“It is a pity,” pursued Mrs. Kite, “because if you hadn’t been seen by Mr. Macduff, I might have sworn you a famous alibi, and made out you was helping me to move my furniture. Thomasine also, she’d ha’ sworn anything in reason to do you a good turn. What a sad job it was that you didn’t chuck over Macduff as well. But there—I won’t blame you. We none of us, as the parson says, do all those things we ought to do, but leave undone what we ought. Thomasine and I’d swear against Mr. Macduff, but I doubt it would do no good, as Mrs. Macduff keeps a victoria and drives about in it, and we don’t, so the judge would have respect to the witness of Macduff and disregard ours. And yet they say there is justice and righteousness in the world!—when our testimony would not be taken and Macduffs accepted, along of a victoria.” She caught Saltren’s arm again, and led him further into the wood, along a path that seemed to be no path at all for a man to walk, but rather a run for a rabbit. The bushes closed over a mere track in the moss. “I reckon,” muttered Patience, “there’ll be a rare fuss made about the death of his lordship; but how little account was made of that of young Tubb. That was a cruel loss to Thomasine and me. My daughter and he were sweethearts. Captain Tubb was going to take the boy on as a hand at the lime quarry; he could not earn twenty shillings in a trade, so he would get fifteen as a labourer. Well—he could have married and kept house on that. Either he and my girl would have lived with me or with his father. Macduff and Lord Lamerton spoiled the chance for me and them. I owe them both a grudge, and I thank you for paying off my score on his lordship. Macduff may wait. In fall I will make a clay figure of him, and stick pins in it, and give him rheumatic pains and spasms of the heart. Whatever parsons and doctors may say, I can do things which are not to be found in books, and there is more learning than is got by scholarship.” Mrs. Kite paused and looked round. “You’ve not been about in the woods, creeping on all fours as I have, through the coppice. I know my way even in the dark. I can tell it by the feel of the stems of oak. Where there is moss, that is the side to the sou’-west wind and rain. The other side is smooth. So one can get along in the dark. What a moyle there will be over the death of his lordship all because he was a lord, and there was nothing made of the death of Arkie, because he was nobody. There is no justice and righteousness in the world, or Mr. Macduff would be wearing bracelets now and expecting a hempen necklace. Here we are at my cottage that he and his lordship tore down.” They emerged suddenly on the glade where stood the ruins. No one was visible. It remained as it had been left, save that the fallen rafters and walls were blackened by the smoke of the up-flaming thatch. Patience did not tarry at the hovel, but led the way to the quarry edge.