“It’s ill-luck to serve a bad man, Sim.  Well?”

“I never quite thought he’d do it; no, I never did quite think it.  Why is it not a good deed to kill a bad man?”

“How did it happen, Sim?” said Ralph.

“I hardly know—­that’s the truth.  You mind well enough it was the day that Abraham Coward, my landlord, called for his rent.  It was the day the poor woman and her two wee barns took shelter with me.  You looked in on me that night, you remember.  Well, when you left me—­do you recollect how?”

“Yes, Sim.”

“My heart was fair maizlet before, but that—­that—­kiss infected my brain.  I must have been mad, Ralph, that’s the fact, when I thought of what the man meant to do to the only friend I had left in the world—­my own friend and my poor little girl’s.  I went out to the lanes and wandered about.  It was very dark.  Suddenly the awful thought came back upon me, it did.  I was standing at the crossways, where the road goes off to Gaskarth.  I knew Wilson must come by that road.  Something commanded me to walk on.  I had been halting, but now a dreadful force compelled me to go—­ay, compelled me.  I don’t know what it was, but it seemed as if I’d no power against it, none.  It stifled all my scruples, all of them, and I ran—­yes, ran.  But I was weak, and had to stop for breath.  My heart was beating loud, and I pressed my hand hard upon it as I leaned against the wall of the old bridge yonder.  It went thump, thump.  Then I could hear him coming.  I knew his step.  He was not far off, but I couldn’t stir; no, not stir.  My breath seemed all to leave me when I moved.  He was coming closer, he was, and in the distance beyont him I could hear the clatter of a horse’s feet on the road.  The man on the horse was far off, but he galloped, he galloped.  It must be done now, I thought; now or not at all.  I—­I picked up a stone that lay near, I did, and tried to go forward, but fell back, back.  I was powerless.  That weakness was agony, it was.  Wilson had not reached the spot where I stood when the man on the horse had overtaken him.  I heard him speak as the man rode past.  Then I saw it was your father, and that he turned back.  There were high words on his side, and I could hear Wilson’s bitter laugh—­you recollect that laugh?”

“Yes, yes; well?”

“In a moment Angus had jumped from the horse’s back—­and then I heard a thud—­and that’s all.”

“Is that all you know?”

“Not all; no, not all, neither.  Your father had got up into the saddle in an instant, and I labored out into the middle of the road.  He saw me and stopped.  ‘Ye’ve earned nowt of late,’ he said; ’tak this, my man, and gae off and pay your rent.’  Then he put some money into my hand from his purse and galloped on.  I thought he’d killed Wilson, and I crept along to look at the dead man.  I couldn’t find him at first, and groped about in the darkness till my hand touched his face.  Then I thought he was alive, I did.  The touch flayt me, and I fled away—­I don’t know how.  Ralph, I saw the mark of my hand on his face when they drew me up to it next day in the bedroom of the inn.  That night I paid my rent with your father’s money, and then I went home.”