On entering the yard, she saw a man’s figure approaching her from the kitchen door. She thought it was the doctor’s, for a moment, but it was not, and with a “Lord! who’s that?” gasped in fear that sounded like fury, she stood fixed as the old pump.
“Bah! don’t you know me, woman?” said Harry Fairfield, surlily; “I have only a few minutes. Ye’ll have to come wi’ me in the morning over to Twyford.”
“To Twyford?”
“Ay, to Twyford; and why the devil do ye leave the yard-door open; I walked into the kitchen and right up the stairs, lookin’ for ye, and knocked at Ally’s door. I think ye’re cracked.”
“And what’s to fear here, down in the Grange? Hoot! If ’tweren’t for form’s sake we need never draw bolt from one Christmas to another.”
“There was a woman found with her throat cut by the Three Pollards, between this and Hatherton, on Tuesday. If you likes it down here, ’tis little to me. I’ll come here at eight o’clock in the morning to fetch ye.”
“Is the child sick?”
“Not it. It was, but it’s gettin’ all right; that is, if it be the child.”
“What the de’il d’ye mean, Master Harry?”
“I was lookin’ at the child this mornin’, and d⸺ me, if I think it’s the same child we left there!” said Harry.
“Why, sir—Mr. Harry, what’s this?”
“I say I misdoubt it’s not the same child, and ye must come over and look at it. Don’t ye say a word o’ the matter to no one; no more did I; if you do we’ll never come to the bottom of it.”
“My good Lord!” exclaimed old Mildred, turning paler, and frowning very hard.
“I won’t stop. I won’t eat anything. I can’t delay tonight; my nag’s by the bridle, there, beside the scales, and—any message to Wykeford? I’ll be passing Willett’s house.”
“Well! well!” repeated Mildred, gaping at him still, with scarcely a breath left her, “sin is sin, be it seen or no; judgment follows. God has feet o’ wool and hands o’ iron.”
“Sweep before your own door, lass; ye’re a bit daft, bain’t ye?” said Harry, with a sudden glare in his face.
“God forgive us all!”
“Amen,” said Harry.
And there came a pause.
“Women and fools will be meddlin’,” he resumed. “Lord love ye! For mad words, deaf ears, they say. ’Pon my soul! ’twould make a cow laugh, and if ye don’t mind ye may run yer head against the wall.”
“I will go tomorrow and look at the child,” said Mildred, with sullen emphasis, clapping one lean hand down on the other.
“That’s all I want ye. Come, what mischief can ye make o’ that? Clear yer head!”
“There’s two things shouldn’t anger ye: what ye can help and what ye can’t,” said Mildred. “I’ll go wi’ ye in the mornin’, Master Harry.”
“That’s the least we can do and the most. How’s Ally?”
“Dyin’, I think; she’ll be gone before daybreak, I’m thinkin’.”
“That’s bad,” said Harry.
“Good hap or ill hap, as God awards. I know nout against her.”
“Poor little thing!” said Harry.
“I blame myself; but what could I do? If aught’s gone wrong wi’ the child, poor lady! ’tis well she were gone too.”
“There’s many a fellow’d knock ye on the head for less,” replied Harry, with a very black look; “you women has a hintin’ funkin’ way wi’ ye. Ye like to ladle the drippin’ over a fellow’s legs, and say ye meant the mutton. Can’t ye speak out and say what ye mean, and get it off yer stomach, and let me know, and I’ll answer it straight like a man and a Fairfield, d⸺ me!”
“I’ll go wi’ ye tomorrow; and I take it that’s what ye want.”
“Well, this I’ll say. If ye suppose I’d hurt that poor baby to the value of a pin’s point, you’re a stupider and a wickeder witch than I took ye for, and I wish poor Ally could hear me, and I’d swear to her on my knees, at her dying bed, by the Creator that made me, that I’ll work for that boy as if he was my own, till I make him safe in Wyvern. And can’t ye see, woman, d⸺ ye, that I can have but the boy’s good in my mind when I ask ye to come over on such an errand to Twyford?”
“Well, I do suppose—I do suppose. Eight o’clock, and there’s two feet will be cold ere then, I’m afeard.”
“Don’t be a fool no more, and I forgive ye, Mildred,” said he, extending his hand; “and don’t ye mind a lick wi’ the rough side o’ my tongue—’tis a way wi’ us Fairfields—and there wasn’t many on ’em would ’a stood to let ye rile them as ye did me. And bolt yer doors, mind; and, poor Ally! I hope she may do yet, and mind ye—eight o’clock sharp.”
So Harry departed.
Mildred stood and looked after him for a time.
“There’s nothin’ ever goes right at the Grange,” she said with a short hard sigh; “nor never did, nor never will.”
And after a pause, with another sigh, she said—
“No, no; I won’t think it—I couldn’t think it—’taint in one o’ them. They might be fickle wi’ a lass, or hot tempered wi’ a man, and a bit too hard wi’ tongue or hand, but the like o’ that—I can’t believe it—never, and I wish I hadn’t a’ heard that. I’m most sure I heard the child cry in the loft there; I’m sorry I didn’t say so then. I don’t know why, and I don’t know now, what it should be no more than another, but I didn’t like it. It looked like summat hid—I can’t say. But my heart misgave me.”
Old Mildred walked into the house. She had other thoughts now than the poor lady upstairs. They were remorseful, though she could hardly say for what she could blame herself. Perhaps
