dang thee! what should I know about your brass? You're kicking up a stour to waken a corp!"
"I had fifteen white shillin' in my reet-hand breek pocket, I tell thee!"
"What's that to me, thou poor shaffles? You're as drunk as muck. Do you think I've taken your brass? You've got a wrong pig by the lug if you reckon to come ower me!"
"They were in my reet-hand breek pocket, I'll swear on it!"
"What a fratchin' – try your left-hand breek pocket."
The russet-faced plowman thrust his hand where directed and instantly a comical smile of mingled joy and shame overspread his countenance. There was a gurgling laugh, through which the voice of the peddler could be heard saying:
"We'll mak' thee king ower the cockers, my canny lad."
The canny lad was slinking away amid a derisive titter, when a great silence fell on the booth. Those in front fell back, and those behind craned their necks to see over the heads of the people before them.
At the mouth of the booth stood the old Laird Fisher, his face ghastly pale, his eyes big and restless, the rain dripping from his long hair and beard.
"They've telt me," he began in a strange voice, "they've telt me that my Mercy has gone off in the London train. I reckon they're mistook as to the lass, but I've come to see for mysel'. Is she here?"
None answered. Only the heavy rain-drops that pattered on the canvas overhead broke the silence. Paul Ritson pushed his way through the crowd.
"Mercy? – London? Wait, Matthew; I'll see if she's here."
The Laird Fisher looked from face to face of the people about him.
"Any on you know owt about her?" he asked in a low voice. "Why don't you speak, some on you? You shake your heads – what does that mean?"
The old man was struggling to control the emotion that was surging in his throat.
"No, Matthew, she's not here," said Paul Ritson.
"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet.
There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise.
"She might be at Little Town – in Keswick – twenty places."
"She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way to London, Mercy is."
It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke.
At that the old man's trance seemed to break.
"Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?"
"She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'."
Paul's face became rigid with anger.
"There's villainy in this – be sure of that!" he said, hotly.
The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child.
"My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father."
Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about, and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said:
"Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody know?"
No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a laugh it was!
"No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose. There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it."
The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.
"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father – broken-hearted – him 'at loved her – no matter, I've nowt left to – Ha! ha! ha!"
He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms. They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.
Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his brother's arms.
Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.
"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"
At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and put a glass of water to his lips.
CHAPTER VIII
In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a "griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta Lowther sat together.
At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.
"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you know."
"It's an hour past supper-time," said Mrs. Ritson, glancing aside at the old clock that ticked audibly from behind the great arm-chair. "The rain is coming again – listen!" There was a light patter of rain-drops against the window-panes. "If he's on the fells now he'll be wet to the skin."
"I wish I'd gone in place of him," said Paul, turning to Greta. "A bad wetting troubles him nowadays. Not same as of old, when he'd follow the fells all day long knee-deep in water and soaked to the skin with rain or snow."
The thunder-clap shook the house. The windows rattled, and the lamp that had been newly lighted and put on the table flickered slightly and burned red.
"Mercy, me, what a night! Was that a flash of lightning?" said Mrs. Ritson, and she walked to the door once more and opened it.
"Don't worrit, mother," repeated Paul. "Do come in. Father will be here soon, and if he gets a wetting there's no help for it now."
Paul had turned aside from an animated conversation with Greta to interpolate this remonstrance against his mother's anxiety. Resuming the narrative of his wrestling match, he described its incidents as much by gesture as by words.
"John Proudfoot took me – so – and tried to give me the cross-buttock, but I caught his eye and twisted him on my hip – so – and down he went in a bash!"
A hurried knock came to the outer door. In an instant it was opened, and a white face looked in.
"What's now, Reuben?" said Paul, rising
