“It's the fellow Ray, to a certainty,” said the little man, pricking his horse into a canter as soon as he reached the first fields of Ennerdale.
In a few minutes the three men had drawn up at the cottage on the breast of Brandreth where Sim had asked for a drink.
“Mistress! Hegh! hegh! Who was the man that left you just now?”
“I dunnet know wha't war—some feckless body, I'm afeart. He was a' wizzent and savvorless. He begged ma a drink o' milk, but lang ere a cud cum tul him he was gane his gate like yan dazt-like.”
“Who could this be? It's not our man clearly. Who could it be, blacksmith?”
The gentleman addressed had turned alternately white and red at the woman's description. There had flashed upon his brain the idea that little Lizzie Branthwaite had betrayed him.
“I reckon it must have been that hang-gallows of a tailor—that Sim,” he said, perspiring from head to foot.
“And he's here to carry tidings of our coming. Push on—follow the man—heed this blockhead no longer.”
VI. The procession of mourners, with Robbie Anderson and the mare at its head, had walked slowly down Borrowdale after the men on foot had turned back towards Withburn. Following the course of the winding Derwent, they had passed the villages of Stonethwaite and Seathwaite, and in two hours from the time they set out from Shoulthwaite they had reached the foot of Stye Head Pass. The brightness of noon had now given place to the chill leaden atmosphere of a Cumbrian December.
In the bed of the dale they were sheltered from the wind, but they saw the mists torn into long streaks overhead, and knew that the storm had not abated. When they came within easy range of the top of the great gap between the mountains over which they were to pass, they saw for a moment a man's figure clearly outlined against the sky.