“His fratch with Angus, that was all.”
“There must have been more than that, Matthew, there must.”
“I never heeard on it, then.”
“Old Wilson must have had money on him that night,” said Monsey, who had been looking gravely into the fire, his hands clasped about his knees. Encouraged by this support of the sapient idea he had hinted at, the shepherd who had spoken before broke in with, “Where else did he get it I say?”
“Ye breed of the cuckoo,” said Matthew, “ye've gat no rhyme but yan.”
Amid the derisive laughter that followed, the door of the inn was again opened, and in a moment more Ralph Ray stood in the middle of the floor with Simeon Stagg in his arms. Rotha was behind, pale but composed. Every man in the room rose to his feet. The landlord stepped forward, with no pleasant expression on his face; and from an inner room his wife came bustling up. Little Monsey stood clutching and twitching his fingers. Old Matthew had let the pipe drop out of his mouth, and it lay broken on the hearth.
“He has fainted,” said Ralph, still holding his burden; “turn that bench to the fire.”
No one stirred. Every one stood for the moment as if stupefied. Sim's head hung over Ralph's arm: his face was as pale as death.
“Out of the way,” said Ralph, brushing past a great lumbering fellow, with his mouth agape.
The company found their tongues at last. Were they to sit with “this hang-gallows of a tailor”? The landlord, thinking himself appealed to, replied that he “couldn't hev na brulliment” in his house.