Again the cry rose, farther in the distance, burdened with a sense of desolation.
“A bittern,” said Mirren; “it can only be a bittern.”
“Do ye think I have not thought of that?” asked Wanlock. “Have ye ever heard a bittern boom at this time of the year, and in the middle of the day?”
“I have heard it once or twice at night of late,” said his daughter. “It can only be a bittern, or some other creature maybe wounded. Do you know that The Peel has been plundered? Last night the strong-room was broken into.”
“And robbed of the Mellish jewels?” broke in Wanlock, with exultant intuition.
“Yes, and a great collection of antique gems entrusted to Mellish for the purpose of a monograph he was writing,” said the daughter.
“A monograph?” asked Wanlock, still with eyes bent on the wood from which the dog returned indifferent.
“It is a book on gems he has been busy writing.”
Wanlock sneered. “A book!” said he. “I’m thinking he’d be better at some other business. I find, myself, but the one Book needful; all the others are but vanity, and lead but to confusion. And he was pillaged, was he? Well, there’s this, it might have been a man who could afford it less, for Mellish was the wealthiest in the shire.”
“But now he is the poorest,” said the girl with pity. “I’m told it means his utter ruin.”
“There’s the money of the Glasfurd girl to patch his broken fortune with; they’re long enough engaged if the clash of the countryside be true,” said Wanlock, and his daughter blenched, while the wailing cry rose up again beyond the fir-tops on the moorland edge.
Wanlock stood confused a moment, then seized her by the arm. “Would ye have me vexed for him?” said he. “Now I—with your permission—look upon it as a dispensation. If Mellish is ruined, Dreghorn is the richest man in the countryside and the better match for you—”
“Dreghorn!” cried the girl with scorn. “He danced at my mother’s wedding—a cankered, friendless miser!”
“And now he’ll dance at yours! There have been men more spendthrift, I’ll admit, but you’re not a Wanlock if in that respect ye could not teach him better. He was at me again for ye yesterday—”
Mirren put her fingers in her ears; she was used to these importunities; they had lately made her days and nights unhappy, and sent her fleeing like a wild thing to the hills, or roving with a rebel heart in all the solitary places of the valley. At any other hour this spirit would have made him furious; to-day he was elated at her news, and let her go.