“You're very weak, old friend; it will be best for you to sleep here to-day, and take to-night's Carlisle coach as far back as Mardale. It will be early morning when the coach gets there, and at daybreak you can walk over the Stye Pass to Shoulthwaite.”
“I dare not, I dare not; no, no, don't leave me here.” Sim's importunity was irresistible, and Ralph yielded more out of pity than by persuasion. A second horse was ordered, and in less than half an hour the travellers, fortified by a meal, were riding side by side on the high road from Kendal to the North.
Sim was not yet so far recovered from his exhaustion but that the exertion of riding—at any time a serious undertaking to him—was quick in producing symptoms of collapse. But he held on to his purpose of accompanying Ralph on his northward journey with a tenacity which was unshaken either by his companion's glances of solicitude or yet by the broad mouthed merriment of the rustics, who obviously found it amusing to watch the contortions of an ill-graced, weak, and spiritless rider, and to fire off at him as he passed the sallies of an elephantine humor.
When the pair started away from Kendal, Sim had clearly no thought but that their destination was to be Wythburn. It was therefore with some surprise and no little concern that he observed that Ralph took the road to the right which led to Penrith and the northeast, when they arrived at that angle of the highway outside the town where two turnpikes met, and one went off to Wythburn and the Northwest.
“I should have reckoned that the nighest way home was through Staveley,” Sim said with hesitation.
“We can turn to the left at Mardale,” said Ralph, and pushed on without further explanation. “Do you say that mother has never once spoken?” he asked, drawing up at one moment to give Sim a little breathing space.
“Never once, Ralph—mute as the grave, she is—poor body.”
“And Rotha—Rotha—”
“Yes, the lass is with her, she is.”
“God bless her in this world and the next!”