"Stories," I repeated after her--"what stories?"

"Why, there were some bad enough to say that it was Master Luke was
tryin' to abduct the lady, and that it was Sir Jasper was hinderin' him.
I couldn't believe it myself. He cared for none but Miss Mary, although
she'd been hard to him. And Miss Irene Cardew would have gone with
Master Luke willin' enough. A pretty delicate little lady she was, and
'ud jump if she caught sight of her own shadow. Sure, Master Luke could
have nothing but pity for her."

"There seem to have been a great many stories," I said.

"Aye, indeed, so there were, my jewel. There isn't two you'd meet in the
county this minute 'ud hold the same opinion about it. Not but that any
way the country people are on the side of Master Luke."

I was silent for a few minutes, stroking Dido's silky head, letting her
rippled ears fall through my fingers. Her dim eyes were fixed on me with
a terrible wistfulness, as though she longed to speak and could not. I
felt a great pity for the old dog. What a sad lot is theirs, depending
on our presence as they do for the light in their sky, to whom our
slightest absence is the absence of death.

"Was nothing ever heard of him?" I asked after that silence.

"Nothing. Some said that he got on board a hooker and was carried to
Liverpool and got off to America. Others said the same hooker--she was a
stranger in these parts--was swept out to sea and, in the big storm that
broke that very week, foundered."