victuals as I was promised. What's the difference in wickedness, I'd like to know?" asked the old man sententiously, and figuring out his proposition on Saltren's coat with his crooked fingers. "What's the odds in wickedness, chucking over a horrible precipice a dozen sweet and innocent children as is, or as is to be, my family was as certain as new potatoes in June, and now—all gone, chucked down the Cleave. It is wickedness."
"What is that you hinted about Captain Saltren?" asked Giles gravely.
"Oh, I say nothing," answered old Samuel sourly. "I don't talk—I leave that to the woman."
"It does seem a pity," said Joan. "Samuel would have been so useful. He might have gone about the park picking up the sandwich-papers and the corks and bottles, after the public."
"But," said the young man, "I really wish to know what the talk is about in which my father's name is introduced."
"Sir, sir! folks' tongues go like the clappers in the fields to drive away the blackbirds. A very little wind makes 'em rattle wonderfully."
"But what have they said?"
"Well"—Joan hesitated. She was a woman of delicate feeling. "Well, sir, you must not think there is anything in it. Tongues cannot rest, and what they say to-day they unsay to-morrow. Some think that as the captain was so bitter against his lordship, and denounced him as ordained to destruction, that he may have had a helping hand in his death. But, sir, the captain did not speak so strong as Mr. Welsh, and nobody says that Mr. Welsh laid a finger on him. Why should they try to fix it on your father and not on your uncle? But, sir, there is no call to fix it on any one. I might walk over the edge of the Cleave. If a man goes over the brink, I reckon he needs no help to make him go to the bottom."
