“You have him there, Mattha Branthet,” said the others with a laugh, “a feckless fool.” The young dalesman leaned back on the bench, took a draught of his liquor, rested the pot on his knee, and looked into the fire with the steady gaze of one just out of the darkness. After a pause he said quietly,—
“I'll wager there's never a man among you dare go up to Sim's cave to-night. Yet you drive him up there every night of the year.”
“Bad dreams, lad; bad dreams,” said the old man, shaking his head with portentous gravity, “forby the boggle of auld Wilson—that's maybe what maks Sim ga rakin aboot the fell o' neets without ony eerand.”
“Ay, ay, that's aboot it,” said the others, removing their pipes together and speaking with the gravity and earnestness of men who had got a grip of the key to some knotty problem. “The ghost of auld Wilson.”
“The ghost of some of your stout sticks, I reckon,” said Ralph, turning upon them with a shadow of a sneer on his frank face.
His companions laughed. Just then the wind rose higher than before, and came in a gust down the open chimney. The dogs that had been sleeping on the sanded floor got up, walked across the room with drooping heads, and growled. Then they lay down again and addressed themselves afresh to sleep. The young dalesman looked into the mouth of his pewter and muttered, as if to himself,—
“Because there was no evidence to convict the poor soul, suspicion, that is worse than conviction, must so fix upon him that he's afraid to sleep his nights in his bed at home, but must go where never a braggart loon of Wythburn dare follow him.”
“Aye, lad,” said the old man, with a wink of profound import, “foxes hev holes.”
The sally was followed by a general laugh.
Not noticing it, Ralph said,—