Bob, Son of Battle Part 32

"I don't, nor niver shall," she answered firmly; but there was less conviction in her heart than voice.

"Iss yo' do, la.s.s," he coaxed, and kissed her again.

She struggled faintly.

"Hoo daur yo'?" she cried through her tears. But he was not to be moved.

"Will yo' noo?" he asked.

She remained dumb, and he kissed her again.

"Impidence!" she cried.

"Ay," said he, closing her mouth.

"I wonder at ye, Davie!" she said, surrendering.

After that Maggie must needs give in; and it was well understood, though nothing definite had been said, that the boy and girl were courting. And in the Dale the unanimous opinion was that the young couple would make "a gradely pair, surely."

M'Adam was the last person to hear the news, long after it had been common knowledge in the village. It was in the Sylvester Arms he first heard it, and straightway fell into one of those foaming frenzies characteristic of him.

"The dochter o' Moore o' Kenmuir, d'ye say? sic a dochter o' sic a man!

The dochter o' th' one man in the warld that's harmed me aboon the rest!

I'd no ha' believed it gin ye'd no tell't me. Oh, David, David! I'd no ha' thocht it even o' you, ill son as ye've aye bin to me. I think he might ha' waited till his auld dad was gone, and he'd no had to wait lang the noo." Then the little man sat down and burst into tears.

Gradually, however, he resigned himself, and the more readily when he realized that David by his act had exposed a fresh wound into which he might plunge his barbed shafts. And he availed himself to the full of his new opportunities. Often and often David was sore pressed to restrain himself.

"Is't true what they're sayin' that Maggie Moore's nae better than she should be?" the little man asked one evening with anxious interest.

"They're not sayin' so, and if they were 'twad be a lie," the boy answered angrily.

M'Adam leant back in his chair and nodded his head.

"Ay, they tell't me that gin ony man knew 'twad be David M'Adam."

David strode across the room.

"No, no mair o' that," he shouted. "Y'ought to be 'shamed, an owd mon like you, to speak so o' a la.s.s." The little man edged close up to his son, and looked up into the fair flushed face towering above him.

"David," he said in smooth soft tones, "I'm 'stonished ye dinna strike yen auld dad." He stood with his hands clasped behind his back as if daring the young giant to raise a finger against him. "Ye maist might noo," he continued suavely. "Ye maun be sax inches taller, and a good four stane heavier. Hooiver, aiblins ye're wise to wait. Anither year twa I'll be an auld man, as ye say, and feebler, and Wullie here'll be gettin' on, while you'll be in the prime o' yer strength. Then I think ye might hit me wi' safety to your person, and honor to yourself."

He took a pace back, smiling.

"Feyther," said David, huskily, "one day yo'll drive me too far."

Chapter XX. THE SNAPPING OF THE STRING

THE spring was pa.s.sing, marked throughout with the b.l.o.o.d.y trail of the Killer. The adventure in the Scoop scared him for a while into innocuousness; then he resumed his game again with redoubled zest.

It seemed likely he would harry the district till some lucky accident carried him off, for all chance there was of arresting him.

You could still hear nightly in the Sylvester Arms and elsewhere the a.s.sertion, delivered with the same dogmatic certainty as of old, "It's the Terror, I tell yo'!" and that irritating, inevitable reply: "Ay; but wheer's the proof?" While often, at the same moment, in a house not far away, a little lonely man was sitting before a low-burnt fire, rocking to and fro, biting his nails, and muttering to the great dog whose head lay between his knees: "If we had but the proof, Wullie! if we had but the proof! I'd give ma right hand aff my arm gin we had the proof to-morrow."

Long Kirby, who was always for war when some one else was to do the fighting, suggested that David should be requested, in the name of the Dalesmen, to tell M'Adam that he must make an end to Red Wull. But Jim Mason quashed the proposal, remarking truly enough that there was too much bad blood as it was between father and son; while Tammas proposed with a sneer that the smith should be his own agent in the matter.

Whether it was this remark of Tammas's which stung the big man into action, or whether it was that the intensity of his hate gave him unusual courage, anyhow, a few days later, M'Adam caught him lurking in the granary of the Grange.

The little man may not have guessed his murderous intent; yet the blacksmith's white-faced terror, as he crouched away in the darkest corner, could hardly have escaped remark; though--and Kirby may thank his stars for it--the treacherous gleam of a gun-barrel, ill-concealed behind him, did.

"Hullo, Kirby!" said M'Adam cordially, "ye'll stay the night wi' me?"

And the next thing the big man heard was a giggle on the far side the door, lost in the clank of padlock and rattle of chain. Then--through a crack--"Good-night to ye. Hope ye'll be comfie." And there he stayed that night, the following day and next night--thirty-six hours in all, with swedes for his hunger and the dew off the thatch for his thirst.

Meanwhile the struggle between David and his father seemed coming to a head. The little man's tongue wagged more bitterly than ever; now it was never at rest--searching out sores, stinging, piercing.

Worst of all, he was continually dropping innuendoes, seemingly innocent enough, yet with a world of subtile meaning at their back, respecting Maggie. The leer and wink with which, when David came home from Kenmuir at nights, he would ask the simple question, "And was she kind, David--eh, eh?" made the boy's blood boil within him.

And the more effective the little man saw his shots to be, the more persistently he plied them. And David retaliated in kind. It was a war of reprisals. There was no peace; there were no truces in which to bury the dead before the opponents set to slaying others. And every day brought the combatants nearer to that final struggle, the issue of which neither cared to contemplate.

There came a Sat.u.r.day, toward the end of the spring, long to be remembered by more than David in the Dale.

For that young man the day started sensationally. Rising before c.o.c.k-crow, and going to the window, the first thing he saw in the misty dawn was the gaunt, gigantic figure of Red Wull, hounding up the hill from the Stony Bottom; and in an instant his faith was shaken to its foundation.

The dog was travelling up at a long, slouching trot; and as he rapidly approached the house, David saw that his flanks were all splashed with red mud, his tongue out, and the foam dripping from his jaws, as though he had come far and fast.

He slunk up to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of the boards as the dog dropped within the house.

For the moment, excited as he was, David held his peace. Even the Black Killer took only second place in his thoughts that morning. For this was to be a momentous day for him.

That afternoon James Moore and Andrew would, he knew, be over at Grammoch-town, and, his work finished for the day, he was resolved to tackle Maggie and decide his fate. If she would have him--well, he would go next morning and thank G.o.d for it, kneeling beside her in the tiny village church; if not, he would leave the Grange and all its unhappiness behind, and straightway plunge out into the world.

All through a week of stern work he had looked forward to this hard-won half-holiday. Therefore, when, as he was breaking off at noon, his father turned to him and said abruptly:

"David, ye're to tak' the Cheviot lot o'er to Grammoch-town at once," he answered shortly:

"Yo' mun tak' 'em yo'sel', if yo' wish 'em to go to-day."

"Na," the little man answered; "Wullie and me, we're busy. Ye're to tak'

'em, I tell ye."

"I'll not," David replied. "If they wait for me, they wait till Monday,"

and with that he left the room.