"But he fled from us, Ned--minding the night, I warrant, when we took him in the back with yond stone ball. Yet they say he's always like that now; Nanny Witherlee tells me he sees the Dog at the side of every Wayne among us, and flees from that, not from us."
"Nanny is a fond old wife, with more tales on her tongue-tip than hairs on her thinning thatch."
"Yet--dost mind what I saw, too, that night in the garden?" said Mistress Wayne. "Brown, blunt-headed--I can see him yet, Ned, as he fawned against thy side."
Wayne did not answer, though he paled a little, and soon he made excuse to leave them.
"Where art going, Ned? We've fifty tales to tell thee of the day's sport," cried Griff.
"But have I idleness enough to listen, ye careless rascals?" laughed Wayne from the door. "I must see Hiram Hey and make all ready against to-morrow's work."
"Thou'lt not find him, for he was going into the Friendly Inn with shepherd Jose as we passed through Ling Crag."
"Was he?" growled the other. "Hiram is a poor drinker by his own showing, and a man with no spare time on his hands--but he has worn many a tavern threshold bare, I'll warrant, since he first learned to set lips to pewter."
And, indeed, Hiram wore a leisurely air enough at the moment. Stretched at his ease on the wide lang-settle of the Friendly Inn, he was handling a mug of home-brewed and watching the crumbling faces in the peat-fire, while shepherd Jose talked idly to him from the window.
"There's somebody got four gooid legs under him," said Jose, as the racket of horse-hoofs came up the road.
"Ay, by th' sound. Who is't, Jose?" answered Hiram lazily.
"Why, Mistress Janet fro' Wildwater. She's a tidy seat i' th' saddle, hes th' lass," said the shepherd, pressing his face closer to the glass to see the last of her.
"A wench can hev a tidy seat i' th' saddle, an' yet be leet as thistle-down."
"Ay, but she hes a snod way wi' her, an' all. I've thowt, whiles, she hed more o' th' free, stand-up look o' th' Waynes about her nor her breed warrants."
"Well, there's some say that, if wishes war doings, she'd hev a Wayne name to her back," said Hiram, shifting to an easier posture.
"Nowt o' th' sort!" put in the shepherd warmly. "Th' young Maister may hev been a wild-rake, an' he may be wilful i' farming-matters an' sich--but he'd niver foul th' owd name by gi'eing it to a Ratcliffe."