“He was heard to say to Mr. Smith,” Crickledon pursued, and she lowered her voice, “he was heard to say, it was when they were quarreling over that chiwal, and they went at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith beat him and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to say, there was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith if he but lifted his finger.  They Tinmans have awful tempers.  His old mother died malignant, though she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny to a Christian a hour longer than it took to pay the money.  And old Tinman’s just such another.”

“Transportation!” Herbert ejaculated, “that’s sheer nonsense, Crickledon.  I’m sure your husband would tell you so.”

“It was my husband brought me the words,” Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with some triumph.  “He did tell me, I own, to keep it shut:  but my speaking to you, a friend of Mr. Smith’s, won’t do no harm.  He heard them under the battery, over that chiwal glass:  ‘And you shall pay,’ says Mr. Smith, and ‘I sha’n’t,’ says old Tinman.  Mr. Smith said he would have it if he had to squeeze a deathbed confession from a sinner.  Then old Tinman fires out, ‘You!’ he says, ‘you’ and he stammered.  ‘Mr. Smith,’ my husband said and you never saw a man so shocked as my husband at being obliged to hear them at one another Mr. Smith used the word damn.  ’You may laugh, sir.’”

“You say it so capitally, Crickledon.”

“And then old Tinman said, ’And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger, it’s Big D. on your back.”

“And what did Mr. Smith say, then?”

“He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, ‘My God!’”

Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.

“You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that—­just those words?—­the tones?”

“My husband says he heard him say, ‘My God!’ just like a poor man shot or stabbed.  You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir.  I say you ought to know.  For I’ve noticed Mr. Smith since that day has never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we first knew him.  He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but Crickledon thought I’d better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me, ’Perhaps you’re right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among you?’”

Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon’s shop.  Thence, with the story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.

CHAPTER VIII

The moon was over sea.  Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.