When this grace was ended, and they were about to begin, Alice said,
as if without premeditation, but in reality with a keen shrinking of
heart out of sympathy with her child-'Philip would have been in to his tea by now, I reckon, if he'd been
coming.' William looked up suddenly at Hester; her mother carefully turned
her head another way. But she answered quite quietly-'He'll be gone to his aunt's at Haytersbank. I met him at t' top o'
t' Brow, with his cousin and Molly Corney.' 'He's a deal there,' said William.
'Yes,' said Hester. 'It's likely; him and his aunt come from
Carlisle-way, and must needs cling together in these strange parts.' 'I saw him at the burying of yon Darley,' said William.
'It were a vast o' people went past th' entry end,' said Alice. 'It
were a'most like election time; I were just come back fra' meeting
when they were all going up th' church steps. I met yon sailor as,
they say, used violence and did murder; he looked like a ghost,
though whether it were his bodily wounds, or the sense of his sins
stirring within him, it's not for me to say. And by t' time I was
back here and settled to my Bible, t' folk were returning, and it
were tramp, tramp, past th' entry end for better nor a quarter of an
hour.' 'They say Kinraid has getten slugs and gun-shot in his side,' said
Hester.
'He's niver one Charley Kinraid, for sure, as I knowed at
Newcastle,' said William Coulson, roused to sudden and energetic
curiosity.
'I don't know,' replied Hester; 'they call him just Kinraid; and
Betsy Darley says he's t' most daring specksioneer of all that go
off this coast to t' Greenland seas. But he's been in Newcastle, for
I mind me she said her poor brother met with him there.' 'How didst thee come to know him?' inquired Alice.
'I cannot abide him if it is Charley,' said William. 'He kept
company with my poor sister as is dead for better nor two year, and
then he left off coming to see her and went wi' another girl, and it
just broke her heart.' 'He don't look now as if he iver could play at that game again,'
said Alice; 'he has had a warning fra' the Lord. Whether it be a
call no one can tell. But to my eyne he looks as if he had been
called, and was going.' 'Then he'll meet my sister,' said William, solemnly; 'and I hope the
Lord will make it clear to him, then, how he killed her, as sure as
he shot down yon sailors; an' if there's a gnashing o' teeth for
murder i' that other place, I reckon he'll have his share on't. He's
a bad man yon.' 'Betsy said he were such a friend to her brother as niver was; and
he's sent her word and promised to go and see her, first place he
goes out to.