The shades cast round his jaw and cheek-bones made them stand out with even greater prominence, and the hair, hanging unkempt on either side of his brow, framed it in with dull black. He seemed to Bumpett gigantically tall.
“Look you,” began the Pig-driver, folding his hands over his stick, “there’s no more use in dangling on here, an’ ye must just pearten up, Walters. It’s time ye was out o’ this. I’ve got a cousin down Cardiff way, and if I could get ye off to him, he’d give ye a hand wi’ some o’ they ship captains. Ye’d be out o’ harm’s reach then, an’ a good job too.”
For answer Rhys looked at him with a smile, not as though he were smiling at him, but at something which he saw in his mind.
“No,” he said, shaking his head; “no, no.”
“Nonsense,” rejoined Bumpett smartly. “I’m not trifling now, and out o’ this ye’ll have to go, my lad.”
“Not I,” said Rhys, his eyes hardening.
“I tell ’e, go ye shall!” cried the old man. “’Tis my place, not yours, an’ not another bite nor sup can ye get when I stop sendin’ the food that keeps ye. I can turn ye out, an’ I will too.”
“You daren’t do that,” said the other, looking sideways at him; “there’s no manner of use trying to frighten me. Put me out of this house, and it’s you that’ll have to be on your way to Cardiff, not me. And you’ll be too late.”
“I’m speakin’ for yer good,” began the Pig-driver again, seeing that threats could produce no effect. “Mind me, ye don’t hear nothing hid away in this black hole, but it’s different wi’ me. I get all the talk o’ the country-side, an’ I know the police has got their noses turned this way ever since ye let the fellar wi’ the dark lantern get sight o’ ye on the mountain. It was all written i’ the newspapers, so I did hear. Old Job Hondy in Crishowell was tellin’ me, for he got a loan of the paper from Parson Lewis.”