“So—so!”
“Mus Garston be a-wanting to see ye both down at Thorney Chapel. There be a fat load comin’ through, and Mus Garston he’ll share like a gentleman.”
Isaac’s gray eyes gave that peculiar twinkle that told those who knew him that he was in the sweetest of tempers. He was never backward where money might be made, and he had no objection to cheating the Customs occasionally, provided that the adventure was worth the risk. Mus Garston was one of the finest land smugglers on the southern coast—a keen, black-eyed fellow, who loved the game better than he loved his soul. Bess, too, was safe, bound to the chair in Dan’s cottage. They could join Garston’s men and leave the girl to be dealt with at their leisure.
“We’ll come, Jim,” he said. “Come in and have a bite of food and a pull at the ale-pot.”
The poacher capped Isaac, for Grimshaw was a man of some circumstance among the night-moths of Pevensel. They went, the three of them, into Isaac’s cottage, and were soon gossiping over their bacon, brown bread, and ale. When they had ended the meal, Isaac whispered a few words into his son’s ear, and Dan, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, marched off to his cottage to look at Bess.
He found her much as they had left her, sitting stiffly in the chair, and gazing out of the window. Her face brightened a little when Dan entered, and she tried to smile at him as though for welcome. The man appeared in no mood to pity her. He felt the cords about her wrists and ankles, stared at her a moment in silence, stroking his beard with the palm of his hand.
“Dan,” she said, with a wistful drooping of the mouth.
Her husband’s dark eyes were hard and without light.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Do with ye?”