“How now, dame!” said he, looking angry and black at us; “what is this that you are saying of me? Think you I have naught to do but slay men o’ nights? I would have you know that there is law for those that set malicious reports abroad.”
Then my mother looked straight at him. “Master Watson,” she said, “I have set no reports abroad, nor shall I. I know not who killed my dear husband. But I am very sure, Master Watson, that not all the sorrow and pain which I and these children have suffered will equal one tithe of the sorrow that God will bring down on the head of his murderer.”
And therewith she went inside and closed the door, and Rupert Watson rode out of the yard with his head bent down, looking, said one of our maids, as if he had seen a spirit.
IX
Of the Passage of Many Years
After that time many years came and went and brought nothing of moment with them. It seemed, indeed, to me that however the great world’s affairs might go, naught disturbed us at Dale’s Field, where the seasons travelled round with monotonous regularity. Now it was winter and now spring, and with the latter came fresh flowers and the bleating of lambs, and summer followed only to be driven forth by apple-cheeked autumn, and so the year completed its cycle, and was in its turn compelled to give way to its successor. For I perceived at last that I was grown head and shoulders above my mother, who herself was a tall woman, and I was not a little proud to feel that I was approaching manhood.
I had pleaded hard after my father’s sudden death to be allowed to remain at home and help my mother in managing the farm, for I knew that she would need a helping hand and head where there was so much to do. There would, I foresaw, be many an occasion when she would need someone to carry messages and ride forth on business, and it seemed to me that I was the one to undertake such affairs. And for a time my mother, feeling the loneliness of her position, was minded to keep me at home to help her. But having taken counsel, as was her wont upon all important matters, with Parson Drumbleforth, she considered it best that I should go back to Dr. Parsons for a twelvemonth at least.
“Thou wilt do thy poor mother most good, Will,” said Parson Drumbleforth, “by going back to thy book and attending thereto. As to farm matters, she hath Jacob Trusty to assist her, and a wiser man in husbandry I know not. Go back, then, lad, to my good friend Doctor Parsons, and mind thy book for the space of a year, and get some strength into those great bones of thine against the time when thou wilt be master of Dale’s Field.”
And with that I was fain to be content, and returned to school, determined to do my duty there until such times as I was called to do it elsewhere. Yet I cared little about book-learning, for my head was always running after what things were going on at Dale’s Field, and I fear that my mind was often with Jacob Trusty and Timothy Grass when it ought to have been immersed in far diverse matters. It was, for example, a hard thing to sit in the ancient schoolhouse on a fine spring morning, staring at the grammar and remembering that at that very moment Jacob Trusty was probably counting the young lambs in the home meadow. At such times I used to wish that I could jump across the country and join Jacob for an hour, so inviting was the thought of the green fields and bright sunshine. However, I had a good deal of consolation in the weekly home-going, for I ran off homewards as soon as school was over on Friday, and did not return until Monday. By my mother’s pleasure I was often accompanied on these weekend visits by one or other of my fellows, Ben Tuckett or Tom Thorpe, and on the Saturday we were as often as not joined by Jack Drumbleforth, with whom we had many a royal day at birds’-nesting, so that the country round there became as familiar to us as the lines on our hands. And once or twice at holiday times I had all three lads to stay with me at Dale’s Field, and our merrymaking was great.
So the time went on, and I was growing every month and assuming vast proportions, so that people who knew me not stared in astonishment on learning my age, and thought me older than I was. For at my fifteenth year I was nearly six feet high and well-fashioned into the bargain, being broad-shouldered and properly proportioned, and having nothing of the beanstalk about me, as so many fast-growing lads have. Moreover, I was developing considerable strength, and could lift and carry a load of wheat or potatoes as easily as if it were a pikestaff. But Jacob Trusty would not allow me to do much in that way.
“Husband thy strength, William,” he was wont to say, “husband thy strength. For what good will it do thee to show folk how strong thou art now? ’Tis a fine sight, doubtless, to see so young a lad possess the strength of a grown man, but such things are, after all, but in the way of sightseeing, and afford only a passing curiosity. Keep thy strength, lad, for thy manhood, for thou mayst find a time of blows, and worse, coming.”
Now, when I was fifteen I told my mother with all respect that I thought it time I was busied about the farm and learning the active duties of life. And in this view I was supported by Dr. Parsons,
