“I’ve come to warn ye,” he said, dropping his voice.
But she made no movement to regain her seat, for she was thoroughly angry, and she looked down at the eccentric figure of the Pig-driver with an expression of disgust. It was years since she had spoken to any one, except her son and the preacher she followed, who could pretend to an equal position with herself, and the impertinent familiarities of the old man were not to be endured. She debated whether she should send for a couple of her men and have him turned out of the place.
“It’s my duty, plain an’ pure,” he continued, nothing daunted by her silence, “an’ I’ve come from Abergavenny to tell ye what may give ye a turn, an’ show ye what ye’ve got about the place. There’s a feller name o’ George Williams here, isn’t there? Well, he’s a limb an’ no mistake. A fine sort to be hangin’ about a respectable house, he is!”
He paused for a reply, but Anne appeared entirely unmoved by his news and he began to get exasperated. He thumped his stick on the floor.
“Ah, you women!” he cried, “ye’re a queer lot! Ye won’t believe a word a decent man says, an’ yet ye’ll believe any scoundrel that comes puggin’ his forelock to yer face an’ lying an’ thievin’ behind yer back. Well, ye’ve got a rare one now. Ye don’t know the life he’s been leadin’.”
Mrs. Walters looked intently at him.
“I do,” she said quietly, thinking of what George had admitted to her.
The Pig-driver’s blatant demeanour collapsed like a pricked gas-bag; the shreds of it hung round him and that was all. If Williams had been fool enough to place his own safety in the hands of the woman confronting him, then he, Bumpett, was a lost man. In all his calculations he had never pictured any one who would, so to speak, thrust his own head into the prison door, and he made an effort to collect his wits and to find out how much she really knew.
“What were he tellin’ ye about himself?” he asked, in a voice from which truculence had suddenly vanished.