Presently, “Josina, what are you doing there?” Miss Peacock cried. She had come to the open door and discovered the girl. She began to scold. “Come in this minute, child! What are you starving the house for, standing there?” But Josina did not budge. “He is very late,” she said. “Late? What nonsense! And what if he is late? What good can you do, standing out there? I declare one might suppose your father was one of those skimble-skambles that can’t pass a tavern door, to hear you talk! And Thomas with him! Come in at once when I tell you! As if I should not be the first to cry out if anything were wrong. Late indeed—why, goodness gracious, I declare it’s nearly eight. What can have become of him, child? And Calamy and those good-for-nothing girls warming their knees at the fire, and no more caring if their master is in the river than—Josina, do you hear? Do you know that your father is still out? Calamy!” ringing a hand-bell that stood on the table in the hall, “Calamy! Are you all asleep? Don’t you know that your master is not in, and it is nearly eight?” Calamy was the butler. A tall, lanthorn-jawed man, he would have looked lugubrious in the King’s scarlet which he had once worn; in his professional black, or in his shirt sleeves, cleaning plate, he was melancholy itself. And his modes and manners were at least as mournful as his aspect—no man so sure as “Old Calamity” to see the dark side of things or to put it before others. It was whispered that he had been a Dissenter, and why the Squire, who hated a ranter as he hated the devil, had ever engaged him, much less kept him, was a puzzle to Garthmyle. That he had been his son’s servant and had been with the boy when he died, might have seemed a sufficient reason, had the Squire been other than he was. But no one supposed that such a thing weighed with the old man—he was of too hard a grain. Yet at Garth, Calamy had lived for a score of years, and been suffered with a patience which might have stood to the credit of more reasonable men. “Nearly eight!” Miss Peacock flung at him, and repeated her statement. “We’ve put the dinner back, ma’am.” “Put the dinner back! And that’s all you think of, when at any minute your master—oh, dear, dear, what can have happened to him?” “Well, it’s a dark night, ma’am, to be sure.” “Gracious goodness, can’t I see that? If Thomas weren’t with him——” The butler shook his head. “Under notice, ma’am,” he said. “I think the worst of Thomas. On a dark night, with Thomas——” Miss Peacock gasped. “I should say my prayers, ma’am,” the butler murmured softly. Miss Peacock stared, aghast. “Under notice?” she cried. “Well, of all the—’deed, and I wish you were all under notice, if that is the best you’ve got to say.” “Hadn’t you better,” said Josina from the darkness outside, “send Fewtrell to meet him with a lanthorn?” “And get my nose bitten off when your father comes home! La, bless me, I don’t know what to do! And no one else to do a thing!”