‘But, your honour! Miss Barbara said I was to watch you as a cat watches a mouse.’
‘Who is master here, I or she? I order you to go; and if she is angry I will protect you against her. I am to be watched, am I? By my own children? By my servant? This is more than I can bear. The whole world is conspiring against me. How can I trust anyone—even Jane? How can I say that the police were not bribed before to let him go? And they may be bribed again. Trust none but thyself,’ he muttered, and stood up.
‘Please, master,’ said Jane, ‘you may be certain I will do what you want. I’m not like some folks, as is unnatural to their very parents. Why, sir! what do y’ think? As I were a coming in, who should run by me, looking the pictur’ of fear, but Miss Eve. And where do y’ think her runned? Why, sir—I watched her, and her went as fast as a leaping hare over the fields towards the Raven Rock—to where he be. Well, I’m sure I’d not do that. I don’t mind a-going to love feasts in chapel with Joseph, but I wouldn’t go seeking him in a wood. Some folks have too much self-respect for that, I reckon.’ She muttered this looking up at the old man, uncertain how he would take it.
‘Go,’ said he. ‘Leave me—go at once.’
Presently Barbara came in, and found her father alone.
‘What, no one with you, papa?’
‘No—I want to be alone. Do you grudge me quiet? Must I live under a microscope? Must I have everything I do marked, every word noted? Why do you peer in here? Am I an escaped felon to be guarded? Am I likely to break out? Will you leave me? I tell you I do not want you here. I desire solitude. I have had you and Coyshe and Eve jabbering here till my head spins and my temples are bursting. Leave me alone.’ Then, with the craftiness of incipient derangement, he said, ‘I have had two—three bad nights, and want sleep. I was dozing in my chair when Jane came in to light a fire. I sent her out. Then, when I was nodding off again, I heard cook or Jasper tramping through the hall. That roused me, and now when I hoped to compose myself again, you thrust yourself upon me; are you all in a league to drive me mad, by forbidding me sleep? That is how Hopkins, the witch-finder, got the poor wretches to confess. He would not suffer them to sleep, and at last, in sheer madness and hunger for rest, they confessed whatever was desired of them. You want to force something out of me. That is why you will not let me sleep.’
‘Papa dear, I shall be so glad if you can sleep. I promise you shall be left quite alone for an hour.’
‘O—an hour! limited to sixty minutes.’
‘Dear papa, till you rap on the wall, to intimate that you are awake.’