Indeed, all the worries of a queen of the
road!
"And I'm so fat!" she said, "and yet I'm not forty, and shan't be for
two year--and me a grandmother!"
"I knowed it!" Jock exclaimed.
"If I wasn't such a heap o' flesh--"
"Ye're the grandest heap o' flesh as I ever set eyes on, and I'm telling
ye!" Jock interrupted her.
VIII
Then there were disconcerting sounds out in the world beyond the van.
The horse stopped. The double doors were forced open from without, and a
black figure, with white eyes in a black face, filled the doorway. The
van had passed through the mining village of Moorthorne, and this was
one of the marauding colliers on the outskirts thereof. When the
colliers had highroad business in the night they did not trouble to wash
their faces after work. The coal-dust was a positive aid to them, for it
gave them a most useful resemblance to the devil.
Jock-at-a-Venture sprang up as though launched from a catapult.
"Is it thou, Jock?" cried the collier, astounded.
"Ay, lad!" said Jock, briefly.
And caught the collier a blow under the chin that sent him flying into
the obscurity of the night.
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