“Ah, dame,” he said, “I can remember when Jeremy brought ye your wedding-ribbons and a ring at Rookhurst. You were a merry bit of mutton then. Do you call to mind old Stumpy Job, the Jew who used to have his stall in the corner of the market before Surgeon Stott’s door? It was John Stott in those days, and, deuce take me, he was a rough devil; he’d bleed you half dead and blister your back till there wasn’t a sound bit of skin over your kidneys. Well, Stumpy Job, he was about the cleverest knave as ever I knew. Half the smugglers in the Channel had dealings with him, and if ‘my lady’ wanted French lace or silks, she had but to let Stumpy know, and a pack load of finery would drop over the garden-wall one quiet night. Yes, Stumpy was a neat rogue, but too greedy on the main chance, and they stretched his neck for him at the end of it. They hanged him on Dardan Heath for shooting an exciseman, and he showed the white-feather terrible at the end. I did hear that he promised to pay ’em all a powerful lot of money if they’d let him run and cross the water. His guineas were buried somewhere down Chichester way, and they do say that a flash dame who kept an inn there had it, for Stumpy was always hot on the women.”
Bess had been sitting motionless all through the old man’s monologue, her brows contracted, and an expression of alertness on her face. Her eyes were fixed upon the door opening upon the stairs, though she cast rapid glances ever and again at Isaac’s countenance shining in the firelight under his silvery hair. Ursula was half asleep in the ingle-nook, nodding her head mechanically over her brother’s reminiscences. Bess had caught a vague and indefinite sound that had quickened her pulses and deepened her distrust. She rose up very quietly from her stool, yawned, and reached for the brass candlestick upon the mantle-shelf.
Old Isaac, wide-awake on the instant, turned on the settle and looked at her suspiciously.
“What’s amiss, lass?” he asked her, with a smile.
Bess lit the candle, steadied herself, betraying nothing of the dread that was in her heart.
“Tut, tut, lass, stay with us a little longer. Have you listened too much to an old man’s tales?”
Bess yawned behind her hand, laughed, and walked towards the stairs.