Paul Ritson was in truth a changed man.
His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes were bleared and heavy. He dropped with a listless weariness into the chair that Greta drew up to the fire. When he smiled the lips lagged back to a gloomy repose, and when he laughed the note of merriment rang hollow and fell short.
"Just in time for a game with me, my lad!" said the parson. "Greta, fetch the chessboard and box."
The board was brought, the pieces fixed; the parson settled himself at his ease, with slippers on the hearth-rug and a handkerchief across his knee.
"Do you know, Paul, I heard a great parl about you to-day?"
"About me! Where?" asked Paul, without much curiosity in his tone.
"At Mr. Proudfoot's smithy, while I was turning the fallows in the meadow down at the crossroads. Little Mr. Oglethorpe was saying that you slept at the Pack Horse, in Keswick, the night before last; but Mr. Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, said nay, and they had high words indeed, wherein Job called Mr. Oglethorpe all but his proper name, and flung away in high dudgeon."
Paul moved his pawn and said, "I never slept at the Pack Horse in my life, Mr. Christian."
Greta sat knitting at one side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke the silence.
At last Parson Christian drew himself up in his chair.