might have laid a burden of melancholy.
But Tyson thought of his wrongs, not of the night, and with a curse he turned and plunged into the wood, following a path impossible for a stranger. As it was he stumbled over roots, the saplings whipped him smartly, a low bough struck off his hat, and when he came to the stream which whirled through the bottom of the dingle he had much ado to find the plank bridge. But at length he emerged from the wood, gained the road, and mounted the steep shoulder that divided the Low Wood hamlet from the vale of Troutbeck.
Where his road topped the ridge the gaunt outline of a tall, narrow building rose in the gloom. It resembled a sentry-box commanding either valley. It was set back some twenty paces from the road with half a dozen ragged fir trees intervening; and on its lower side-but the night hid them-some mean farm-buildings clung to the steep. With the wind soughing among the firs and rustling through the scanty grass, the place on that bleak shoulder seemed lonely even at night. But in the day its ugliness and barrenness were a proverb. They called it "Starvecrow Farm."
Nevertheless, Tyson paused at the gate, and with an irresolute oath looked over it.
"Cursed shrew!" he said, for the third time. "What business is it of hers if I choose to amuse myself?"
And with his heart hardened, he flung the gate wide, and entered. He had not gone two paces before he leapt back, startled by the fierce snarl of a dog, that, unseen, flung itself to the end of its chain. Disappointed in its spring, it began to bay.
The doctor's fright was only momentary.
"What, Turk!" he cried. "What are you doing here? What the blazes are you doing here? Down, you brute, down!"
The dog knew his voice, ceased to bark, and began to whimper. Tyson entered, and assured that the watchdog knew him, kicked it brutally from his path. Then he groped his way between the trees, stumbled down three broken steps at the corner of the house, and passing round the building reached the door which was on the further side from the road. He tried it, but it was fastened. He knocked on it.
A slip-shod foot dragged across a stone floor. A high cracked voice asked, "Who's there?"
"I! Tyson!" the doctor answered impatiently. "Who should it be at this hour?"
"Is't you, doctor?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Who's wi' ye?"
"No one, you old fool! Who should there be?"
A key creaked in the lock, and the great bar was withdrawn; but slowly, as it seemed to the apothecary, and reluctantly. He entered and the door was barred behind him.
"Where's Bess?" he asked.
The bent creeping figure that had admitted him replied that she was "somewheres about, somewheres about." After which, strangely clad in a kind of bedgown and nightcap, it trailed back to the settle beside the turf and wood fire, which furnished both light and warmth. The fire, indeed, was the one generous thing the room contained. All else was sordid and pinched and mean. The once-whitened walls were stained, the rafters were smoked in a dozen places, the long dresser-for the room was large, though low-was cracked and ill-furnished, a brick supported one leg of the table. Even in the deep hearth-place, where was such comfort as the place could boast, a couple of logs served for stools and a frowsy blanket gave a squalid look to the settle.
Tyson stood on the hearth with his back to the fire, and eyed the room with a scowl of disgust. The old man, bent double over a stick which he was notching, breathed loudly and laboriously.
"What folly is this about the dog?" Tyson asked contemptuously.
The old man looked up, cunning in his eyes.
"Ask her," he said.
"Eh?"
The miser bending over his task seemed to be taken with a fit of silent laughter.
"It's the still sow sups the brose," he said. "And I'm still! I'm still."
"What are you doing?" Tyson growled.
"Nothing much! Nothing much! You've not," looking up with greed in his eyes, "an old letter-back to spare?"
Tyson seldom came to the house unfurnished with one. He had long known that Hinkson belonged to the class of misers who, if they can get a thing for nothing, are as well pleased with a scrap of paper, a length of string, or a mouldy crust, as with a crown-piece. The poor land about the house, which with difficulty supported three or four cows, on the produce of which the Hinksons lived, might have been made profitable at the cost of some labour and a little money. But labour and money were withheld. And Tyson often doubted if the miser's store were as large as rumour had it, or even if there were a store at all.
"Not that," he would add, "large or small, some one won't cut his throat for it one day!"
He produced the old letter, and after showing it, held it behind him.
"What of the dog now?" he said.
"Na, na, I'll not speak for that!"
"Then you won't have it!"
But the old fellow only cackled superior.
"What's-what's-a pound-note a week? Is't four pound a month?"
"Ay!" the doctor answered. "It is. That's money, my lad!"
"Ay!"
The old man hugged himself, and rocked to and fro in an ecstasy.
"That's money! And four pound a month," he consulted the stick he was notching, "is forty-eight pound a year?"
"And four to it," Tyson answered. "Who's paying you that?"
"Na, na!"
"And what's it to do with the dog?"
Hinkson looked knavish but frightened.
"Hist!" he said. "Here's Bess. I'd use to wallop her, but now-"
"She wallops you," the visitor muttered. "That's the ticket, I expect."
The girl entered by the mean staircase door and nodded to him coolly.
"I supposed it was you," she said slightingly.
And for the hundredth or two-hundredth time he felt with rage that he was in the presence of a stronger nature than his own. He could treat the old man, whose greed had survived his other passions, and almost his faculties, pretty much as he pleased. But though he had sauntered through the gate a score of times with the intention of treating Bess as he had treated more than one village girl who pleased him, he had never re-crossed the threshold without a sense not only of defeat, but of inferiority. He came to strut, he remained to kneel.
He fought against that feeling now, calling his temper to his aid.
"What folly is this about the dog?" he asked.
"Father thinks," she replied demurely, "that if thieves come it can be heard better at the gate."
"Heard? I should think it could be heard in Bowness!"
"Just so."
"But your father-"
"Father!"
