Some sentiment, unknown and inexplainable, came into the ruffian’s heart. He loosed his grip of the delicate little hand that felt like nothing in his grasp, which he could have crushed to a jelly: and indeed he had nearly done so. He said, ‘I will; I’ll keep my word,’ in a deep growling bass voice.
It was all that Mrs. Sandford could do to unclasp the fingers he had gripped, and to keep from crying with the pain. She dropped the sovereign into his hand.
‘Now go,’ she said.
‘You are game,’ he cried, with a sort of admiration, looking at her rather than the sovereign, though his hand closed upon that with the eagerness of a famished beast upon a bone. ‘I never saw one as was more game.’
She made a gesture of dismissal with her cramped fingers.
‘Oh, go, go—and God forgive you. And oh! try to get honest work, and live decent—and not fall into trouble again.’
‘Good-bye, lady,’ he said; then coming back a step—‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’
She waved to him to go away. The man still lingered a moment, putting up his hand to his cap, then turned, and, slouching, with his shoulders up to his ears, took the way across the corner of the moor to the railway-station, which was a mile off or more.
Mrs. Sandford turned to go back to her house. She was so pale that when she came near the door of the shop Mrs. Box came running out to her in alarm.
‘Oh, Mrs. Sandford, come in, ma’am; come in and rest a bit. You’ve not a bit of colour on your cheeks—you that have such a fine complexion. You’re just dead with fright, and I don’t wonder at it. How did he dare to speak to you, the villain? and shook your nerves, poor dear, so that I see you can’t speak.’