But where the gaol was, or how severe Roger's wound was, or Job's, could in no way be extracted from poor Tim's confused brain and tongue! "Poor Tim!" he said, apologising with broken words, as a faithful dog might with wistful looks, for having escaped without his master, "Poor Tim tried hard to follow Master Roger--tried hard! Master Roger knows Tim did not wish to leave him; Master Roger knows. Master Roger said, 'Tim, you've done all you could. Go home. And tell them Master Roger's all right.'" When first he saw Rachel, he said, "Poor Job said, 'Take care!'" And then clenching his hand, with a smile, "Poor Tim took care!" But he never repeated or explained it. It was quite useless to question him. That one purpose of obeying Roger possessed the whole of his poor brain. The poor creature was faint from pain and weariness, and loss of blood. Rachel would have made him a bed in the cottage, and not one of us at Netherby but would have counted it an honour to have nursed him for his love to Roger; but he shook his head: 'Master Roger said, 'Tim, you've done all you could. Go home.'" And nothing would satisfy him but to go on to the hovel by the Mere, were his grandmother lived. Gammer Grindle was a poor, wizened, old woman, soured by much trouble and by the constant fretting of a sharp temper against poverty and wrong, until few in the village liked to venture near her. Indeed, there were dark suspicious afloat about her. Many a labouring-man would have gone a mile round rather than pass her door after dusk, and many a yeoman-farmer and goodwife who had lost an unusual number of sheep or poultry would propitiate her by the present of a lamb or a fat pullet. And, in general, in the neighbourhood she was spoken of with a reverent terror much akin to that of the man who, after hastily using the name of the devil, crossed himself, and said, "May he pardon me for taking his holy name in vain." But Roger and I happened to have come across her on another and very different side. In our fishing expeditions on the Mere her grandson Tim had often followed us with the fish-basket or tackle; and the rare contrast of Roger's kindly tones and words with the jeerings of the rough boys in the village, had won him in Tim's heart an affection intense, absorbing, disinterested, and entirely free from demand of return or hope of reward; more like that of a faithful dog than of a human being with purposes and interests of his own.