"Your bill wi’ me is lang enow as ’tis, Maister, an’ a full belly craves no meat," the host retorted drily. "Willun’t ye hearken to what I tried to tell ye when first ye came here to-neet? Willun’t ye be telled ’at your father ligs as cold as Wildwater Pool, wi’ a Ratcliffe sword-cut i’ his back? ’Tis noan decent ’at one i’ your upside down frame o’ body should go to a house o’ death, bawling a thieves’ song, likely, by way o’ burying dirge." Shameless Wayne thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and leaned against the wall, and laughed till the tears ran down his comely face. "Wilt never let the jest be, Jonas?" he stammered. "Because I’ve not been home these days past, and am returning thither full to the brim, thou think’st to scare me with a tale like yond?—And all the folk in the parlour are leagued with thee, thou ruffian," he went on, with a drunkard’s cunning in his eyes. "When I first came in, they set their faces grim as Death’s fiddle-head, and nudged each the other, and muttered, ’Ay, ay,’ like mourners at a lyke-wake, when thou said’st that the old man was dead." "Willun’t ye be telled?" cried Jonas, groaning at his own impotence to drive the truth home. "Willun’t ye fettle up your wits this once, an’ hearken to one ’at hes a care for th’ Waynes o’ Marsh?" "Naught will strengthen me till I have slept off thy liquor, Jonas—unless ’twere the chill look of the kirkyard as I pass through," said Shameless Wayne, blundering merrily down the passage. "For th’ love o’ God, lad, bide where ye are this neet!" cried Jonas. But his guest was already out on the cobblestones that fronted the inn doorway. Shameless Wayne came to a sudden halt as he gained the lower gate of the graveyard. For the minute bell, driving its deep note through the fumes that hugged his brain, carried a plainer message to the lad than any words of Jonas Feather had done. "There’s somebody dead," he muttered, staring vaguely at the belfry-tower. "Is’t—is’t father? Did yond old fool talk plain truth, when all the while I thought he jested?" he went on after a moment’s pause. And then he tried to laugh, and swaggered up the path, and vowed that the bell was leagued with Jonas in this daft effort to make a laughing stock of him throughout the moorside. But another sound greeted him from the far side of the yew-trees—the clash of steel, and the hungry, breathless cries of men who were fighting to the topmost of their strength. His step grew soberer; he turned the bend in the path noiselessly, and saw what was doing on the vault-stone. He stood stock-still, and his face was smooth and empty while the wine fumes cleared enough to let him understand the meaning of all this. And then the meaning took him full, and the anguish in his eyes was strange and terrible to see.