BOOK THE FOURTH: A TURNING
Chapter 1: Setting Traps (continued)
'Did you ever see a ghost?' was the sullen retort.
'I mean to say, you're quite wore out.'
'That may well be. I have had no rest since I left here. I don't
remember that I have so much as sat down since I left here.'
'Lie down now, then,' said Riderhood.
'I will, if you'll give me something to quench my thirst first.'
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak
draught, and another, and drank both in quick succession. 'You
asked me something,' he said then.
'No, I didn't,' replied Riderhood.
'I tell you,' retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and
desperate manner, 'you asked me something, before I went out to
wash my face in the river.
'Oh! Then?' said Riderhood, backing a little. 'I asked you wot you
wos a-going to do.'
'How can a man in this state know?' he answered, protesting with
both his tremulous hands, with an action so vigorously angry that
he shook the water from his sleeves upon the floor, as if he had
wrung them. 'How can I plan anything, if I haven't sleep?'
'Why, that's what I as good as said,' returned the other. 'Didn't I
say lie down?'
'Well, perhaps you did.'
'Well! Anyways I says it again. Sleep where you slept last; the
sounder and longer you can sleep, the better you'll know arterwards
what you're up to.'
His pointing to the truckle bed in the corner, seemed gradually to
bring that poor couch to Bradley's wandering remembrance. He
slipped off his worn down-trodden shoes, and cast himself heavily,
all wet as he was, upon the bed.
|