“Getting above himself! I should think so, forsooth. But verily a reckoning day is at hand. Woe to him who carries a load of guilt at his heart and thinks that no man knows of it. Better a millstone were about his neck, and he were swallowed up in the great deep.”
The parson turned away. Garth stood for a moment without perceiving that he was alone, his eyes still bent on the ground. Then he walked moodily in the other direction.
When he reached his home, Joe threw down the hoop in the smithy and went into the house. His mother was there.
“Sim, he's at Shoulthwaite,” he said. “It's like enough his daughter is there, too.”
A sneer crossed Mrs. Garth's face.
“Tut, she's yan as wad wed the midden for sake of the muck.”
“You mean she's setting herself at one of the Rays?”
Mrs. Garth snorted, but gave no more explicit reply.
“Ey, she's none so daft, is yon lass,” observed the blacksmith.
This was not quite the trace he had meant to follow. After a pause he said, “What came of his papers—in the trunk?”