His answer was an action, and before she had done speaking he stretched above him and took his gun from its place on an old beam that extended across the ceiling.

“What in God’s name be that for?  You wouldn’t—?”

“Shoot a fox?  Why not?  I’m a farmer now, and I’d kill best auld red Moor fox as ever gave a field forty minutes an’ beat it.  You was whinin’ ‘bout the chicks awnly this marnin’.  I’ll sit under the woodstack a bit an’ think ’fore I starts.  Ban’t no gude gwaine yet.”

Will’s explanation of his deed was the true one, but Phoebe realised in some dim fashion that she stood within the shadow of a critical night and that action was called upon from her.  Her anger waned a little, and her heart began to beat fast, but she acted with courage and promptitude.

“Let un be to-night—­auld fox, I mean.  Theer ’m more chicks than young foxes, come to think of it; an’ he ‘m awnly doin’ what you forget to do—­fighting for his vixen an’ cubs.”

She looked straight into Will’s eyes, took the gun out of his hands, climbed on to a chair, and hung the weapon up again in its place.

He laughed curiously, and helped his wife to the ground again.

“Thank you,” she said.  “Now go an’ do what you want to do, an’ doan’t forget the future happiness of women an’ childer lies upon it.”  Her anger was nearly gone, as he spoke again.

“How little you onderstand me arter all these years—­an’ never will—­nobody never will but mother.  What did ’e fear?  That I’d draw trigger on the man from behind a tree, p’r’aps?”

“No—­not that, but that you might be driven to kill yourself along o’ having such a bad wife.”

“Now we ’m both on the mad road,” he said bitterly.  Then he picked up his stick and, a moment later, went out into the night.

Phoebe watched his tall figure pass over the river, and saw him silhouetted against dead silver of moonlit waters as he crossed the stepping-stones.  Then she climbed for the gun again, hid it, and presently prepared for her father’s return.

“What butivul peace an quiet theer be in ministerin’ to a gude faither,” she thought, “as compared wi’ servin’ a stormy husband!” Then sorrow changed to active fear, and that, in its turn, sank into a desolate weariness and indifference.  She detected no semblance of justice in her husband’s outburst; she failed to see how circumstances must sooner or late have precipitated his revolt; and she felt herself very cruelly misjudged, very gravely wronged.

Meantime Blanchard passed through a hurricane of rage against his enemy much akin to that formerly recorded of John Grimbal himself, when the brute won to the top of him and he yearned for physical conflict.  That night Will was resolved to get a definite response or come to some conclusion by force of arms.  His thoughts carried him far, and before he took up his station within the grounds of the Red House, at a point from which the avenue approach might be controlled, he had already fallen into a frantic hunger for fight and a hope that his enemy would prove of like mind.  He itched for assault and battery, and his heart clamoured to be clean in his breast again.