"But I knew of yours," answered the storekeeper. "Your agent hath an
annoying trick of speech, and the overseers have caught it from him. 'Your
master' this, and 'your master' that; in short, for ten years it hath
been, 'Work, you dog, that your master may play!' Well, I have worked; it
was that, or killing myself, or going mad. I have worked for you in the
fields, in the smithy, in this close room. But when you bought my body,
you could not buy my soul. Day after day, and night after night, I sent it
away; I would not let it bide in these dull levels, in this cursed land of
heat and stagnant waters. At first it went home to its own country,--to
its friends and its foes, to the torrent and the mountain and the music of
the pipes; but at last the pain outweighed the pleasure, and I sent it
there no more. And then it began to follow you."
"To follow me!" involuntarily exclaimed Haward.
"I have been in London," went on the other, without heeding the
interruption. "I know the life of men of quality, and where they most
resort. I early learned from your other servants, and from the chance
words of those who had your affairs in charge, that you were young,
well-looking, a man of pleasure. At first when I thought of you the blood
came into my cheek, but at last I thought of you constantly, and I felt
for you a constant hatred. It began when I knew that Ewin Mackinnon was
dead. I had no need of love; I had need of hate. Day after day, my body
slaving here, my mind has dogged your footsteps. Up and down, to and fro,
in business and in pleasure, in whatever place I have imagined you to be,
there have I been also. Did you never, when there seemed none by, look
over your shoulder, feeling another presence than your own?"
He ceased to speak, and the hand upon the cask was still. The sunshine was
clean gone from the room, and without the door the wind in the
locust-tree answered the voice of the river. Haward rose from his seat,
but made no further motion toward departing. "You have been frank," he
said quietly. "Had you it in mind, all this while, so to speak to me when
we should meet?"
"No," answered the other. "I thought not of words, but of"-"But of deeds," Haward finished for him. "Rather, I imagine, of one deed."
Composed as ever in voice and manner, he drew out his watch, and held it
aslant that the light might strike upon the dial. "'T is after six," he
remarked as he put it away, "and I am yet a mile from the house." The wine
that he had poured for himself had been standing, untouched, upon the keg
beside him. He took it up and drank it off; then wiped his lips with his
handkerchief, and passing the storekeeper with a slight inclination of his
head walked toward the door. A yard beyond the man who had so coolly shown
his side of the shield was a rude table, on which were displayed hatchets
and hunting knives. Haward passed the gleaming steel; then, a foot beyond
it, stood still, his face to the open door, and his back to the
storekeeper and the table with its sinister lading.