"I haven't harnessed up yet," he said. "I thought perhaps you might like a cup of tea or a chop before we returned. Your sister, I presume, has gone back to her—to her place?"
"Yes, I saw her home before I came on here."
William sighed and waited for instructions. He was willing to be servant to Ralph for Ruth's sake.
"I should like a cup of tea, if you don't mind," Ralph said at length, and he coloured painfully as he spoke. He was living on charity, and the sting of it made all his nerves tingle.
"There's a confectioner's round the corner where they make capital tea," William said cheerfully. And he led the way with long strides.
The moon was up when they started on their homeward journey, and the air was keen and frosty. Neither of them talked much. To Ralph the day seemed like a long and more or less incoherent dream. He had dressed that morning in the dim light of a prison cell—it seemed like a week ago. He felt at times as though he had dreamed all the rest.
William was dreaming of Ruth, and so did not disturb his companion. The horse needed no whip, he seemed the most eager of the three to get home. The fields lay white and silent in the moonlight. The bare trees flung ghostly shadows across the road. The stars twinkled faintly in the far-off depths of space, now and then a dove cooed drowsily in a neighbouring wood.
At length the tower of St. Goram Church loomed massively over the brow of the hill, and a little later William pulled up with a jerk at his own shop door.
Mrs. Menire had provided supper for them. Ralph ate sparingly, and with many pauses. This was not home. He was a stranger in a stranger's house, living on charity. That thought stung him constantly and spoiled his appetite.
He tried to sleep when he got to bed, but the angel was long in coming. His thoughts were too full of other things. The fate of his mother worried him most. How to get her out of the workhouse and find an asylum for her somewhere else was a problem he could not solve. He had been promised work at St. Ivel Mine before his arrest, and he had no doubt that he would still be able to obtain employment there. But no wages would be paid him till the end of the month, and even then it would all be mortgaged for food and clothes.