"We hate, we strike," said the house to the outside world, and the motto, though it matched well the temper of each generation of the Waynes, suited none of the stock so well as old Nicholas Ratcliffe, known through the moorside as the Lean Man of Wildwater. Below the wan strip of intake, an upland tarn showed its sullen, unreflecting face to the sky. Nor curlew nor moor-fowl was ever known to haunt the rushes that fringed Wildwater Pool, no fish ever rose from its waters; and men said that God had cursed the pool, since a winter’s night, nigh on a hundred years agone, when a Ratcliffe had tempted a Wayne to sup with him in amity and had thereafter thrown his body to the waters. But Nicholas Ratcliffe loved the tarn, as he loved the storms that broke over the naked hills and the wild deeds that had made his fathers a terror and a scourge; and the sons and grandsons who grew up about him he trained to the rough logic of tradition. Brave the Lean Man was, and crafty as a stoat; wiry of body, lank-jawed of face; and the hair stood up from his crown a rusty grey, like stubble when the first frost has nipped it. Old Nicholas sat in the hall this morning, in the carved oaken chair that stood over against the lang-settle. Robert, his eldest-born, sat opposite, and three other of the grandsons were at table still, finishing a breakfast of mutton-pasty and ham and oaten-bread, washed down with nut-brown ale. For the hall, running a quarter the length of the house and all its width, was the chief living chamber, where the indoors business of the day was gone through; a cool and pleasant chamber in summer heat, but in winter the winds piped through and through it, driving the women-folk for warmth to the more cosy parlour. The Lean Man had been cradled in cold winds, and it pleased him to see as little as might be of the women; for women were rather a cumbrous necessity than a joy to Nicholas Ratcliffe. "Thy son should be safe off with Mistress Wayne by now," said Nicholas to his eldest-born. "Likely. ’Tis all the lad is good for, curse him! Dick was ever the weakling of the breed." "Aye, but there’s a use for weaklings, when all is said," chuckled the old man. "They fear dishonour worse than aught that can chance to them, these Waynes, and when first I learned that Dick was playing kiss-i’-the-dark with yon milk-faced wife of Wayne’s, I gave him rope enough to strangle the Marsh pride." "He starts well!" laughed one of the youngsters from the breakfast board. "He starts well," said the Lean Man. "First to make a cuckold of the husband, and then to run him through—he’s half a Ratcliffe, this shiftless Dick-o’-lanthorn, after all." "Why did you let him go with the wench, father?" put in Robert. "Dick can wield a sword if he’s forced to it, and scabbards will need to be empty in a while."