“Doan’t say no such vain things!  D’ you think I caan’t read what your face speaks so plain?  A man’s eyes tell the truth awftener than what his tongue does, for they ’m harder to break into lying.  ‘Tu busy’!  You be foul to the very brainpan wi’ this job an’ you knaw it.”

“Is the hatred all on my side, d’ you suppose?  Curse the brute to hell!  And you’d have me eat humble-pie to the man who ’s wrecked my life?”

“No such thing at all.  All the hatred be on your side.  He’d forgived ’e clean.  Even now, though you ’m fretting his guts to fiddlestrings because of waiting for ’e, he feels no malice—­no more than the caged rat feels ’gainst the man as be carrying him, anyway.”

“You’re wrong there.  He’d kill me to-morrow.  He let me know it.  In a weak moment I asked him the other day how his mother was; and he turned upon me like a mad dog, and told me to keep his name off my lips, and said he’d have my life if I gave him up.”

“That’s coorious then, for he ’s hungry to give himself up, so soon as the auld woman ’s well again.”

“Talk!  I suppose he sent you to whine for him?”

“Not so.  He’d have blocked my road if he’d guessed.”

“Well, I’m honest when I say I don’t care a curse what he does or does not.  Let him go his way.  And as to proclaiming him, I shall do so when it pleases me.  An odious crime that,—­a traitor to his country.”

“Doan’t become you nor me to dwell ’pon that, seeing how things was.”

Grimbal rose.

“You think he ’s a noble fellow, and that your daughter had a merciful escape.  It isn’t for me to suggest you are mistaken.  Now I’ve no more time to spare, I’m afraid.”

The miller also rose, and as he prepared to depart he spoke a final word.

“You ’m terrible pushed for time, by the looks of it.  I knaw ’t is hard in this life to find time to do right, though every man can make a ‘mazing mort o’ leisure for t’ other thing.  But hear me:  you ‘m ruinin’ yourself, body an’ sawl, along o’ this job—­body an’ sawl, like apples in a barrel rots each other.  You ‘m in a bad way, Jan Grimbal, an’ I’m sorry for ‘e—­brick house an’ horses an’ dogs notwithstanding.  Have a spring cleaning in that sulky brain o’ yourn, my son, an’ be a man wi’ yourself, same as you be a man wi’ the world.”

The other sneered.

“Don’t get hot.  The air is cold.  And as you’ve given so much good advice, take some, too.  Mind your own business, and let your son-in-law mind his.”

Mr. Lyddon shook his head.

“Such words do only prove me right.  Look in your heart an’ see how ’t is with you that you can speak to an auld man so.  ’T is common metal shawing up in ‘e, an’ I’m sorry to find it.”

He set off home without more words and, as chance ordered the incident, emerged from the avenue gates of the Red House while a covered vehicle passed by on the way from Moreton Hampstead.  Its roof was piled with luggage, and inside sat Chris, her husband, and Will.  They spied Mr. Lyddon and made room for him; but later on in the evening Will taxed the miller with his action.