The girl's face was no longer lit by the declining sun, which had glided further north-west, but the flames of the driftwood flickered in her large eyes that met those of the man, and the cap was still illumined by the evening glow, a scarlet blaze against the indigo gloom.
'Have you lost your tongue, Glory?' asked the man, impatiently striking the bricks with the butt end of his gun.
'Why do you not speak, Mehalah?' said the mother, turning her wan wet face aside, to catch a glimpse of her daughter.
'I've answered him fifty times,' said the girl.
'No,' protested the old woman feebly, 'you have not spoken a word to Master Rebow.'
'By God, she is right,' broke in the man. 'The little devil has a tongue in each eye, and she has been telling me with each a thousand times that she hates me. Eh, Glory?'
The girl rose erect, set her teeth, and turned her face aside, and looked out at the little window on the decaying light.
Rebow laughed aloud.
'She hated me before, and now she hates me worse, because I have become her landlord. I have bought the Ray for eight hundred pounds. The Ray is mine, I tell you. Mistress Sharland, you will henceforth have to pay me the rent, to me and to none other. I am your landlord, and Michaelmas is next week.'
'The rent shall be paid, Elijah!' said the widow.