He said that what he had told me wasn’t meant to be repeated again, and I ought not to have gone telling it about, especially to the Rymers themselves; that it might not be true——”
“As the Squire said yesterday, you know, Lee.”
“Yes, sir. I answered Jelf that it couldn’t have been me that had gone talking to the Rymers, for I had not as much as seen them. Any way, he said, somebody had, for they knew of it, and Benjamin had gone off in consequence. Jelf’s as cross over it as two sticks. It’s his own fault; why did he tell me what wasn’t true?”
Lee went off—looking cross also. After breakfast I related this to the Squire. He didn’t seem to like it, and walked about thinking.
“Johnny, I can’t stir in it, you see,” he said presently. “If it got abroad, people might talk about compromising a felony, and all that sort of rubbish: and I am a magistrate. You must go. See Rymer: and make him understand—without telling him in so many words, you know—that there’s nothing to fear from me, and he may call Ben back again. If the young man has begun to lead a new life, Heaven forbid that I, having sons myself, should be a stumbling-block in the way of it.”
It was striking twelve when I reached Timberdale. Margaret said her father was poorly, having gone out in the storm of the previous day and caught a chill. He was in the parlour alone, cowering over the fire. In the last few hours he seemed to have aged years. I shut the door.