"I ’eard Biddick say as ’e was goin’ after’m to-day." He had a habit of shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as he stood, and it gave him an appearance of restlessness, as if at any moment he might start off on some errand. "I don’t want to bother with oreweed or turmits. I’m going into Stowe and I thought you might like for me to get the pigs. Come, leave me ’av some money." "I don’t want they veares." She rested her strong hands on the sides of the cone and looked at him with understanding. He must be made to realize that this was folly and that it must come to an end. "An’ you don’t want to buy them. All you want is to go with Gray." Leadville, as always when his subterfuges were detected, fell back on the truth. "Well?" he said. "An’ s’posin’ if I did?" Sabina was startled. Had matters gone so far that he no longer had the decency to deny his feelings? "Isolda’s goin’ wi’ Gray," she said, with a shrug of her plump shoulders. "Isolda?" he said and his disappointment, bubbling up from the depths, showed as anger. Among them they took good care of Gray; but if they thought their scheming and underhauling would prevent his reaching her, he would very soon show them they were mistaken. "Fine thing you," he cried wrathfully, "to be jealous over a feller." Mrs. Byron had grown stouter since her long illness. She filled the wicker cone to overflowing, a big rosy woman with abundance of white hair above a face the strength of which time had made plain. Her husband’s thrust was shrewd, so shrewd that she gave way before it. "You’m wishin’ me daid, I s’pose?" she said bitterly and waited to hear him deny the accusation. Leadville shifted from one foot to the other but did not speak. People say terrible things when they are angry, but silence can be more terrible than speech. "I shen’t die any quicker," cried poor Mrs. Byron, "for you wishin’ of it." For months the man had concealed his feelings behind down-dropped lids and avoidance; but now the repugnance with which she filled him rose to his eyes, eyes no longer moody and dull, but suddenly, revealingly, alive. Hitherto the secrecy which was natural to him had seemed the only possible plan; now, driven by jealousy, by anger, by a mounting hatred, he suddenly discarded it. Raising his lids he stared at Sabina for some seconds and his soul showed her its loathing and threatened her and condemned her; and—like a rabbit held by lanthorn light—she stared back. The truth was riding nakedly through the street of life. It spoke with a clear note of warning and Sabina—for a moment—both saw and heard. *CHAPTER IX* "You’m lookin’ whisht this mornin’, missis, what’s the matter with ’ee?"