The women came to the house-door, and it surprised Miles that it was not Constance, but Mistress Hopkins, who cried, in a frightened voice: "Stephen, Stephen, I pray you--"
Ned rose to his feet with his face white, and stood brushing the dirt off the side on which he had fallen; there was a great brown streak of it along one sleeve and the shoulder of his shirt. "There's work you have made for the mistress, sir," he said, and began laughing in a high key.
"That's enough," Stephen Hopkins checked him. "Remember, I've never laid hands on you ere now, Edward Lister, but if you mend not your ways, this will not be the last time." He lingered yet a moment ere he turned away to the door, as if awaiting an answer, but Ned made no reply, just stood fumbling at the fishing tackle with one hand, while the other hung limp at his side.
Only when Master Hopkins had passed out of sight into the house did Lister raise his head, and then, squaring his shoulders, he led the way toward the street. "Will you not take the tackle, after all?" asked Miles, running at his side. Ned's only answer was a shake of the head, and to all Miles's further efforts at talk and one clumsy effort at sympathy he kept silent.
They left behind them the sandy street, and, skirting along the bluff, came to the path to the spring and the stepping-stones, beyond which lay the trail to the ponds. Ned did not turn off there, however, but trudged on till he reached the little stream that flowed from the pool where they had cut thatch. "Whither are you going?" panted Miles, for the third time.
"Where you were best not come," Ned answered, crashing into the bushes on the right hand. But Miles turned doggedly in his steps, through the first crisp thickets and then along the miry ground by the edge of the pool, where the air was so muggy that he wondered Ned cared to keep up his reckless pace.
Of necessity the speed slackened, as they clambered over the pebbles and pushed aside the crackling undergrowth of a dry gully in the northern hillside, but it was not till they were tramping through the hushed woods on the summit that Ned spoke: "Did you know, Miley, my father was a gentleman? A great family, the Listers, up Yorkshire way. But he was a mere younger son, and he married a pretty serving wench out of his father's hall, so they would have no more of him. But he was a gentleman, and he tried to give me a smattering of decent breeding,--" there Ned began to laugh, with the corners of his mouth drawn up, and his eyes mirthless,--"and I am a brisk serving fellow, whom the master pommels at will, eh, Miles? And they set a clod like Edward Dotey over me."