“Worse luck,” said Ralph in a low tone, as though trying to avoid the subject.

“Whear the pot’s brocken, there let the sherds lie, lad,” said the old man; “keep thy breath to cool thy poddish, forby thy mug of yal, and here’t comes.”

As he spoke the hostess brought up a pot of ale, smoking hot, and put it in Ralph’s hand.

“Let every man stand his awn rackups, Ralph.  Sim’s a bad lot, and reet serv’d.”

“You have him there, Mattha Branthet,” said the others with a laugh, “a feckless fool.”  The young dalesman leaned back on the bench, took a draught of his liquor, rested the pot on his knee, and looked into the fire with the steady gaze of one just out of the darkness.  After a pause he said quietly,—­

“I’ll wager there’s never a man among you dare go up to Sim’s cave to-night.  Yet you drive him up there every night of the year.”

“Bad dreams, lad; bad dreams,” said the old man, shaking his head with portentous gravity, “forby the boggle of auld Wilson—­that’s maybe what maks Sim ga rakin aboot the fell o’ neets without ony eerand.”

“Ay, ay, that’s aboot it,” said the others, removing their pipes together and speaking with the gravity and earnestness of men who had got a grip of the key to some knotty problem.  “The ghost of auld Wilson.”

“The ghost of some of your stout sticks, I reckon,” said Ralph, turning upon them with a shadow of a sneer on his frank face.

His companions laughed.  Just then the wind rose higher than before, and came in a gust down the open chimney.  The dogs that had been sleeping on the sanded floor got up, walked across the room with drooping heads, and growled.  Then they lay down again and addressed themselves afresh to sleep.  The young dalesman looked into the mouth of his pewter and muttered, as if to himself,—­

“Because there was no evidence to convict the poor soul, suspicion, that is worse than conviction, must so fix upon him that he’s afraid to sleep his nights in his bed at home, but must go where never a braggart loon of Wythburn dare follow him.”

“Aye, lad,” said the old man, with a wink of profound import, “foxes hev holes.”

The sally was followed by a general laugh.

Not noticing it, Ralph said,—­

“A hole, indeed! a cleft in the bare rock, open to nigh every wind, deluged by every rain, desolate, unsheltered by bush or bough—­a hole no fox would house in.”

Ralph was not unmoved, but the sage in the chimney corner caught little of the contagion of his emotion.  Taking his pipe out of his mouth, and with the shank of it marking time to the doggerel, he said,—­

    “Wheariver there’s screes
     There’s mair stones nor trees.”

The further sally provoked a louder laugh.  Just then another gust came down the chimney and sent a wave of mingled heat and cold through the room.  The windows rattled louder with the wind and crackled sharper with the pelting sleet.  The dogs rose and growled.