“Well,” said Rhys in a weak, petulant voice, “this is a bad look-out, isn’t it?”
“Indeed, and so it is,” answered the old man, as if he had been struck by a new idea.
“And I don’t know when I can get up out of here.”
“Bide you where you are,” interrupted the Pig-driver. “You couldn’t be safer, not if you was in Hereford jail itself,” he concluded cheerfully, sitting down on the bed.
Rhys frowned under his bandage.
“That’s where I may be yet,” he said, “curse the whole business.”
“I’d been lookin’ out for ye at Abergavenny,” said Bumpett, “an’ not seein’ ye, I thought all had been well, and ye’d gone off licketty smack to Evans’s.”
“If I could get hold of Evans, I’d half kill him,” said Rhys between his teeth. “He cried out my name, and I had to ride for it, I can tell you. Give me a drop more water, Williams.”
George went to the opposite wall and drew out a stone, letting in the pleasant babbling noise of the brook. The foundations of the cottage were so near the water that he stretched his arm through, holding the mug, and filled it easily. In flood-time the room was uninhabitable.
“I thought there was nothing that could touch that mare of mine,” continued the sick man, as George went up the ladder and left the two together, “but young Fenton’s mind was made up to catch me, though I’d have distanced him if this damned frost hadn’t been against me. I could have dodged him in the mountain and got him bogged, maybe.”