For Hurd had risen, and as he and his wife looked at each other a sort of mute conversation seemed to pass between them.  Then he turned angrily, and went out of the cottage by the back door into the garden.

The wife sat in some agitation a moment, then she resumed.  “He can’t bear no talk about Westall—­it seems to drive him silly.  But I say as how people should know.”

Her wavering eye seemed to interrogate her companion.  Marcella was puzzled by her manner—­it was so far from simple.

“But that was long ago, surely,” she said.

“Yes, it wor long ago, but you don’t forget them things, miss!  An’ Westall, he’s just the same sort as he was then, so folks say,” she added hurriedly.  “You see Jim, miss, how he’s made?  His back was twisted that way when he was a little un.  His father was a good old man—­everybody spoke well of ’im—­but his mother, she was a queer mad body, with red hair, just like Jim and the children, and a temper! my word.  They do say she was an Irish girl, out of a gang as used to work near here—­an’ she let him drop one day when she was in liquor, an’ never took no trouble about him afterwards.  He was a poor sickly lad, he was! you’d wonder how he grew up at all.  And oh!  George Westall he treated him cruel.  He’d kick and swear at him; then he’d dare him to fight, an’ thrash him till the others came in, an’ got him away.  Then he’d carry tales to his father, and one day old Westall beat Jim within an inch of ’is life, with a strap end, because of a lie George told ’im.  The poor chap lay in a ditch under Disley Wood all day, because he was that knocked about he couldn’t walk, and at night he crawled home on his hands and knees.  He’s shown me the place many a time!  Then he told his father, and next morning he told me, as he couldn’t stand it no longer, an’ he never went back no more.”

“And he told no one else?—­he never complained?” asked Marcella, indignantly.

“What ud ha been the good o’ that, miss?” Mrs. Hurd said, wondering.  “Nobody ud ha taken his word agen old Westall’s.  But he come and told me.  I was housemaid at Lady Leven’s then, an’ he and his father were old friends of ourn.  And I knew George Westall too.  He used to walk out with me of a Sunday, just as civil as could be, and give my mother rabbits now and again, and do anything I’d ask him.  An’ I up and told him he was a brute to go ill-treatin’ a sickly fellow as couldn’t pay him back.  That made him as cross as vinegar, an’ when Jim began to be about with me ov a Sunday sometimes, instead of him, he got madder and madder.  An’ Jim asked me to marry him—­he begged of me—­an’ I didn’t know what to say.  For Westall had asked me twice; an’ I was afeard of Jim’s health, an’ the low wages he’d get, an’ of not bein’ strong myself.  But one day I was going up a lane into Tudley End woods, an’ I heard George Westall on tother side of the hedge with a young dog he was training.  Somethin’