A light came into the man’s eyes for a second or two, but he quickly curtained it.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’ll not trouble you. There’ll be an inn, I reckon. I’ll go down there.”
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH INMAN RECEIVES A COLD RECEPTION AND
SOME INFORMATION
A FEEBLE moon lit up the darkness that had fallen rapidly whilst he had been engaged with the master-carpenter, and enabled Inman to find his way without difficulty down the sloping street to the green, where the weather-beaten inn squatted in close proximity to the purling river—a baby stream of mysterious origin, and only a mile or two old, if one may put it so.
A few other houses, substantially but plainly built of millstone grit and limestone, and varying from the humble whitewashed cottages of the labouring classes to the more pretentious dwellings of farmers and apartment-providers faced the green on three sides. An hotel of somewhat imposing dimensions stood back a few yards from the main road on the west; but after one brief glance in that direction Inman turned on his heel, and crossing the stream and the upper section of the green entered the low door of “The Packhorse,” and found himself in a well-filled room, where he discerned amidst the smoke the features of the phlegmatic elders who had been silent witnesses of the scene at the carpenter’s.
His entrance interrupted the conversation for a few seconds only, and when he had ordered and been served with a pot of ale, he rested his chin on his hands and set himself to pick up the threads. It was quite evident that the incident in which he had taken part had been under discussion for some time, and he was quick to realise that his action, the ultimate result of which was not known, had aroused some measure of resentment. The knowledge amused without embarrassing him; but he masked his features as carefully as he had done in the master’s office.
“A trew word, as Jagger tell’d him,” said an elderly man whose beard bore wintry evidences of a former fiery splendour. “I mind when he wor nowt but a wisp of a lad and laiked taws[[1]] wi’ t’ rest on us he wor a rare trader; and there worn’t many he didn’t diddle out o’ all their glass uns. Allus for his-sen, wor Baldwin, and t’ owder he gets t’ worse he becomes.”
“It’s t’ way o’ t’ world, Swith’n,” a spare, undersized man of advanced age observed in a thin, leaking voice that whistled at every sibilant. “I made a verse of it when I wor a young man i’ my prime. I can’t think o’ things same as I use to could. When I try to call ’em up it’s same as they start a-dancin’ a polka, and I can’t pick out one from t’other. I know ‘pelf’ came at t’ end o’ one line and ‘self’ at t’other. It wor a good rhyme, and t’ plain meanin’ of it wor ’at it’s i’ t’ way o’ Natur’ for a man to look after his-sen. I had a gift i’ them days for puttin’ my thoughts into verse.”
“And uncommon well you did it, Ambrus; that’s a fact,” admitted Swithin, whilst two or three others grunted approval.