"Tell her "an accident,"" I whispered, "we are going to look for him--say nothing about the yard door having been opened and shut again."
For even then I felt that the key of the mystery lay there.
My mother took it more quietly than we had hoped. She did not cry out, but to this day I mind the tremulous light of the candle which she carried in one shaking hand and sheltered with the other. It went quavering from her breast to her face, and then down again till it mixed with the steady shine of the stable lantern in Bob"s hand.
She went into the stable and looked Dapple over carefully, without, however, attempting to touch anything about the mare"s trappings.
"There will hae been an accident," she faltered, her tongue almost refusing its office, "your faither must have been thrown! We will all go and seek for him. We will waken the village."
"But you are not fit, mother. Bide here quiet in the house--let others seek--you are never fit."
"Who has my right?" she said, with a suppressed fierceness, very strange in one so kindly. "I will go out and seek for my man! No one shall hinder me!"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HUNTERS OF MEN
In the village of Breckonside on that December morning was to be seen a sight the like of which I never looked upon. Doors were open all up and down the street. Every window was a yellow square of light.
Frighted, white-faced women looked round curtains. Children in their scanty nightgowns clung on to stair rails, and tried to look out of the open front door without taking their feet off the first-floor landing.
The men of the village mustered about the police office--not because of any help poor old Constable Codling could be to them, but because the very place gave a kind of legality to their proposed doings.
For this time there was no doubt in the minds of any at Breckonside.
Harry Foster was a comparatively poor man, even taking into consideration the banknotes which he carried in the mail bags. But my father, Joseph Yarrow, was the richest and most powerful man in all the district--ay, as far down as East Dene itself.
More than that, he had ridden to Longtown to take payment of a long outstanding debt. Bob Kingsman had heard him say so--so, for the matter of that, had I myself. It would certainly be a large sum for him to mention it twice, reticent as he was on all such matters.
The road to Longtown, or back from Longtown--for it was doubtless there that he would be trapped--led over Brom Common, by the edge of Sparhawk Wood, and so on through the Slack into Scotland. On all the long road, there was only one suspected house--Deep Moat Grange. Only one man whose wealth could not be accounted for penny by penny--Mr. Stennis, the Golden Farmer. Only one nest of mysterious and dangerous folk--Mad Jeremy and his sisters. All the rest were shepherds and their little white shielings.
The conclusion was clear--at least to the minds of the Breckonsiders--in, at, or about Deep Moat Grange, Joseph Yarrow, senior, was to be found--and, what was even more to the point, Joseph Yarrow"s money.
The conclusion was, they would go in a body to Deep Moat Grange. Our registrar, Waldron, who was great on the instinct of animals, tried to get Dapple to retrace her steps. She was led out into the yard, and instantly retraced them into the stable.
At the Bridge End there was a halt. The heads of our Breckonsiders were no ways strong. Besides they were dazed with the sudden alarm.
The memory of poor Harry, the strange tales they had heard for the last ten years of vanished drovers, travellers seen on the moss and then vanishing in some hollow, like the shadow of a cloud, to be seen no more, weighed heavy upon them.
Then some fool cried out that Hobby Stennis had been often seen of late with his son Robin"s daughter--meaning Elsie--and who knew?
Now, no one can ever tell what will seem reasonable to a crowd of such rustics as those about us. And, indeed, if it had not been for my mother--who strode out, and, even in her grief, raged upon them--a.s.serting that Elsie was a good girl and should not be meddled with, I do believe that Nance Edgar"s house would have been routed out from garret to hallan, to seek for the captors or a.s.sa.s.sins of my father.
The sound of many feet, the hoa.r.s.e murmur of voices in angry discussion, and perhaps, also, the reflected light of many lanterns awoke both Nance Edgar and Elsie. But it was Elsie who was first down.
"What is it?" she asked, standing in the doorway with a plaid about her shoulders, and her feet thrust into Nance Edgar"s big, wooden-soled, winter clogs. "What has brought you out?"
I told her that my father had not returned from Longtown, but that some one had brought Dapple home, unlocked the door of the yard, and let in the mare--then relocked it and gone his way. I had quite forgotten--shame be to me--that of all this my mother had yet been told nothing. She stumbled where she stood a little before them all. A kind of hoa.r.s.e cry escaped her lips, and it was into Elsie"s arms that she fell. Perhaps it was as well. For in the rough and tumble of that dark, wintry campaign there was no place for women.
In a while Nance Edgar came out also, and she and Elsie soon got my poor mother into a comfortable bed. I had a word or two with Elsie.
She would fain have come, making no doubt but that it was in the neighbourhood of that accursed house of the Moat Grange that my father, if, indeed, he were dead, had come by his end.
But I reminded her, first, that she was Hobby Stennis"s own granddaughter. Also, she was a teacher in the local school, and, accordingly, leaving all else to one side, that she and I must not run the hills and woods as we had been in the habit of doing ever since she had come from Mrs. Comline"s as a little toddling maid. Last of all, my mother would stay behind more contentedly if so be Elsie were with her.
Now it was a black frost, clean and durable. There had, of course, been considerable traffic over the moor road during the days of the Tryst at Longtown. So the feeble light of our lanterns in the winter morning could reveal nothing as to the means by which Dapple had reached home, nor yet who had brought her. Indeed, we were all more than a little dazed. It seemed such a terrible, unthinkable event, the loss of my father, that no one after him could feel secure. He had been the strongest among us, and if he had fallen to the knife of the secret criminal the only question in Breckonside was, Who was to be the next to go?
Mingled with all this, there was a curious deference toward me, wholly new in my experience. The villagers called me "Mister Joseph," instead of "Joe," as had been their wont. They consulted me as to the steps to be taken--without, however, any very great idea of acting upon what I had to advise. Indeed, that morning, there did not seem to be but the one thing to do--that was, to go as quickly as possible to Deep Moat Grange, and lay hands upon the whole uncanny crew Mr. Stennis had gathered about him there.
It was the earliest grey of the December morning--which is to say, little better than night--when we descended the slopes of Brom Common, crossed the road, and entered into the woods which surrounded Deep Moat Grange. Not without considerable difficulty could I induce the searchers to extinguish their lanterns. And there were more than one of these hunters of men who would have been glad of any excuse to turn back now---men, too, who had been the bravest of the brave when the familiar sights and sounds of the village street compa.s.sed them about.
Several of the searchers kept looking over their shoulders and examining the branches of the trees curiously, as if afraid that Mad Jeremy might suddenly descend upon their shoulders from these tossing arms netted so blackly between them and the sky.
The dead leaves scuffed and crisped under foot. Sometimes a roosting bird, disturbed in its slumbers, or an early-questing, wild creature scurried away into the underbrush. It was an eerie journey, and it was with a breath of relief that I found myself stopped at the Moat, with the water sleeping beneath, black and icebound for want of a current.
The drawbridge was up, and at first it seemed that we had come to the end of our tether. But a little testing and scrambling showed me that the Moat was covered with ice strong enough to support us all, going over carefully and one by one.
Presently we stood on the edge of the wide, green lawn, now hard and dark beneath our feet, the blades of gra.s.s stiff with frost and breaking under our tread like tiny icicles. Between us and the dusky shadow of the house, set against the waking gloom of the eastern sky, there were only the black mounds of Miss Orrin"s garden, where the Lent lilies had waved so bravely in those spring days when first Elsie and I had looked upon Deep Moat Grange.
There were about twenty of us, variously armed. I had a pistol and a Scottish dirk. There were two or three rifles, about a dozen shotguns, many old swords, and even a pitchfork or two in lieu of better. If the courage of the men had been as good as their armament, we might have a.s.saulted a fortress by way of a forlorn hope. But concerning this courage I had my doubts. For Breckonside was like most other villages.
The men were good enough, but valued their own skins a great deal more than anybody else"s--even that of their natural chief, my father.
Still I did not doubt but that they would do their best. For one thing they dared not turn back. They had to stick to the pack, and, after all, two was the extent of the number of foes they would have to face--one of whom was old. But then the other was that terrifying legend of the village and all the country round, Mad Jeremy himself.
Still numbers give, if not strength, at least confidence. Indeed, the men moved so closely together, that I was in constant fear of some weapon of war going off and giving warning to our foes within the dark house.
What we needed was a leader. And after I had guided them across the ice of the Moat, somehow I slipped into that position myself. I was at least the person most concerned. I never before knew that I loved my father--not particularly, that is. And, perhaps, after all it was only blood-kinship that did it. At any rate, I felt a new sensation steal upon me--a steady, cold determination to be revenged on any one who had harmed him--to find out all about it and bring the miscreant to justice--even to kill him if I could. Yes, there is no use denying it.
I knew the verse, "Vengeance is Mine--I will repay!" Which is very true, but is an impossible thing to say at a time like that. No doubt in the long run He will, and does, but it seems too long to wait.
There was not a light to be seen anywhere about the house of the Moat.
The crisp wind of earliest dawn made a dry sough among the evergreens of the shrubbery. The tall chimney cl.u.s.ters were black against the sky, and beneath them and about the overgrown porch the ivy leaves clattered bonely like fairy castanets.
We stood still--close together, but very still.
Then strangely, familiarly, out of the darkness there came to our ears the sound of the sweet singing of a hymn--a hymn, too, that every one knows. I am not going to set down here which one it was. I never could rightly bear to hear it again--much less can I join in singing it. It was spoiled for me, and I would not for the world spoil it for those who may read this history of true, though strange, happenings.
Then, quick as a flash, I thought of the barn where we had seen and heard such wonderful things, Elsie and I. But it was no time for reminiscence. I stepped quietly across the yard and lifted the thick, felted fold of matting. I pushed open the half of the inner door, which perhaps the chill of the night, perhaps the needs of the service, had caused those within to close. Behind me I could hear the people of the village breathe restrainedly, and I smelled the odour of burned horses" hoofs which clothed the blacksmith like a garment. Ebie McClintock was the one man there with a stiff upper lip, and it was a mightily comforting thing to feel him at my back, even though he carried no other weapon than an iron hammer s.n.a.t.c.hed up from the smithy floor as he came away.
The barn was dark, lighted by a couple of tall candles on the altar, and one caught on to the side of a kind of reading desk. I could at first see no more than a huddle of figures clad in black with white kerchiefs bound about their foreheads. The draught from without, caused by the opening of the door and the lifting of the curtain, made the candles flicker, and, indeed, blew out the one at the little desk farthest from us.
It seemed to me, however, that I saw a figure, or, rather, a dim shadow, flit across the heavy hangings, and disappear in the darkness behind. I could not have sworn it, though such was my impression; for at that moment the villagers, bearing on my shoulder, crowding on tiptoe to look, broke like water over an overfull dam. The other half of the door fell back with a clang, and they entered confusedly, tearing down the curtain in their haste. A shot went off accidentally--the very thing I had been expecting all the time from men, who, though warned, would persist in carrying their guns at full c.o.c.k. No harm, however, was done, save that a bevy of bats, disturbed in their winter"s repose, dashed wildly for the door, striking their faces before swooping out into the night.
Then the kneeling women rose--the three mad sisters, and one who stepped in front of them, their elder and protector, Aphra Orrin.
It may seem strange, yet in a moment there came upon me a sense of shame. All was so decent and in order, as for some private Divine service in an oratory. A Bible was open at the lesson for the day, a "marker," with a gold cross hanging between the leaves. The altar nicely laid with a white cloth, and against the black pall, which hid the end of the barn, hung a great gilt crucifix.
"What seek ye here?" said Miss Orrin, standing up very tall, and speaking with a certain chill and surprising dignity which overawed many of my followers.
"I seek my father!" I answered, since n.o.body else could. "He has been lost, and it is here that we have come to look for him."
And though the villagers murmured, "Ay--ay, rightly said, Master Joseph!" I could not but feel at that moment that my reasoning was but weak. If I had had to speak with a man it would have been different.