He cried out a bit louder than he need have done, if that's what
you mean, but not loud enough to cause all this fuss. Get downstairs
again, you two, and keep quiet. I've no patience with such nonsense;
coming flying upstairs as if you'd both gone mad."
"It was not your friend's voice we heard," Ellen answered resolutely; "it
was a woman's cry. You must have heard it surely, Stephen Whitelaw."
"I heard nothing but what I tell you," the farmer muttered sulkily. "Get
downstairs, can't you?"
"Not till I know what's the matter," his wife said, undismayed by his
anger. "Give me your light, and let me go and see."
"You can go where you like, wench, and see what you can; and an uncommon
deal wiser you'll be for your trouble."
And yet, although Mr. Whitelaw gave his wife the candlestick with an air
of profound indifference, there was an uneasy look in his countenance
which she could plainly see, and which perplexed her not a little.
"Come, Mrs. Tadman," she said decisively, "we had better see into this.
It was a woman's voice, and must have been one of the girls, I suppose.
It may be nothing serious, after all,--these country girls scream out for
a very little,--but we'd better get to the bottom of it."
Mr. Whitelaw burst into a laugh--and he was a man whose laughter was as
unpleasant as it was rare.
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