"They people at Cadworthy?"
"Yes. Not that I think he'll do aught; but if he does, 'twill be
there. Mrs. Baskerville be taking very unkindly to the thought of
leaving. She've lived here all her married life and brought all her
childer there. But she've got to go. They're all off after Lady Day.
Too much rent wanted by the new owner."
"Same with us," said Heathman. "These here men, who have got the
places on their hands now, 'pear to think a Dartmoor farm's a gold
mine. Me and my mother clear out too."
Mrs. Hacker drank again.
"And after this glass, one of you chaps will have to see me up over,"
she said.
"We'll all come, if you'll promise another drink at t'other end,"
declared Heathman; but Susan turned to Jack Head.
"You'd best to come, Jack," she declared.
He exhibited indifference, but she pressed him and he agreed.
"If I've got a man to look after me, there's no hurry," she concluded.
"I'm in for a wigging as 'tis."
The easy soul stopped on until closing time, and then Mr. Head
fulfilled his promise and walked homeward beside her through a foggy
night. She rested repeatedly while climbing the hill to the Moor, and
she talked without ceasing. Susan was exhilarated and loquacious as
the result of too much to drink. Head, however, bore with her and
acquired a most startling and unexpected piece of information.
He mentioned the attitude of Heathman Lintern and his fiery
championship of the dead.
"I thought he'd have come across and hit me down, because I told the
naked truth about the man. And he denied that his mother was the
better by a penny when Nathan died. But how about it when he was
alive?"
"Truth's truth," answered Susan. "You might have knocked me down with
a feather when--but there, what am I saying?"
He smelt a secret and angled for it.
"Of course, you're like one of the Baskerville family yourself, and
I've no right to ask you things; only such a man as me with a credit
for sense be different to the talking sort. Truth's truth, as you say,
and the truth will out. But Eliza Gollop--of course she knows nothing.
She couldn't keep a secret like you or me."
Mrs. Hacker stood still again and breathed hard in the darkness. Her
tongue itched to tell a tremendous thing known to her; but her muddled
senses fought against this impropriety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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