The old man's eyes wandered vacantly.
"Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father—broken-hearted—him 'at loved her—no matter, I've nowt left to—Ha! ha! ha!"
He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms. They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead.
Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his brother's arms.
Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered.
"Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless work; and may the sight follow him to his death!"
At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and put a glass of water to his lips.
In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a "griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta Lowther sat together.
At intervals that grew shorter, and with a grave face that became more anxious, Mrs. Ritson walked to the door and looked out into the thickening sky. The young people had been too much absorbed to notice her increasing perturbation, until she opened a clothes-chest and took out dry flannels and spread them on the hearth to air.
"Don't worrit yourself, mother," said Paul. "He'll be here soon. He had to cross the Coledale Pass, and that's a long stroke of the ground, you know."<
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