"It's dead and done with, like the man himself. What remains is not
dead, and cannot soon be done with. Some of us must meet it face to
face even yet. Wilson--that was his name in those days--was a Royalist
when I encountered him. What he had been before, God knows. At a
moment of peril he took his life at the hands of a Roundhead. He had
been guilty of treachery to the Royalists, and he was afraid to return
to his friends. I understood his position and sheltered him. When
Carlisle fell to us he clung closer to me, and when the campaign was
over he prayed to be permitted to follow me to these parts. I yielded
to him reluctantly. I distrusted him, but I took his anxiety to be
with me for gratitude, as he said it was. It was not that, Sim."

"Was it fear? Was he afeart of being hanged by friends or foes? Hadn't
he been a taistrel to both?"

"Partly fear, but partly greed, and partly revenge. He was hardly a
week at Shoulthwaite before I guessed his secret--I couldn't be blind
to that. When he married his young wife on the Borders, folks didn't
use to call her a witch. She had a little fortune coming to her one
day, and when she fled the prospect of it was lost to her husband.
Wilson was in no hurry to recover her while she was poor-a vagrant
woman with his child at her breast. The sense of his rights as a
husband became keener a little later. Do you remember the time when
young Joe Garth set himself up in the smithy yonder?"

"I do," said Sim; "it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of
some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's mother
aboon a hundred pound."

"Wilson knew that much better than our neighbors. He knew, too, where
his wife had hidden herself, as she thought, though it had served his
turn to seem ignorant of it until then. Sim, he used _me_ to get to
Wythburn."

"Teush!"

"Once here, it was not long before he had made his wife aware of his
coming. I had kept an eye on him, and I knew his movements. I saw that
he meant to ruin the Garths, mother and son, to strip them and leave
them destitute. I determined that he should not do it. I felt that
mine was the blame that he was here to molest them. 'Tamper with
them,' I said, 'show once more by word or look that you know anything
of them, and I'll hand you over as a traitor to the nearest sheriff.'"

"Why didn't you do it anyhow, why didn't you?" said Sim eagerly.

"That would have been unwise. He now hated me for defeating