She shook her head. It was as bitter to rob a man of honour as of his precedence in fight; yet she could not grant him this. "Thine, if any man’s," she said. "But father left the right to me, and before the dawn comes up cold above Wildwater I shall have eased thee of the task." They stood there in silence. Rolf Wayne was eager to forbid the enterprise, yet fearful of crossing the girl’s wild mood at such a time; and no words came to him. And she, for her part, was listening to the gaining shouts of revelry that came from the tavern just below; her brother’s voice, thick with wine and reckless jollity, was loudest of all, and she could no longer doubt that Shameless Wayne was there, bettering the reputation that was given him by all the countryside. Wayne of Cranshaw heard it, and looked at the girl, and "Nell," said he, "could not Ned keep sober just for this one night?" She did not answer, but drew her cloak about her, shivering. "How the bell shudders, Rolf," she said, as the deep note rang out again and lost itself among the wind-beats. "Was it thy thought, or his wife’s, to bid the bell be rung?" asked Wayne. The girl laughed harshly. "Hers, Rolf—because she was afraid of meeting father beyond the grave. She hopes for Heaven, this little, lying wisp of windle-straw; and so she paid for a half-hour of the bell, knowing that ’twas all too short a passing for a man’s soul and thinking to keep father on this side of the Gates. ’Twas a trim device, my faith!" "And like her, Nell; ’tis just a trick of Mistress Wayne’s to rob him at the last, as she robbed him through that year of marriage. If such as she win into Heaven, pray God that thou, and I, and all honest folk, burn everlastingly." The girl began to move up to the moor—slowly, for even now the man’s will bore hardly on her, and she sought, in a queer, half-hearted way, his leave to go and do what must be done at Wildwater. "Rolf—let me go—I am armed, and—and ’twill not take me long," she faltered. He gripped her arm roughly. "Thou shalt not; I forbid thee," he said. The plain compulsion angered her. "Forbid? When wedlock has shackled me, Wayne of Cranshaw, ’twill be time for thee to play the bully.—Rolf," she went on, pleading again, "I swore by the Brown Dog, and even now I heard him in the wind." "Pish! Leave Barguests to the farm-hinds that come home too full of liquor and think every good dog’s note a boggart’s cry. I say, the feud is mine, and mine it shall be." "Dost grudge it even to me? When summer was tender with the moorside, Rolf, how oft a day didst tell me that naught was too much to give? But winter chills a man’s love-vows, and thou grudgest it."