And,
perhaps, Lord Littimer might come riding through on his big black horse,
small, lithe, brown as mahogany, and with an eye piercing as a
diamond-drill. One day he looked almost boyishly young, there would be a
smile on his tanned face. And then another day he would be bent in the
saddle, huddled up, wizened, an old, old man, crushed with the weight of
years and sorrow.
In sooth he was a man of moods and contradictions, changeable as an April
sky, and none the less quick-tempered and hard because he knew that
everybody was terribly afraid of him. And he had a tongue, too, a
lashing, cutting tongue that burnt and blistered. Sometimes he would be
quite meek and angry under the reproaches of the vicar, and yet the same
day history records it that he got off his horse and administered a sound
thrashing to the village poacher. Sometimes he got the best of the vicar,
and sometimes that worthy man scored. They were good friends, these two,
though the vicar never swerved in his fealty to Lady Littimer, whose
cause he always championed. But nobody seemed to know anything about that
dark scandal. They knew that there had been a dreadful scene at the
castle seven years before, and that Lady Littimer and her son had left
never to return.
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