“See here, whatever they call ye,” he said. “‘Grim,’ ye said; but it might easy be grimmer. Now just take it on yourself that that’s the last tale o’ that sort ye tell in this house.”
And as Moon strode out, more than one man felt as if a chill hand had passed over his flesh at the thought that Sally Northrop might at any moment have entered the parlour.
Monjoy had followed Moon out. They met on the cobbles.
“Yon man heard what was said at Emmason’s about Will and Jim, didn’t he?” the merchant demanded.
“Yes,” Monjoy replied.
“And he knew that was Jim’s house, too; ay, he knew. Yon’s mind’s as misshapen as his body,” the merchant said, and he turned away.
CHAPTER IV.
EASTWOOD ELLAH.
HE was certainly a heartless man who could, in that house, find mirth in such a matter. For five months the key had not been turned in Sally Northrop’s door, nor had an evening passed but Sally had set her husband’s slippers on the oven and laid his supper lest the door should suddenly open to his push. Week by week the slips of the pillow beside her own had been changed; and in all other particulars Jim Northrop might have left his house but for an afternoon.
When it became necessary that Sally should have help, Cicely Eastwood had left her carding-wheel and the care of her father’s new-dropped lambs and had made her home in the inn, taking on herself the ruling of the house. This arrangement had commended itself to Big Monjoy. She was big, fair, well-nourished and handsome, and so softly embrowned was her skin that her fair hair seemed of a paler yellow than it really was, and her clear eyes and the flash between her lips were conspicuously white. Her movements were those of a free-limbed lad; her clothing seemed, in some odd way, not something to be doffed for the night, but assumed for the day; and the sight of her had filled Arthur Monjoy with an increasing trouble.
And so, apparently, it had her cousin, deaf Eastwood Ellah, who lived with her father in the house under Wadsworth Scout. He was a short-necked man, with a choleric face, prominent choleric grey eyes, and light hair so closely cropped and so nearly matching his complexion, that, save for a metallic glint on scalp and brow and chin, all would have been of one angry orange hue. His deafness had long isolated him from most society; and he went once in a while into violent “iggs” or unreasonable moods.