IV.—AT PORTSANNET.
THE news had spread in Portsannet, and many of the decent fisherfolk had joined the common sort at the head of the street. They murmured, but it was little of their business, after all. Had any of their own kin been seized, they might have resisted; as it was, Portsannet was well rid of a rogue or two; and as for the Pillers, they, too, were in a sort vagrants. True, when a red-haired, slipshod, unkempt wench appeared, holding a dead retriever bitch in her arms, they wondered, and some called her a hussy; but others, looking again, cried that it was a shame. But a dead dog was not a deal to make a trouble about, and what they would be gladdest to see was the stern of the longboat that was fastened down by the jetty.
And why did Jessie, with her lover pinioned and about to be reft from her, take his case less passionately than that of the cold and heavy animal? She could not have told you. Maybe her mind could comprehend only the small evil; or, as men in moments of stress will occupy themselves with foolish, trivial things, an instinct bade her hold the unbearable thought away from her. Likely enough it was this last; for, suddenly seeing Willie’s haggard eyes on her, she cried, faintly: “Dinna look at me now, or ’twill be th’ last! Turn thy face away! And ye—some o’ ye—show me where th’ bailiff lives——”
A woman took her own shawl and set it over her shoulders. “Dinna shame us, lassie,” she said; and “Ay, ay—where d’ye say he lives?” Jessie replied.
“Best tak’ her to our spare cham’er, Ellen,” a man’s voice said; but Jessie called again for the bailiff: he was a harmless man, wi’ a pleasant word for folk; his oaks and pines were but half cut; nay, they had not started with the pines....
“I’ll tak’ ye to th’ bailiff, dearie. Come, then,” said the woman who had given her the shawl; and suddenly Jessie began to tremble. Without glancing once at Willie, she crossed to the narrow entry of a passage, laid down the dog’s body, and then turned to the woman. “Come, make haste,” she said. She passed the lieutenant without seeming to see him. The two women turned into a dark lane that was deep rutted with carts, as if it led to a farm. By and by Jessie began to run.
Through a bare orchard a candle shone in the bailiff’s window. They found him in his comfortable kitchen smoking his strong tobacco. The two pieces of wood he had brought from the Ladyshaws lay on the table before him, and with the point of his penknife he was counting the rings of the tree’s growth. “A hundred and ninety-six—a hundred and ninety-seven—a hundred and ninety-eight,” he said, counting aloud; and when he got to the two hundredth ring he stuck the point of his penknife into the wood and looked up mildly and enquiringly.
Jessie’s railing was past now; she thought no more of Nellie.
“They’re taking th’ men—th’ press—that’s cutting the trees; they’re taking ’em down th’ street now,” she announced shortly; “go stop ’em.”
“Men?” the bailiff enquired, quite unruffled: “Oh, ay, the Pillers. I remember ye were with ’em. Dear, dear, now; that’s awk’ard. Two more days o’ this weather and the leaves’ll be breaking out everywhere. We shall lose the price o’ the bark—wi’out we could prosecute for it—no—now that’s vexing.... Ye’d see this piece of oak this morning? Of course. I’ve counted two hundred; think o’ that! Two hundred year sin’ them letters were cut, and more to count yet.”