Now Carrick bawled that out, and Griffith, who was at the door, heard it. He walked into the kitchen, ghastly pale, and spoke to Harry Vint first. "I take your inn, your farm, and your debts on me," said he; "not one without t' other." "Spoke like a man!" cried the landlord, joyfully; "and so be it--before these witnesses." Griffith turned on Carrick: "This house is mine. Get out on 't, ye _jealous_, mischief-making cur." And he took him by the collar and dragged him furiously out of the place, and sent him whirling into the middle of the road; then ran back for his hat and flung it out after him. This done, he sat down boiling, and his eyes roved fiercely round the room in search of some other antagonist. But his strength was so great, and his face so altered with this sudden spasm of reviving jealousy, that nobody cared to provoke him further. After a while, however, Harry Vint muttered dryly, "There goes one good customer." Griffith took him up sternly: "If your debts are to be mine, your trade shall be mine too, that you had not the head to conduct." "So be it, son-in-law," said the old man; "only you go so fast: you do take possession afore you pays the fee." Griffith winced. "That shall be the last of your taunts, old man." He turned to the ostler: "Bill, give Black Dick his oats at sunrise; and in ten days at furthest I'll pay every shilling this house and farm do owe. Now, Master White, you'll put in hand a new sign-board for this inn; a fresh 'Packhorse,' and paint him jet black, with one white hoof (instead of chocolate), in honor of my nag Dick; and in place of Harry Vint you'll put in Thomas Leicester. See that is done against I come back, or come _you_ here no more." Soon after this scene he retired to tell Mercy; and, on his departure, the suppressed tongues went like mill-clacks. Dick came round saddled at peep of day; but Mercy had been up more than an hour, and prepared her man's breakfast. She clung to him at parting, and cried a little; and whispered something in his ear, for nobody else to hear: it was an entreaty that he would not be long gone, lest he should be far from her in the hour of her peril. Thereupon he promised her, and kissed her tenderly, and bade her be of good heart; and so rode away northwards with dogged resolution. As soon as he was gone, Mercy's tears flowed without restraint. Her father set himself to console her. "Thy good man," he said, "is but gone back to the high road for a night or two, to follow his trade of 'stand and deliver.' Fear naught, child; his pistols are well primed: I saw to that myself; and his horse is the fleetest in the county. You'll have him back in three days, and money in both pockets. I warrant you his is a better trade than mine; and he is a fool to change it." * * * * *