The miser had shuffled after them, holding out his hand and begging of them.
“At the doctor’s,” he answered. “Her be fearsome and begged it. Ye’ll give an old man something?” he added, whining. “Ye’ll give something?”
“Off! Off you go, my lad!” Bishop cried. “We’ve done with you. If you’re not a rascal ’tis hard on you, for you look one!” And when the old skinflint had crawled back under the fir-trees, “Worst is, sir,” he continued, with a grave face, “it’s all true. Tyson’s away in the north—with a brother or something of that kind—so I hear. And his missus had a baby this ten days gone or more. He’s a rough tyke, but he’s above this sort of thing, I take it. Still, we’ll go and question the girl. We may get something from her.”
And they trooped off along the road in twos and threes, and turning the corner saw Tyson’s house, below them—so far below them that it had, as always, the look of a toy house on a toy meadow at the bottom of a green bowl. Below the house the little rivulet that rose beside it bisected the meadow, until at the end of the open it lost itself in the narrow wooded gorge, through which it sprang in unseen waterfalls to join the lake below.
They descended the slope to the house; sharp-eyed but saying little. A trifle to one side of the door, under a window, a dog was kenneled. It leapt out barking; but seeing so many persons it slunk in again and lay growling.. A moment and the door was opened and Bess showed herself. She looked astonished, but not in any way frightened.
“Eh, masters!” she said. “What is it? Are you come after the young lady again?”
“Ay,” Bishop answered. “We are. We want to know where you got the letter you gave Ann at the inn—to give to her?”
Perhaps Bess looked for the question and was prepared. At any rate, she betrayed no sign of confusion.
“Well,” she said, “I can tell you what he was like that gave it me.”
“A man gave it you?”