"Nothing!" he said. "She's got nothing for it neither. I might have followed her to Castletown, but I didn't. 'I'll lave her to it,' I thought. 'Maybe the girl's cleverer than we thought, and will come home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good acres besides.' But no, not a ha'porth! And now she has come back to ate us up for the rest of our lives! The toot! The boght! The booby!" "Dan Collister," said the old woman, "don't thou see the girl is ill?" "Ill, is she?" said Dan. "I wouldn't trust but she is, ma'am. So it's worse than I thought, and maybe before long there'll be another mouth to feed." Bessie dropped her head on the table. "But not in this house, if you plaze, miss. It happened here once before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if it happened again." Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm. "You're like a dead letter, you've come to the wrong address, mistress. It wasn't Dan Baldromma's thatched cottage you were wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks are scraming. I'll trouble you to go there." "Sakes alive, man," cried the old woman, "thou'rt not for turning the girl out of doors?" "I am that, ma'am," said Dan, going over to the door. "No trollop shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace of the parish and the talk of the island." Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, he said, "Out of my house, miss! Out of it! Out of it!" Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and rose to go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she felt a hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder. "Stay thou there, and leave this to me." It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on the three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away as if she had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband with blazing eyes. "Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine," she said. "What made it thine?" "The law, if thou wants to know, woman," said Dan. "Then the law is a robber and a thief." Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a fit of forced laughter. "Well, that's good! That's rich! That's wonderful! What next, I wonder?" "Do you want me to tell thee the truth, Dan Collister? Before the girl, too? Then there's not a stick or a stone in the place that in the eyes of heaven does not belong to me." "What?" "Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord's, that wasn't bought with my father's money--John Corteen, a man of God, if ever there was one." "Pity his daughter didn't take after him, then." "Pity enough, Dan Collister. But when I brought shame into his house he forgave me. And when the finger of death was on the man the only trouble he had in life was what was to become of his girl when he was gone." "Truth enough, ma'am, he had to find thee a husband, hadn't he?"