“Isaac shall have no second chance,” he said; “thank God, dear, he did not spoil it all.”
And they held each other very close awhile, awed and silenced by what had happened.
By the hovel, Isaac was bending over the young man Enoch, who was groaning and writhing in the road. The slugs from the blunderbuss had fleshed him cruelly, but his broken legs hurt him more than Gladden’s lead. Isaac Grimshaw’s eyes showed no pity for the lad; his helpless whimperings made the old man savage.
“Drop that snivelling! Curse your bones and the mother that made ’em. What did I say to ye, ‘Get to the horses’ heads,’ wasn’t it? Not, ‘Stand off and shove your arm up like a scarecrow in the middle of a field.’ Pretty mess you’ve made. Stop that row, or I’ll give ye the pistol butt.”
Enoch was half fainting and too distraught with pain to give much heed to Isaac’s curses. The old man took him by the collar of the coat, and dragged him into the hovel, despite his cries as the broken bones jarred and rubbed together. The lower end of one splintered shin-bone had pierced the skin and showed through the lad’s stocking when Isaac let him rest at last on the foul straw of the shed.
“Lie there and snivel, damn you,” he said. “The louder you shout, the sooner you’ll be hanged.”
And after reloading his pistols he crammed his hat down over his eyes, took his holly staff, and, ignoring Enoch’s whimperings, limped away doggedly along the road to the sea.
XLVII
The sky grew more heavily clouded as Bess and Jeffray neared the sea, and the distant downs stood out with peculiar distinctness under the ragged fringes of the wind-blown clouds. The two in the coach hardly so much as heeded the darkening of the day, or the dishevelled clouds that were shutting out the sun. They were still blessed by the preservation of the morning, and by the thought that the sea would rock their troubles to an end. The coach rolled fast over the flats, dust blowing in clouds, and the windows rattling and banging with the wind. Jeffray had shouted to the coachman not to spare his horseflesh, for there was no knowing how far old Grimshaw’s doggedness might not take him.
He smiled, and looked glad when they neared the outskirts of the little town, and could see the masts of the ships and fishing-boats rising in the harbor. Even the banking of the clouds, and the gusts of wind that beat about the coach, gave him no thought or trouble nor dulled the ardor of the day.