Well, on Monday, the sixth of December, at 8.59 I received a letter bearing the Edinburgh postmark, stating that a certain Mr. Stephen Cairney, who has owed me over three hundred pounds for a number of years (329, to be exact) would be selling a large parcel of cattle at Longtown Tryst. The writer of the note was Mr. H. Stennis, of Deep Moat Grange, and he informed me that he had successfully adopted a similar course at Falkirk some years ago. He had been able to give his lawyer due notice, and had "riested" the money in the hands of the auctioneer.
Now there is no reason why Hobby Stennis should go out of his way to put money into my pocket. On the contrary! If it had been the other way about I should have seen him farther first before I meddled.
Still, the sum was a considerable one, and Mr. Dealer Stephen Cairney certainly a slippery customer, whom I might never be able to make anything off of again. It was just possible that old Hobby, as spiteful an old ruffian as lived, whether as poor weaver or as Golden Farmer, had his knife into Cairney for some old quarrel which most likely Cairney had himself forgotten.
At any rate, there was nothing against my riding to Longtown to see.
Nothing against my trying, at least, to come by my own. Still it was with an angry and unsettled mind, but a firm determination not to be cheated if I could help it, that I rode off to Longtown on Dapple, the good and trusty mare I had bought as a bargain from the heirs and a.s.signs of Mr. Henry Foster, sometime deceased.
My wife was most difficult as to my riding alone, but if a man is to take account of the whim-whams of his women-folk, he will have time for little else. So I gave Joseph and Kingsman sufficient directions and elaborate instructions to pa.s.s them over till my return, and so parted.
There is nothing to note on the journey to Longtown. I fell into converse with several farmers and made arrangements with one to take his young pigs at valuation--which I judged a good affair to me, his valuator being largely indebted to me in the line of bone manures and feeding stuffs.
But beyond that nothing, and even that affair was quite in the course of business, though it has not yet matured.
For, perhaps owing to the unsettled state of the country, the pigs have been anxious-minded and run to legs, utterly refusing to put on flesh, which, as I understand it, is the first duty of pig. I came somewhere across a book by Thomas Carlyle in which he stated this somewhat strongly. I was much struck by the strength and precision of the argumentation, and wished that at all times he had thought fit to write with similar clearness. There is no doubt that the man had the ability. I have read worse newspaper articles.
I found my man without great difficulty, and duly "riested" or arrested the moneys due to me, in the hands of Mr. Lightbody the auctioneer, taking the said Mr. Lightbody"s cheque on a Thorsby bank--both as more portable, and also to give that sound and well-considered man time to settle with the buyers of the Cairney cattle--lots A, B, and C, on which I had first charge.
Now, I am not a man ever to halt at markets, or to drink in public places--more, that is, than to clinch a bargain, as an honest man ought, neither with stinting nor with offensive liberality. I even made it up with Cairney, though at first, of course, he was neither to hold nor to bind. He threatened to bring me up "before the fifteen"
for damage to his credit. But I pointed out that nothing hurts a man"s credit so much as the habit of not paying his debts. Whereupon he calmed a little, and said he, "I"ll wager that it was old Hobby who put you on to this!" To which, naturally, I made no reply, letting him think just what he would.
At three o"clock I had Dapple saddled. For it being the winter season, I judged that late enough to be travelling over so wild a country. But having done harm to no one, and carrying no sums of money, I saw no reason for fear.
At the half-way little hedge inn, for once in my life I lighted down and called for a bowl of soup, but could only get coffee, and that without milk--which proves the improvidence of these people. For Crewe Moss would easily have pastured a hundred cows, though it would most likely happen that an odd one might get laired in the soft places now and then. But not to have so much as a drop of milk and on Crewe Moss!
Lamentable! So I told the people what I thought of them, mounted Dapple, and came my ways.
I had gone, perhaps, three miles, and was skirting the woods adjoining the property of Mr. Stennis, when, as I pa.s.sed under some high trees a noose dropped about my neck. The mare pa.s.sed on, and I was left dangling as neatly as if the hangman had done it. Happily for me the cord had descended lower than my neck on one side, and I was caught under the left armpit. But there I swung and turned all the same, shouting manfully for help. I could observe as I wheeled about, for all the world like a scarecrow in a bean field, some one in the act of catching Dapple and tying her to a tree.
Then the man--a long-limbed, ugly-mugged fellow, with corkscrew curls exactly like the old maids when I was young--came back, and, letting me down, wrapped me carefully in a coil of rope till I could move neither hand nor foot. I know him now to be Mad Jeremy, for long chief agent in the doubtful affairs of Mr. Hobby Stennis.
Now I am a fair weight, for my inches, though not to call a heavy man.
But this gipsy-looking fellow took me on his back as easily as if I had been a bag of shavings for kindling. If he had taken to honest courses, that same Jeremy Orrin--for so I am informed he is called--I would gladly have given him a thirty-shilling-a-week job in the warehouse. Nothing would have come unhandily to him.
Well, he carried me by various pa.s.sages, the rough stone and lime of which scratched my face, knees, and knocking elbows, to a commodious rounded chamber. It was floored, walled, and roofed with wood. But I could make out, by sounding, the stone arching, and behind that again the solid earth. It was, as I now know, the cellar or ice house of the monks which they had built for themselves on the verge of the Moat to cool their wine in torrid summers.
Hither the woman, Aphra Orrin, accompanied her brother, my captor.
They searched me thoroughly, as though I were a postman with registered letters and other valuables, but, as was my habit, they found upon my person no store of valuables--fairs and trysts being no fit places to make parade of one"s gear.
Among some almanacs, jottings of bargains, and other things, these two came on the cheque for three hundred pounds on the bank of Thorsby, at which Mr. Lightbody, the auctioneer, did his business--as they said, for the purpose of giving him a day extra--which, indeed, an honest man might very well do, paying out on many occasions before he had received the price from the buyer.
At the sight of that they were much bewildered, and did not, as I judge, know what to do. Finally, after having taken away the cheque and considered upon it, or perhaps taken the advice of a third person, they brought it back to me, and offered me my life in exchange for my signature upon the back of that piece of paper.
But to this I would not agree. I regarded the position all round, and saw clearly that as soon as I had signed, it would be as good as signing my death warrant. So I judged it best to put them off with half promises, and partial encouragements. As, "that I could not bring myself to rob my family of so great a sum," or "that the bank would expect me to present the cheque in person." Both of which were mere vanities--for, of course, the cheque was made out to me personally and would be paid over my signature, which was as well known to the cashiers of the Thorsby bank as that of the manager himself.
So, being countered in this, the man with the curls was for putting his knife into me instanter, but the tall woman took him apart, and I could hear her pounding the table with her fist, persuading him. With three hundred pounds, so she argued, they could all get out of the country, supposing that Mr. Stennis"s money was not available. I was, I learned from her words, their anchor to windward. They had expected I should bring back the money in gold or notes. Therefore, as I had not done so, I should be kept in the ice house and coaxed till I signed the cheque. Then they could close all the doors--no need of stronger measures--and leave me tied on the floor of the ice house. Who, at least for long, would be any the wiser?
I had time for many things, there, in that chilly abode. They chained my ankles to rings let into the wall, the bolts of which appeared through the lining of planks. I was given a mattress to lie upon, and occasionally Mad Jeremy threw me a loaf of bread, as one does to a dog.
Most of all, I was afraid that my faculties should rust, or even that I should go mad, so by steady application I learned the multiplication table up to twenty-four-times, making each as familiar to me as ten times ten. This would prove of great use to me afterwards in my business, and those who do have transactions with me wonder at my quickness while I laugh at their simplicity.
Then I took up one by one all the concerns of every man I knew, and set myself problems as against myself. As thus: Yarrow, of Breckonside, will be coming to me shortly for two hundred loads of fodder for the company"s horses. He has the contract down at Clifton--the tramway company--and get the fodder he must. And how shall I mix the stuff so that it will be pa.s.sed when it comes to be taken off his hands?
I thought all this out, putting myself in the other"s place, and no one can imagine--who has not tried it--how excellent a lesson in affairs it proved. After that drill in the old ice house, where at times I was well-nigh frozen, I seemed to see inside every man"s skull with whom I was making a bargain. It was not only a great advantage, but in a sort of way it was poetry also. I don"t expect Joseph to understand this any more than I understand his maunderings about love and girls. Not but what I am fond of my wife. She brought me a good round sum, as every woman ought, which I have used with care and caused to breed handsomely. But if I were to tell Mary that I loved her, I think she would go at once and order my tombstone. At least, she would call in a doctor!
Still, with all my invention, the time hung heavy. Each day the Orrin woman came bringing Lightbody"s cheque, with new arguments why I should sign it. I put her off, though sometimes not without difficulty. I think she must have been partly cracked, in spite of her apparently business-like habits, for it puzzled me how they would have got the money, even over my signature, taking into consideration my sudden disappearance and the to-do there would be about it. But I took care to say nothing about that. Mr. Lightbody"s cheque and the hope that they had of my signing it, and so enabling them to get the money, was my best safeguard.
But one day Miss Orrin, apparently after long cogitation, made another proposal. If I would write to my bankers telling them that I had gone abroad on an affair of great moment, and asking them to pay to the bearer a thousand pounds on my behalf, Miss Orrin would pledge her word to leave me with ten days" provisions in the vault, and at the end of that time to send to the authorities a message stating where I was to be found.
This, she said, was their ultimatum. The alternative unexpressed, but evident, was Master Jeremy"s knife. However, I did not agree. The business had too speculative an air, and there was a decided lack of guarantee. For there was nothing to prevent those kind friends from cutting my throat after they had pocketed the cash, supposing that my banker was fool enough to pay it without going to the police. I suppose, however, that Jeremy would have stayed here by me, and if the police had been called in, or his sister had not returned, there would have been no more of me.
I told them plainly, and as a business man, that they would only be running their heads into a trap if I wrote any such order, but that the cheque was negotiable anywhere. It could pa.s.s through any number of hands even from the Continent. This little bit of information, I believe, preserved my life. For the very next day I caught one of the jackdaws that came to seek shelter about my dungeon, entering through a crack high in the arched roof. I wrote the message--already reproduced--on paper stuffed in a rook"s quill which I picked up off the floor, and fastening the long feather to the jackdaw"s tail with whitey-brown thread unwound from a b.u.t.ton, I let the bird flutter away.
Now I come to a circ.u.mstance that I have something of delicacy about.
Bairns" plays are not suitable for men of ripe years, you say. I agree, but when sometimes one has children, and especially an only son upon whom the care and guidance of a large business will some day devolve, there are certain kinds of plays that cannot be hastily condemned even by the wisest.
It was the year when the fever, now called typhoid, but then simply the "Fivvor," made ravages in Breckonside. No one knew what brought it, and none knew why it went away. But during its stay, both myself and my son Joseph were attacked by it among the first. My wife, Mrs.
Yarrow, had her hands full with the two of us. Neither was very ill, but the time of convalescence was long; and had it been any other doctor than Dr. Hector who attended me, I would have been out a dozen times a day.
But--and I like him for it, for I have the faculty myself--Dr. Hector has a way with him that makes people think twice before disobeying him.
Joe was in his room, I in mine, and there was between us a thick part.i.tion, such as are to be found in old houses, of double oak, with an air s.p.a.ce between.
Now my brain being by nature busy, and to amuse the boy most of all, I concocted a simple code of sound signals which Joe and I called our "Morse." We would often amuse ourselves the day by the length, by rapping our messages the one to the other. It went like this. I made a little tablet for Joe, and kept one by me till we had both learned the inscription by ear, as it were.
+-----------------------+12345+-------------------+1ABCDE+------------------+2FGHIK+------------------+3LMNOP+------------------+4QRSTU+------------------+5VWXYZ+-----------------------+
It consisted of the alphabet arranged in five lines, and numbered above, and at the side. Then the intersection of the number of knocks, two series with a pause between, beginning with the horizontal top figures gave the letter. It was simplicity itself when once learned.
Joe picked it up quickly, and we rapped out messages to each other as soon as we were awake. For instance, three knocks, then after a pause two more, gave the letter H.
This was the first of our morning"s greetings, "Heeps better." Joe did not spell well at that time, but for the correction of his orthography it needed the schoolmaster"s cane, and not a newly invented Morse sound code. So I let him spell as he liked. It lightened our days very much. And I will admit, ever after that, Joseph and I understood each other better.
Now it will hardly be believed, but I am willing to let my commercial honour stand for the truth of what I am about to say, which with those who have done business with me will be sufficient. One morning I awoke early, before the slate-blue crack, with a star wandering across it, which was the jackdaw"s front door, had changed to the grey of a winter"s morning. I lay on my comfortless straw couch, wondering why it was that my prison was not colder. It could not be that it was so far underground as to be warm like the bottom of a mine, by its own distance from the earth"s surface. There were the exits and the entrances of the jackdaws to witness against that.
Still, though cold enough at times, the fact remained that the temperature of my prison never descended to the freezing point.
Indeed, it had probably been chosen as a winter home by the birds on that account. Once or twice I had seen a flake of snow fluttering down, but these melted before they could be discerned on the oaken floor of the curious circular cellar in which I lay.
I was, as I say, pondering over these things, about home, too, and what Joseph would be doing. I almost blush to write, but I began automatically knocking out a sentence in our old "Morse" code which had amused us during the fever year.
"Is any one there?" I spelled the words out.
And I actually sat upright with wonder when I heard come through the thick oak of the part.i.tion, first five distinct knocks, then, after a pause, one.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I heard first five distinct knocks then after a pause--one."]
It was the letter E! But, then, only Joe and I knew of it! My heart sank. I thought in swift, lightning flashes. Had my son been captured also? But the person at the other side of the wall went on spelling, one knock, pause, three knocks.
It was the letter L!