Rotha signified that his supper was ready.
“Thou limmer,” said Wilson, in his thin shriek, “how long 'ul thy dool last? It's na mair to see a woman greet than to see a goose gang barefit.”
Ralph Ray called at the tailor's cottage the morning after this, and found Sim suffering under violent excitement, of which Wilson's behavior to Rotha had been the cause. The insults offered to himself he had taken with a wince, perhaps, but without a retort. Now that his daughter was made the subject of them, he was profoundly agitated.
“There I sat,” he cried, as his breath came and went in gusts,—“there I sat, a poor barrow-back't creature, and heard that old savvorless loon spit his spite at my lass. I'm none of a brave man, Ralph: no, I must be a coward, but I went nigh to snatching up yon flail of his and striking him—aye, killing him!—but no, it must be that I'm a coward.”
Ralph quieted him as well as he could, telling him to leave this thing to him. Ralph was perhaps Sim's only friend. He would often turn in like this at Sim's workroom as he passed up the fell in the morning. People said the tailor was indebted to Ralph for proofs of friendship more substantial than sympathy. And now, when Sim had the promise of a strong friend's shoulder to lean on, he was unmanned, and wept. Ralph was not unmoved as he stood by the forlorn little man, and clasped his hands in his own and felt the warm tears fall over them.
As the young dalesman was leaving the cottage that morning, he encountered in the porch the subject of the conversation, who was entering in. Taking him firmly but quietly by the shoulder, he led him back a few paces. Sim had leapt up from his bench, and was peering eagerly through the window. But Ralph did no violence to his lodger. He was saying something with marked emphasis, but the words escaped the tailor's ears. Wilson was answering nothing. Loosing his hold of him, Ralph walked quietly away. Wilson entered the cottage with a livid face, and murmuring, as though to himself,—
“Aiblins we may be quits yet, my chiel'. A great stour has begoon, my birkie. Your fire-flaucht e'e wull na fley me. Your Cromwell's gane, an' all traitors shall tryste wi' the hangman.”
It was clear that whatever the mystery pertaining to the Scotchman, Simeon Stagg seemed to possess some knowledge of it. Not that he ever explained anything. His anxiety to avoid all questions about his lodger was sufficiently obvious. Yet that he had somehow obtained some hint of a dark side to Wilson's character, every one felt satisfied. No other person seemed to know with certainty what were Wilson's means of livelihood. The Scotchman was not employed by the farmers and shepherds around Wythburn, and he had neither land nor sheep of his own. He would set out early and return late, usually walking in the direction of Gaskarth. One day Wilson rose at daybreak, and putting a threshing-flail over his shoulder, said he would be away for a week. That week ensuing was a quiet one for the inmates of the cottage at Fornside.
Sim's daughter, Rotha, had about this time become a constant helper at Shoulthwaite Moss, where, indeed, she was treated with the cordiality proper to a member of the household. Old Angus had but little sympathy to spare for the girl's father, but he liked Rotha's own cheerfulness, her winsomeness, and, not least, her usefulness. She could milk and churn, and bake and brew. This was the sort of young woman that Angus liked best. “Rotha's a right heartsome lassie,” he said, as he heard her in the dairy singing while she worked. The dame of Shoulthwaite loved every one, apparently, but there were special corners in her heart for her favorites, and Rotha was one of them.
“Cannot that lass's father earn aught without keeping yon sulking waistrel about him?” asked the old dalesman one day.