"Very well, daeaerlin'!" said Boyd Connoway to himself as his wife left the room. "But, sorrow am I for the man down there that she will not let me nurse. She's a woman among a thousand, is Bridget Connoway. But the craitur will be after makin' the poor man eat his poultices, and use his beef tay for outward application only!" CHAPTER XVII THE MAN "DOON-THE-HOOSE" But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. Who was the mysterious wounded man "down-the-house"? One of the White Smugglers? Hardly. Boyd had been in the thick of that business and knew that no one had been hurt except Barnboard Tam, whose horse had run away with him and brushed him off, a red-haired Absalom in homespuns, against the branches in Marnhoul Great Wood. One of the crew of the _Golden Hind_, American-owned privateersman with French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of Galloway Free Trade. In either case, Boyd Connoway little liked the prospect, and instead of going to bed, he remained swinging his legs before the fire in a musing attitude, listening to the moaning noises that came from the chamber he was forbidden to enter. He was resolved to have it out with his wife. He had not long to wait. Bridget appeared in the doorway, a bundle of dark-stained cloths between her palms. She halted in astonishment at the sight which met her eyes. At first it seemed to her that she was dreaming, or that her voice must have betrayed her. She gave her husband the benefit of the doubt. "I thought I tould ye, Boyd Connoway," she said in a voice dangerously low and caressing, "to be getting off to your bed and not disturbin' the childer'!" "Who is the man that had need of suchlike?" demanded Boyd Connoway, suddenly regaining his lost heritage as the head of a house, "speak woman, who are ye harbouring there?" Bridget stood still. The mere unexpectedness of the demand rendered her silent. The autocrat of all the Russias treated as though he were one of his own ministers of state could not have been more dumbfounded. With a sudden comprehension of the crisis Bridget broke for the poker, but Boyd had gone too far now to recoil. He caught at the little three-legged stool on which he was wont to take his humble frugal meals. It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted mere self-preservation as an insult to his wife.