"Mother, what's that for?"
"That's what it's for," retorted his mother, giving him a sound box on the ear. "You'll dance out with puppies again up to that good-for-nothing minx of a Bridget!—and you'll set rick-yards a-fire!—and you'll go off and hide yourself, and let the place be searched by the police!—and me drawn into trouble, and took off by that insolent Dumps in a stick-up gig to Barmester, and lugged afore the court! Now, where have you been?"
Jim made no return in kind. All the spirit the boy possessed seemed to have gone out of him. He sat down meekly on a broken chair, and began to shiver. "Don't, mother," said he. "I've got a fright."
"A fright!" indignantly responded Mrs. Sanders. "And what sort of a fright do you suppose you have given others? Happen Madam Chattaway might have died of it, they say. You talk of a fright! Who hasn't been in a fright since you took the torch into the yard and set the ricks alight?"
"It isn't that," said Jim. "I ain't afraid of that; I didn't do it. Nora knows I didn't, and Mr. Apperley knows, and Bridget knows. I've no cause to be afeard of that."
"Then what are you quaking for?" angrily demanded Mrs. Sanders.
"I've just got a fright," he answered. "Mother, as true as we be here, Mr. Rupert's dead. I've just watched him killed."
Mrs. Sanders's first proceeding on receipt of this information was to stare; her second to discredit it, believing Jim was out of his mind, or dreaming. "Talk sense, will you?" cried she.
"I'm not a-talking nonsense," he answered. "Mother, as sure as us two be living here, I see it. It were in the grove, up by the field. I saw him struck down."
The woman began to think there must be something in the tale. "It's Mr. Rupert you be talking of?"