Having her own misgivings as to the temper in which her master would take this coup of the arrest, Mildred Tarnley prudently kept her own counsel, and retreated nearly to the kitchen door, while the éclaircissement took place outside. Popping in and out to see what would come of it, old Mildred affected to be busy about her mops and tubs. After a time, in came Tom, looking sulky and hot.

“Is he comin’ this way?” asked Mildred.

“Not him,” answered Tom.

“Where is he?”

“’Twixt this and Wykeford,” he answered, “across the common he’s ridin’”

“To Wykeford, hey?”

“To Wykeford, every foot, if he don’t run him down on the way; and when they meet—him and Squire Rodney—’twill be hot and shrewd work between them, I tell ye. I’d a rid wi’ him myself if there was a beast to carry me, for three agin one is too long odds.”

“Ye don’t mean to tell me!” exclaimed Mildred, planting her mop perpendicularly on the ground, and leaning immovably on this sceptre.

“Tell ye what?”

“There’s goin’ to be rough work like that on the head o’t?”

“Hot blood, ma’am. Ye know the Fairfields. They folk don’t stand long jawin’. It’s like when the blood’s up the hand’s up too.”

“And what’s he to fight for—not that blind beldame, sure?”

“I want my mug o’ beer,” said Tom, turning the conversation.

“Yes, sure,” she said, “yes, ye shall have it. But what for should master Charles go to wry words wi’ Squire Rodney, and what for should there be blows and blood spillin’ between ’em? Nonsense?”

“I can’t help ’em. I’d lend master a hand if I could. Squire Rodney’s no fool neither—’twill e’en be fight dog, fight bear—and there’s two stout lads wi’ him will make short work o’t.”

“Ye don’t think he’s like to be hurt, do ye?”

“Well, ye know, they say fightin’ dogs comes haltin’ home. He’s as strong as two, that’s all, and has a good nag under him. Now gi’e me my beer.”

“’Twon’t be nothin’, Tom, don’t you think, Tom? It won’t come to nothin’?”

“If he comes up wi’ them ’twill be an up-and-down fight, I take it. ’Twas an unlucky maggot bit him.”

“Bit who?”

“What but the Divil brought Squire Rodney over here?”

“Who knows?” answered the dame, fumbling in her pocket for the key of the beer-cellar—“I’m goin’ to fetch your beer, Tom.”

And away she went, and in a minute returned with his draught of beer.

“And I think,” she said, setting it down before him, “’twas well done, taking that beast to her right place, do it who might. She’s just a bedlam Bess—clean out o’ her wits wi’ wickedness—mad wi’ drink and them fits she has. We knows here what she is, and bloody work she’d a made last night wi’ that poor young lady, that’ll never be the same again—the old limb—and master himself, though he’s angered a bit because Justice Rodney did not ask his leave to catch a murderer, if ye please, down here at the Grange!”

“There’s more in it, mayhap, than just that,” said Tom, blowing the froth off his beer.

“To come down here without with your leave or by your leave, to squat in the Grange here like gipsey wo............