“It's dead and done with, like the man himself. What remains is not dead, and cannot soon be done with. Some of us must meet it face to face even yet. Wilson—that was his name in those days—was a Royalist when I encountered him. What he had been before, God knows. At a moment of peril he took his life at the hands of a Roundhead. He had been guilty of treachery to the Royalists, and he was afraid to return to his friends. I understood his position and sheltered him. When Carlisle fell to us he clung closer to me, and when the campaign was over he prayed to be permitted to follow me to these parts. I yielded to him reluctantly. I distrusted him, but I took his anxiety to be with me for gratitude, as he said it was. It was not that, Sim.”
“Was it fear? Was he afeart of being hanged by friends or foes? Hadn't he been a taistrel to both?”
“Partly fear, but partly greed, and partly revenge. He was hardly a week at Shoulthwaite before I guessed his secret—I couldn't be blind to that. When he married his young wife on the Borders, folks didn't use to call her a witch. She had a little fortune coming to her one day, and when she fled the prospect of it was lost to her husband. Wilson was in no hurry to recover her while she was poor-a vagrant woman with his child at her breast. The sense of his rights as a husband became keener a little later. Do you remember the time when young Joe Garth set himself up in the smithy yonder?”
“I do,” said Sim; “it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's mother aboon a hundred pound.”
“Wilson knew that much better than our neighbors. He knew, too, where his wife had hidden herself, as she thought, though it had served his turn to seem ignorant of it until then. Sim, he used me to get to Wythburn.”
“Teush!”
“Once here, it was not long before he had made his wife aware of his coming. I had kept an eye on him, and I knew his movements. I saw that he meant to ruin the Garths, mother and son, to strip them and leave them destitute. I determined that he should not do it. I felt that mine was the blame that he was here to molest them. 'Tamper with them,' I said, 'show once more by word or look that you know anything of them, and I'll hand you over as a traitor to the nearest sheriff.'”
“Why didn't you do it anyhow, why didn't you?” said Sim eagerly.
“That would have been unwise. He now hated me for defeating his designs.
“You had saved his life.”