Uncle Lilliwhyte was carrying by its long legs the spoil of his rusty flintlock—Jinny was glad to see it was only a legitimate curlew with its dagger-like bill. He offered the bird for sale, but she was afraid it had fed too long on the marsh mud. She was glad to hear, though, he had called that very morning and sold her grandfather truffles—Uncle had a pig’s nose for truffles, and her grandfather a passion for them.

“He hadn’t got change for a foive-pun’ note,” Uncle Lilliwhyte reported. “And Oi hadn’t, neither,” he chuckled. “So ye owes me tuppence.”

Jinny was amused at her grandfather’s magnificent mendacity—his lordly way of carrying off his pennilessness.

“Never mind the twopence now,” she said. “You haven’t seen Methusalem, I suppose?”

She had supposed it so often that she took the answer for granted. This reply struck her like a cannon-ball.

“Not since ’Lijah Skindle took him away this marnin’!”

“Elijah Skindle took him!” she gasped, breathless yet relieved. “What for? Where?” Had her grandfather’s fears been justified then?

“To his ’orspital, Oi reckon. Trottin’ behind the trap he was, tied to it. A sick ’oss don’t want to goo that pace though, thinks Oi. ’Twould be before bever,” he added, when she demanded the exact hour.

“When I was at church! But Methusalem wasn’t sick when I left home.”

“Must ha’ been took sick—or it stands to reason your Gran’fer wouldn’t ha’ let him goo!”

“But Gran’fer didn’t know——!”

“Arxin’ your pardon, Jinny—Mr. Quarles waved to ’em as they went off. And Oi’ll be thankful to you for the tuppence, needin’ my Sunday beer.”

She groped in her purse. “But if Mr. Skindle took him back to Chipstone, how comes it nobody has seen him?”

“He went roundabouts by Bog Lane and Squash End, ’tis all droied-up nowadays. And took Bidlake’s Ferry, Oi reckon, stead o’ the bridge.”

A sinister feeling, as yet formless, began to creep into Jinny’s veins. Handing the nondescript his twopence and the jay feather, she ran out of the wood and then in the dusking owl-light by a field-path, and through a prickly hedge of dog-rose and blackberry that left her with scratched fingers, into her own little plot of ground. The stable door was now locked, though its aching emptiness was still visible through the weather-boarding as she passed by; the house-door was even more securely fastened, and all the windows were tightly closed. She rattled the casement of the living-room and heard her grandfather finally hobbling down the stairs.

He examined her cautiously through the little panes.

“Ye’ve left me in the dark,” he complained, turning the window-clasp. “Oi’m famished. Where you been gaddin’ in that frock?”

“Did you send Methusalem away?” she cried impatiently.

He put a scooped hand to his ear. “What be you a-sayin’?”

“Open the door!” she called angrily. “You mustn’t shut me out.”

“We’ve got to be careful, Jinny.” He moved to the door. “There’s a sight o’ bad charriters about.”

“Yes, indeed. What did Mr. Skindle want here?” she asked, as the bolts shot back.

“Skindle!” He pondered. “Young ’Lijah, d’ye mean? He brought me a pot.”

“That was long ago—what did he want this morning?”

“This marnin’? Oh, ay”—the sidelong look returned with remembrance and was succeeded by one of defiance—“That’s my business.”

A terrible suspicion flashed upon Jinny.

“You haven’t sold Methusalem?” she cried.

He winced. “That’s my property. Daniel Quarles, Carrier. And by the good rights, Oi——”

“You have sold him!” she hissed in a fury strange to herself. And she found herself shaking the old man by the arms, shaking him as he had shaken her that very morning in the small hours. And he was cowering before her, the fierce old man, cowering there on his own doorstep.

“Oi couldn’t see ye starve,” he pleaded.

“Oh, it’s not me you were thinking of!” she said harshly, not caring whether she was just or not. “You might have trusted yourself to me after all these years.” Indignation at Elijah’s supposed swindling mingled with her wrath—the idea of his getting Methusalem, an animal worth his weight in gold, for a miserable five-pound note! She gave the old man a final shake, imaginatively intended for Mr. Skindle. “Where’s the money?” she cried, letting him go.

He recovered himself somewhat. “That’s my money,” he said sullenly.

“But where have you put it?”

Cunning and obstinacy mingled in his eye. “Oi’ve put it safe agin all they thieves!”

“I don’t believe you’ve got any money!” she said, matching cunning by cunning. “You just let Mr. Skindle rob you.”

“Noa, Oi dedn’t. Oi got more than Methusalem was worth.”

“Really? More than a sovereign?”

“A suvran!” He cackled with a crafty air. “More than double that!”

“More than two sovereigns?” said Jinny in tones of ingenuous admiration.

“More than double that!”

“More than four sovereigns?” Enthusiasm shone in her eyes through the dusk.

He hurried towards the stairs.

“You’re not going to bed?” she called with mock anxiety. “You haven’t had supper!”

“We’ll have plenty o’ supper now. He, he!” His gleeful cackle descended from the winding staircase. Before he returned, chuckling still, she had lit the lamp and put out some cold rabbit-pie and a jug of beer on the tiger-painted tray.

“A foiver!” he cried, waving it.

She snatched at the note and tore it in two and let the pieces flutter away.

“Help! Thieves! She’s robbed me,” screamed the Gaffer. He scrambled on his knees after the fragments.

“Hush! How dare you sell Methusalem?” He cowered again before her passion.

“That was eating us out of house and home!” he whimpered.

“Get up! There’s your supper.”

He rose like a scolded child, clutching the scraps of thin paper. She put on her bonnet.

“Where ye gooin’?”

“To Mr. Skindle, of course.”

“Too late for that!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“But ye won’t git Methusalem back.”

“Oh, won’t I, though!”

“But ye’ve tore up his foiver!”

“I don’t care.” But alarmed at heart over her insane deed, she took the pieces from his unresisting hand and put them in her purse. “Don’t bolt me out or I’ll break the window.”

“But listen, dearie, Mr. Skindle won’t be there—the place’ll be shut up!”

“All the better. I’ll break it in.”

“But what’s the good o’ that? Poor old Methusalem’s out o’ his misery by now!”

Her heart stood still. “What do you mean?” She was white and shaking.

“’Lijah kills at seven,” he said, “afore his supper.”

“Oh, my God!” she gasped, the completeness of the tragedy impinging on her for the first time. “You sold him to be killed! No, no!” she cried, recovering. “He wouldn’t give five pounds just for a carcase!”

“Then ef that ain’t killed yet,” said the Gaffer, “that won’t be till to-morrow night.”

A sensible remark for once, Jinny thought, subsiding almost happily into a chair. It had been silly even to contemplate setting out afresh after all the day’s journeyings. In this weather the doomed horses would be shut up in Mr. Skindle’s field,—she recalled their joyous gambollings—the first thing in the morning she would set out to the rescue. And yet what if her grandfather should be wrong, what if Mr. Skindle killed before breakfast! No, delay might be fatal, and she started up afresh and, unlocking the stable-door, brought in her lantern.

“Ye’re not gooin’ to Mr. Skindle at this time o’ day?” protested the Gaffer from his soothing tray.

“I must.” She lit the candle in the lantern.

“Well, give my love to his mother!” She thought it sarcasm and went off even more embittered against him.

She had not gone far before she met the returning reveller. Nip’s ears were abased and his eyes edge-long, but in an instant, aware she was glad of his company, he welcomed her roysterously to it. But the blackness that now began to fall upon the pair was not wholly of the night. Great livid thunder-clouds were sagging over them, and of a sudden the whole landscape was lit up with blue blazings and shaken with terrific thunder. And then came the rain—the long-prayed-for rain, with its rich rejoicing gurgle. Providence, importuned on all sides, now asserted itself in a pour that was like solid sheets of water, and the parched soil seemed swilled in a few seconds. To plough along was not only difficult but foolhardy. Heaven had clearly thrown cold water on the project. She crept almost shame-facedly back to her still guzzling grandfather.

“Got a wettin’,” he chuckled. “Sarve ye right to be sow obstropolus. And sarve you right too!” he added, launching a kick towards the shivering and dripping animal. Nip, though untouched, uttered a dreadful howl, and grovelled on his back.

“Do you want to kill them both?” cried Jinny. She was now sure that Methusalem was beyond reprieve—the point of Mr. Skindle’s strategy in purchasing him, so as to leave her no sphere but matrimony, was penetrating to her mind, and, by the side of such “a dirty bit,” Will’s frank and blusterous methods began to appear magnanimity itself. To have found out, too, probably from Bundock, that she would be away at the wedding! The sly skunk!