“A lover!” quo’ Wanlock, regarding his helpless arm, remembering happier things. “Are there still folk loving?”
“It’s what he would like to be,” said the woman awkwardly; “but the man’s a dwarfish waif I daren’t hardly venture through the woods for; ye’ll have heard him screech for a month past. He haunts me like a bogle, comes from I kenna where—a crazy, crooked, gangrel body, worse than the Blednock brownie. He was squatted at the door last night when I got home, and he gave me the brooch,—I—I wish to the Lord I had never seen it.”
“I—I have given it back,” the girl replied with some confusion.
“Ye were wise in that,” said her master. “Woe upon the owner of the havock brooch! for I have had it too, and the heart of me is withered in my bosom. No brooch, no human brooch, I’ll warrant! but a clot of the blood that dried on the spear of the Roman soldier. Ye have trafficked with the devil and have worn his seal. It has robbed me of my money and my home, my son, my daughter, and the power of my members—look at that blemished arm!”
She watched him for a moment, fascinated, seeing now his palsy; he beheld the pity in her eye, resenting it, and caught with his able hand at the bottle of Bordeaux which he poured with a splash into a tarnished goblet. He was about to drink it when he saw a look of fear and speculation come upon her face.
“May the Lord forgive me, Manor!” she exclaimed, “but I gave the brooch this morning to your son!”
“To my son!” he cried, incredulous. “How could you have seen him? He is far from here.”
“He never left the country,” cried the woman, weeping, “and I have known his hiding all the time. He saw the brooch upon me, was furious when he heard how I had got it, and made me give it up.”
“Furious,” said Wanlock curiously. “Had he the right?”
“None better,” said the woman, looking on the floor.
“I might have guessed,” said Wanlock bitterly. “‘Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.’ He has the brooch! Then are his footsteps dogged by the Accuser of the Brethren, for the gem is hell’s bell-wether!”
The night was tranquil, windless, frosty-cold; deep in the valley’s labyrinth lay the lodge-house, far from other dwellings, alien, apparently forgot, with the black plumes of the trees above it. In pauses of the conversation something troubled Wanlock like the fear of ambush; some absorbing sense of breathing shadows: silence itself took on a substance and stood listening at the threshold.