Vague rumours began to come to Griff's ears nowadays, and people stared curiously at him as he passed them in the street.

"Look here, Gabriel, what's in the wind?" he asked bluntly, while the preacher and he were taking a walk together one afternoon.

Although the summer was well advanced now, Joe Strangeways, despite his ready acquiescence in the old witch's advice, had but lately summoned resolution enough to take him to Lawyer French's office. But his tongue had not been idle in the meanwhile.

Gabriel was not the man to break any news gently, nor to beat about the bush; he lacked the guile. So he rested a steady eye on Griff, and—"They say that matters are wrong between you and Kate Strangeways," he said.

Lomax met the preacher's eye squarely.

"Do you believe their tales?"

"I want not to. Lad, it would break my heart to believe it of you. Can you give me your word it's false?"

"As false as the liar who set it abroad. You can believe it or not as you like; but we're free of that charge."

Griff was hurt that the story was going abroad—hurt by a remembrance of his part in the scene which was responsible for it, hurt by the preacher's momentary doubt.

"Forgive me, Griff; I might have known," said Gabriel Hirst, and accepted his friend's word for good and all.

A night or two later, as Lomax was coming home from the moor, he saw Joe Strangeways go in at the Bull doorway; the oil-lamp at the corner showed an evil look on the quarrymaster's face. Without pause or hesitation, Griff followed him into the noisy public bar. There was a shuffling of feet, followed by a silence.

"Strangeways, a word with you," said Griff, standing in the middle of the floor.

Joe laughed, and never so much as glanced at his enemy.

"Stand up, and come over here."

Still the quarrymaster did not look up, and Lomax crossed the floor.

"You're a heavy weight to lift, and I'd rather you came without fetching; but——"

Joe abandoned his defiant attitude on a sudden; he remembered that evening when Griff had laid him prone, with his feet on the top, and his head on the bottom, step of the Bull doorway. He got up reluctantly, growling as he went. Griff set him with his face to the company.

"You have heard strange tales of me lately, neighbours?"

A subdued hum was the only answer.

"They came from Joe Strangeways here, if I'm not mistaken. Speak up, Joe! What have you got to say by way of proof?"

"Hannah see'd wi' her own een——" began Joe, then stopped. Lomax was so confoundedly cool about it all.

"Can you swear to that? Or am I right in guessing that Hannah lied to you, and taught you the lie pat off?"

This new suggestion staggered Joe's muddled wits; his knees shook under him, and he could make no answer. Griff waited for a space, nodding meanwhile at the landlord, who had come to the door to hear what was going on.

"Then I think I needn't keep you any longer, friends," he laughed at length. "Landlord, drinks round; it's thirsty work watching a liar try to moisten his tongue."

He turned to leave; and Joe was never the one to neglect the chance afforded by an adversary's back. He seized a pewter-pot and hurled it with all his strength across the room. Griff felt it whizz past his ear, turned sharp round, and made for Strangeways in a fit of mad fury. He already had his hands at his throat, when a sudden thought pulled him up—a brute the man might be, and a liar, but he was Kate's husband. Nay, he himself was, in a measure, the quarrymaster's debtor—he had filched a kiss that was rightly his; he had stolen his wife's love from him.

"You were born a liar, Joe Strangeways. I'll leave you to it," he said, and went out.

But a shout followed him through the door.

"I'll be even wi' ye yet, Griff Lummax!" yelled Joe, in impotent fury. "Tha'rt ower big to be talked sense to; but thy wench's body shall pay for what tha's said an' done to me. Ay, by God! we'll see which on us is th' maister up to Teewit House! Twice tha's called me a liar, an' I'll blacken her een for that—one for th' first time ye called me, an' one for th' second."

"Hod thy blethering din!" cried one of his mates, roughly. "Tha'rt nobbut a windbag, Joe, an' a foul-mouthed bag at that."

Again Lomax came back. A cold fear seized him, as he caught the drift of the drunkard's threats; he had forgotten that his hasty method of self-defence might place Kate in jeopardy. Again he stood in the middle of the room and looked at the company; but his throat was parched; he was sick with pity, wild with the thought that Kate's name would soon be on every tongue here—would be bandied across this reeking bar, among the shag-smoke, the dirty pots, the beer-droppings on the floor.

"Tha'rt noan so pleased wi' thyseln, seemingly, as tha war a while back," jeered Strangeways, seeing that Griff made no further forward movement, but just stood there like one dazed. "Thee wend home to thy mammy-bird, lad, an' let other fowks's wives alone for th' future."

Still Lomax did not move. The wondering faces to right and left of him showed so many blurred spots of white through the smoke clouds. Every second that he stood there made against them—against Kate and himself—yet the words would not come. The quarrymaster grew bolder, and rose to an effort of wit.

"Landlord," said he, taking two greasy coppers from his pocket and laying them on the table, "we're fine an' freehanded i' Marshcotes Parish. 'Drinks round,' says Mr. Lummax; an', 'drinks for Mr. Lummax,' says Joe Strangeways—— Come, Griff," he went on, with brutal familiarity, "we'll sink th' woman i' beer; tak her for gooid an' all if tha wants, an' we'll be mates, thee an' me. Let fowk talk. I bear thee no malice, lad."

Griff found his tongue at last. The less sober of the company afterwards declared that "it war as if fork-leetning war playing round his face, an' his words came out like thunner."

"Strange ways, I never yet gave my word to a thing and then went back on it. And I promise you now that if you lay a finger on Kate, I'll smash every bone in your body."

"An' swing for 't?" sneered Joe.

"Ay, and swing for it, if need be," Griff answered, his voice falling to a quietness that appalled the quarrymaster.

The landlord followed him into the passage.

"I'm fair sick o' yon Strangeways, sir. He's a surly wastril, as is allus kicking up a row i' my public. Only, ye wouldn't be thinking o' persecuting him for shying that there mug at ye? It 'ud be brought in drunk and disorderly, sure as sure, an' that harms a respectable public."

"Prosecuted?" murmured Griff. "No, of course not."

The landlord turned with a sigh of relief. Truth to tell, Griff scarcely grasped what he had said. He was face to face with a situation which, until now, he had realized but dimly. That swift understanding of the thing called love had so lifted him out and beyond the little world about him, had given him such new forces, new hopes, that he had hardly paused to ask himself "What next?" To-night, though, the matter was practical, urgent. Instinctively he made for Wynyates, quickening his pace with every stride. Gabriel Hirst was coming out of his gate as he passed through Ling Crag.

"Is that you, Griff? I thought it looked like your stride, though it's almost too dark to see."

"Yes, it's I. I'm off for a tramp."

"Where to?" asked the preacher, trying to fall in with his step.

"The devil."

"Griff, Griff, what's this? To speak so to the man who's loved and looked up to you—ay, looked up to you, for all your wild ways. Lad, do you want to—to make an end of our friendship?"

Gabriel had grown very sensitive of late to changes in those he loved.

Griff put out a hand into the darkness and gripped his friend's.

"Don't be a fool, old fellow. It isn't that—only, I want to be alone; I've troubles to think out, and there seems to be no way to it yet."

"Can't you tell them to me, Griff? I might be able to help."

Griff hesitated a moment, then laughed to himself, as he put the thought from him. The preacher was such a baby in women-matters; how could he appeal to him?

"Thanks, Gabriel, but I couldn't explain—not just yet. I'll come to you when the way shows a bit clearer.—Roddick has lived, and he's tough. He ought to be good for something," he added, after he had said good-night to Gabriel, and quickened his stride again.

He reached Wynyates, opened the door without knocking, and stamped into the hall.

"Who's there?" came a voice from the room to his right.

Griff followed the voice. He found Roddick seated at the table, which was covered with a jumble of cold beef, bread, apple-pie, cheese, and beer.

"Oh, you, is it?" said Roddick, cutting himself another slice of beef. "Why the deuce can't you enter in a Christian way? Have some food."

"So I will. I'd clean forgotten supper."

"Forgotten supper, had you?" snapped his host, when he was fairly launched. "A healthy man never does that. What's amiss, Lomax?"

Griff looked at him thoughtfully across the table.

"Something serious. I don't come for advice unless I need it."

"And then you don't take it. You always were a cross-grained beggar. Well?"

"There's a woman in the case."

"Damn the women!" growled Roddick. "Have some more beef."

Griff said no more on the subject till they had turned their chairs to the fire; then he made a plain statement of fact.

"So it's come at last, has it?" said Roddick, gruffly.

Griff flushed.

"Hold hard, Roddick; you're going a bit too far," he muttered, in answer to the spirit rather than the matter of the other's words. "We are innocent, I tell you!"

"Matter of terms, my boy. You kissed her, you say? It amounts to much the same thing."

"It does nothing of the kind. Besides, what fault there was lies at my door; she is not to blame."

"I never insinuated that either of you were to blame. I only said that it amounted to the same thing."

A silence followed, broken at length by Griff.

"It's pretty hopeless, either way," he finished. "If I leave things as they are, she runs a constant danger of being murdered by that brute. If we cut the whole thing, and go away together, it will break mother's heart."

Roddick had been oddly moved during this recital. Twice he had been on the point of blurting out something that lay at the top of his mind; thrice his face had grown soft with pity. It would not have been Roddick if he had allowed these lapses to go without correction.

"Well, you've got to choose," he said bluntly. "We always have to choose when anything serious is at stake. Which is more to you, the lover or the mother?"

Griff frowned at him.

"Roddick," he said, with just the trace of a catch in his voice, "when I speak of my mother, I don't mean any conventional rot. All my life she has been a lover and a friend to me."

The older man softened, and jeered again to hide it.

"You sound like a tract, Lomax. Give the woman up, then, and stick to the feeding-bottle."

"You're a brute!" muttered Griff, savagely, and said no more.

For ten minutes they sat and stared into the fire. The trees without—starveling sentries that challenged the moor winds, but were fain to let them pass—whimpered sorrowfully. A spit or two of rain sounded against the windows.

"God! I ought to have been born up here; I feel like that," cried Roddick, at last, pointing to the window on his right.

Griff had his back to the window and his eyes on the fire. Had he glanced at Roddick, he would have seen the sweat standing out on his forehead; the whole look of the man was changed since that casual glance at the window. But Griff noted nothing; he sat there moodily until his host should find something useful to say.

Roddick recovered himself with an effort.

"Old fellow, if I seem a brute at times, I have very good reason. It is hard, Lomax, to have to go on day after day without telling one's troubles to a living soul.—Your case and mine run on all fours."

"Your case and mine?" repeated Griff. "What do you mean?"

The other checked himself.

"There are some things best left untold. Chuck another log on the fire, will you?"

Another silence followed. Griff could stand it no longer, and rose to leave.

"Man, you're clean daft," he said irritably, "What is the use of asking you what I am to do?"

Roddick gripped the arm of his chair.

"Do?" he cried, with sudden energy. "If you take warning from me, you'll choose the nearest road to happiness, and have done with it. Wait, and wait, and wait, till you're sick with effort and half dead with hunger; yes, wait if you like, and be hanged to you—but you'll regret it."

"I begin to understand," muttered Griff. "Roddick, why did you never hint at this before?"

"Hint? I've hinted at nothing; I can't, for the girl's sake. Look here, Lomax," he added, more sanely, "if your mother is really a friend to you, and as sensible as you think her, she'll give you her blessing. Cut and run—it isn't orthodox advice, but it's level-headed. Cut and run, you fool; and get a look at happiness before you or the woman dies."

Griff moved to the door. Clearly his host was not in a fit state either to give or to take advice, and his suggestions tallied altogether too closely with the promptings of inclination.

"Good night, old man," he muttered; "we'll talk it over when—when you're more yourself. No, don't bother to come to the door with me; I found my way in without help, and I can go out the same way."

He closed the door after him. Roddick moved swiftly to the window, and peered through. There was nothing to be seen. He rattled his hand against the glass with pitiful impotence.

"You—devil!" he said, slowly.

When Griff opened the front door, a storm of wind and rain struck him full in the face. He pushed his way out with a laugh; wind and rain were staunch old friends, and this sort of horse-play was to his liking. He had barely crossed the threshold, and was about to turn and pull to the door after him, when a thing leaped out of the darkness. Something hard and bony went round his neck; something flabby and wet pressed close to his lips. He put out his arms and grasped a bundle of rags.

"It's cold and dark," said a voice. "And what call have you, Leo, to keep your true love waiting?"

Griff thrust the loathsome thing away, not without effort—those lean arms round his neck gripped like a vice. A hollow laugh went up into the darkness, and from the mingled odours Griff singled out the reek of brandy.

"Oh, I'm drunk," went on the voice; "but you took me for better or worse, Leo; yes, you did, so help me God!—and here you keep me waiting in the cold and the wet—in the cold and the wet. But you'll kiss me just once, Leo? That'll make it all right. Take me in, I tell you, and give me warmth; give me food and drink—drink, yes, drink!"

"Roddick!" shouted Griff. He feared this evil creature as he had never yet feared man.

A shadow came before the hall lamp, and Roddick stood at his side.

"What is it?" he demanded testily.

"A vampire, or a mad witch, or something. Why the devil can't she come into the light and give us a fair chance?"

They heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching the gravel; the gate opened and clashed again; there was nothing to be seen but darkness, nothing to be felt but the clean, fresh wind.

"You have guessed half my secret now, I fancy—the wrong half," said Roddick, with a harsh laugh. "Good night. I must go and find her."