I'm no
reckoner of time, that keeps its own score like an innkeeper, without
my help. Lawks! how he did gallop off, working those long spurs he wore
right into the ribs of the horse. And little wonder, poor man, and he
daft, not being able to speak, but only to bleat sheeplike, and fallen
upon by robbers on the king's roads, and in broad daylight. But Billy
cut him loose and caught his horse and set him on it, and got this piece
for his good charity. Lawks! but he was glad to be gone. How he did
gallop!'
'Now you are a bigger fool even than I thought you, Billy Minns,' I said
in anger. 'That man would have murdered me, I overcame him and made him
fast, and you have let him go.'
'He would have murdered you, Master, and you made him fast! Then why did
you not stop to keep him till I came along, and we would have haled him
to the stocks? That would have been sport and all. You call me fool--but
if you found a man covered with blood and hurts tied to a tree, and he
daft and not able to speak, had you not cut him loose? Well, he's gone,
and this alone is left of him,' and he spun the piece into the air.
Now, seeing that there was reason in Billy's talk, for the fault was
mine, I turned away without more words, not straight homewards, for I
wished to think alone awhile on all that had come about between me and
Lily and her father, but down the way which runs across the lane to the
crest of the Vineyard Hills.
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