"Ay, but ye mun!" cried the old woman with sudden vehemence. "There’s marrow i’ th’ owd days an’ th’ owd tales, if ye tak ’em right. See ye, Mistress, ye war a slip of a lassie when th’ feud war staunched ’twixt Wayne an’ Ratcliffe; but I hed seen th’ way on ’t, an’ I knew, plain as if a body hed comed an’ telled me, that ’twould break out again one day. Rest me! There were hate as bitter as th’ bog atween ’em." "And shall be again, nurse," said Nell, in a voice as low as the wind that rustled through the belfry-chamber. The shadow of tradition stole dark across her, and her fingers tightened on the dagger-hilt as if she hid a man’s heart under her rounded breasts. "God willing," croaked the ringer, finishing a row of her knitting and jerking a muffled note of remonstrance from the bell overhead. "’Tis as father always said, when I used to sit at his knee o’ nights and listen to his tales," went on the girl. "There was never honesty or good faith in a Ratcliffe, and when the Waynes held off at last and swore a truce, out of pity for the few Ratcliffes left to kill, father warned his folk what the end would be. And it has begun, Nanny! Their boys are grown men now, and they outnumber us; and they will never rest till they, or we, are blotted out." "’Twill be them as goes under sod, Mistress; there war niver a foxy breed yet but it war run to earth by honest folk. Hark ye! That’s Shameless Wayne’s voice again! Lad, lad, can ye think o’ no sterner wark nor yond, while your father ligs ready for his shroud?" "He does not know, Nanny. How should he know? He has been from home, I tell thee. Nurse, stop knitting and give me thy hands awhile! I thought the weakness in me was killed, and now I could cry like any bairn. I would not tell any but thee, Nanny, but I must ease my heart, and thou’rt staunch as a mother to me. Know’st thou that father’s wife—the little shivering thing he brought from the Low Country—has played false to him these months past?" "I’ve heard summat o’ th’ sort; ay, there’s been part talk ’bout it up an’ dahn th’ moor." "Dick Ratcliffe it was who dishonoured her. He——" She stopped and left holding Nanny’s hands, and began to pace up and down the floor. Nanny took up her needles, and fixed her eyes on the woollen stocking and waited. "A lass is tricksy handling at such times; best bide an’ let her wend her own way; ’twill ease th’ poor bairn, I warrant, to talk her fever out," she muttered. But the girl’s fever was of a sort that no speech could cool, and it was gaining on her fast. Already she had forgotten her need of sympathy, and she could think of naught save the picture that had been stamped clear and deep on her brain by the day’s wild work.