“What’s that for, lad, bringing up a dead man’s name out here in the dark, and near midnight? Do you want to fley me? I never meddled with him. He would be safe in his bed this night, and married to his bonnie lady, and bairns in his house to heir his title and take your lordship from you, if there had been nobody but me.”
“I believe that,” said Geoff, softened. “They say you never harmed man.”
“No, nor beast—except varmint, or the like of a hare or so—when the old wife wanted a bit o’ meat. Never man. For man’s blood is precious,” said the wild fellow with a shudder. “There’s something in it that’s not in a brute. If I were to kill you or you me in this lonesome place, police and that sort might never find it out; but all the same, the place would tell—there would be something there different; they say man’s blood never rubs out.”
Geoff felt a little thrill run through his own veins as he saw his companion shiver and tremble; but it was not fear. The words somehow established perfect confidence between himself and his guide; and he had all the simplicity of mind of a youth whose faith had never been tampered with, and who believed with the unshaken sincerity of childhood. “The stain on the mind never wears out,” he said, thoughtfully. “I knew a boy once who had shot his brother without knowing it. How horrible it was! he never forgot it; and yet it was not his fault.”
“Ah! I wish as I had been that lucky—to shoot my brother by accident,” said Wild Bampfylde, with a long sigh, shaking into its place a pouch or game-bag which he wore across his shoulder. “It would have been the best thing for him,” he added, in answer to Geoff’s cry of protest; “then he wouldn’t have lived—for worse—— ”
“Have you a brother so unfortunate?”
“Unfortunate! I don’t know if that is what you call it. Yes, unfortunate. He never meant bad. I don’t credit it.”
“You are not speaking,” said Geoff, in a very low voice, overpowered at once with curiosity and interest, “of John Musgrave?”
“The young Squire? No, I don’t mean him; he’s bad, and bad enough, but not so bad. You’ve got a deal to learn, my young lord. And what’s your concern with all that old business? If another man’s miserable, that don’t take bit or sup from you—nor a night’s rest, unless you let it. You’ve got everything that heart could desire. Why can’t you be content, and let other folks be?”
“When we could help them, Bampfylde?” said Geoff. “Is that the way you would be done by? Left to languish abroad; left with a stain on your name, and no one to hold out a hand for you—nobody to try to get you righted; only thinking of their own comfort, and the bit and the sup and the night’s rest?”