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The next time Katherine Cregeen saw Peter Quilliam, he was sitting on the ridge of rock at the mouth of Ballure Glen, playing doleful strains on a home-made whistle, and looking the picture of desolation and despair. His mother was lying near to death. He had left Mrs.
After fixing the horse-cloth, and settling the mare in a nose-bag, he began to walk up and down the fore part of the harbour, still keeping an eager look-out. As time went on he grew comfortable, exchanged salutations with the harbour-master, and even whistled a little to while away the time. "Quiet day, Mr. Quayle." "Quiet enough yet, Mr. Cregeen; but what's it saying?
When a man falls into the water he needn't mind the rain. I'll make good money out yonder." A light had appeared at the window of an upper room, and Pete shook his clenched fist at it and cried, "Good-bye, Master Cregeen. I'll put worlds between us. You were my master once, but nobody made you my master for ever neither you nor no man." All this time Philip knew that hell was in his heart.
But on going downstairs he met Cæsar, who asked him how he found her. "Feverish, very; keep her in bed," he answered. "As for this marriage, it must be put off. She's exciting herself, and I won't answer for the consequences. The thing has fallen too suddenly. To tell you the truth this way, Mr. Cregeen I am afraid of a malady of the brain." "Tut, tut, doctor," said Cæsar.
She framed her lips to speak, but the words were half uttered by the parson. The next thing she knew was that a stray hand was holding her hand. She felt more safe now that her poor cold fingers lay in that big warm palm. It was Pete, and he was speaking again. She did not so much hear him as feel his voice tingling through her veins. "I, Peter Quilliam, take thee, Katherine Cregeen "
Cregeen?" said the postman. "Do I mane fiddlesticks!" said Cæsar. "Well, the man's father is at the Govenar reg'lar, they're telling me," said Kelly, "and Ross is this, and Ross is that " "Every dog praises his own tail," said Cæsar. "I'm not denying it, the man isn't fit he has sold himself to the devil, that's a fact " "No, he hasn't," said Cæsar, "the devil gets the like for nothing."
"Hould your tongue, Nancy Cain," said Cæsar, "and take that Popish thing off the child's head." It was the scarlet hood. "Pity the money that's wasted on the like wasn't given to the poor." "I've heard something the same before, Cæsar Cregeen," said Nancy. "It was Judas Iscariot was saying it first, and you're just thieving it from a thief."
At that moment a hand touched his shoulder. It was the hand of Cregeen, the owner of the old lifeboat. "Mister," said Cregeen, too absorbed in his own welfare to notice Ruth. "It's now or never! Five-and-twenty'll buy the Fleetwing, if ten's paid down this mornun." And Denry replied boldly: "You shall have it in an hour. Where shall you be?"
But he knew quite well what it was. It was a cheque for twenty-five pounds. What he did not know was that, with the ten pounds paid in cash earlier in the day, it represented a very large part indeed of such of Denry's savings as had survived his engagement to Ruth Earp. Cregeen took a pen as though it had been a match-end and wrote a receipt.
Can't you be giving a man a drink of something?" He found a dish of milk on the table, where the supper had been laid, and he gulped it down at a mouthful. "She's gone that's what it is. I see it in your face." Then going to the foot of the stairs, she called, "Kirry! Kate! Katherine Cregeen!" "Stop that!" shouted Pete, and he drew her back from the stairs.
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