It was night, and the fire, the one generous thing in the house-place at Starvecrow Farm, blazed fitfully; casting its light now on Walterson"s brooding face as he stooped over the heat, now on the huddled shrunken form that filled the farther side of the hearth. As the flames rose and fell, the shadows of the two men danced whimsically behind them. At one moment they sprang up, darkening the whole smoke-grimed ceiling and seeming to menace the persons who gave them birth, at another they sank into mere hop-o"-my-thumbs, lurking in ambush behind the furniture. There was no other light in the room; it was rarely the old skinflint suffered another. And to-night the shutters were closed and barred that even the reflection of the blaze might not be seen without and breed suspicion.
The younger man"s face, when the firelight rested on it, betrayed not only his present anxiety, but the deep lines of past fear and brooding. He was no longer spruce and neat and close-shaven; he was no longer the dandy who had turned a feather-head--for there was little in this place to encourage cleanliness. Confinement and suspense had sharpened his features; his eyes were harder and brighter than of old, and the shallow tenderness which had fooled Henrietta no longer floated on their depths. A nervous impatience, a peevish irritability showed in his every movement; whether he raised his hand to silence the old man"s crooning, or fell again to biting his nails in moody depression. It was bad enough to be confined in this squalid hole with an imbecile driveller, and to spend long hours without other company.
It was worse to know that beyond its threshold the noose dangled, and the peril which he had so long and so cleverly evaded yawned for him.
To do Walterson justice, it was not entirely for his own safety that he was concerned as he sat over the fire and listened--starting at the squeak of a mouse and finding in every sough of the wind the step of a friend or foe. He was a heartless man. He would not have scrupled to ruin the innocent girl who trusted him: nay, in thought and intention he had ruined her as he had ruined others. But he could not face without a shudder what might be happening at this moment by the waterside. He could not picture without shame what, if the girl escaped there, would happen here; when they dragged her through the doorway, bound and gagged and at the mercy of the jealous vixen who dominated him. Secretly he was base enough to hope that what they did they would do in the darkness, and not terrify him with the sight of it. For if they brought her here, if they confronted him with her, how loathly a figure he must cut even in his own eyes! How poor and dastardly a thing he must seem in the eyes of the woman whose will he did and to whose vengeance he consented.
The sweat rose on his brow as he pondered this; as he looked with terrified eyes at the door and fancied that the scene was already playing, that he saw her dragged into that vile place, that he met her look. Pa.s.sionately he wished--as we all wish in like but smaller cases--that he had never seen either of the women, that he had never played the fool, or that if he must play the fool he had chosen some other direction in which to escape with Henrietta. But wishing was useless. Wishing would not remove him into safety or comfort, would not relieve him from the consequences of his misdeeds, would not convert the skulking imbecile who faced him into decent company. And even while he indulged his regret, he heard the tread of men outside, and he stood up. A moment later the signal, three knocks on the shutter, informed him that the crisis which he had been expecting and dreading, was come--was come!
Delay would not help him; the old man, mowing and chattering, was already on his feet. He went to the door and with a hang-dog face opened it. The long bar which ran all its length into the wall was scarcely clear, when a woman, swaddled to her eyes in a thick drugget shawl, pushed in. It was Bess. After her came a tall man cloaked and booted, followed by two others of lower stature and meaner appearance. The last who entered bore something in his arms, a pack, a bundle--Walterson, shuddering, could not see which. For as Bess with the same show of haste with which she had entered, began to secure the door against the cold blast, that blew the sparks in clouds up the chimney, the cloaked man addressed him.
"You"re Walterson? Ah, to be sure, we"ve met--once, I think. Well," he spoke in a harsh, peremptory tone--"you"ll be good enough to note," he turned and pointed to the other men, "that I have naught to do with this! I"ve neither hand nor part in it! And I"ll ask you to remember that."
Walterson, with a pallid face and shrinking eyes, looked at the man with the bundle.
"What is it?" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "I don"t understand."
"Oh, stow this!" Bess cried, turning brusquely from the door which she had secured. "The gentleman is very grand and mighty," shrugging her shoulders, "but the thing is done now. And I"ll warrant if good comes of it he"ll not be too proud to take his share."
"Not _I_, girl!" the tall man answered. "Not I!"
He took off as he spoke his cloak and hat, and showed a tall, angular figure borne with military stiffness. His face was sallow and long, and his mouth wide; but the plainness or ugliness of his features was redeemed by their power, and by the light of enthusiasm which was never long absent from his sombre eyes. A kind of aloofness in speech and manner showed that he was in the habit of living among inferiors.
And not only the men who came with him, but Walterson himself seemed in his presence of a meaner mould and smaller sort.
His two companions were stout, short-built men of a coa.r.s.e type. But Walterson after a single glance, paid no heed to them. His eyes, his thoughts, his attention were all on the bundle. Yet, it was not possible, it could not be what he dreaded. It was too small, too small! And yet he shuddered.
"What is it?" he asked in uncertain accents.
"The worth of a man"s neck, may be," one of the two men grunted.
"Oh, curse your may-be"s!" the other who carried the child struck in.
"It"s a smart bit of justice, master, with no may-be about it! And came in our way just when we were ready for it. Let"s look at the kid."
"The kid?"
Walterson repeated the words, and opened his mouth dumb-founded. He looked at Thistlewood.
The tall man, who was warming his back at the fire, shrugged his square shoulders.
"I"ve naught to do with it!" he said. "Ask them!"
"Don"t you know what a kid is?" Giles, one of the two others, retorted, with a glance of contempt. "A kinchin! a yelper! It"s Squire Clyne"s, if you must know. He"ll learn now what it is to see your children trodden under foot and your women-kind slashed and cut with sabres! He"s ground the faces of the poor long enough! D----n him, he"s as bad as Castlereagh, the devil! But, hallo!" breaking off. "If I don"t think, mate, you"ve squeezed his throat a bit too tight!"
He had unwound the wrappings and disclosed the still and inanimate form of a boy about six years old, but small for his age. The thin bloodless hands were clenched, the head hung back, the eyes were half-closed; and the tiny face showed so deathly white--among those tanned faces and in that grimy place--that it was not wonderful that the man fancied for a moment that the child was dead.
But, "Not I!" the one who had carried it answered contemptuously.
"It"s swooned, like enough. And I"d to stop it shrieking, hadn"t I?
Let the la.s.s look to it."
Bess took it but reluctantly--with an ill grace and no look of tenderness or pity. She was of those women who love no children but their own, and sometimes do not love their own. While she sprinkled water on the poor little face and rubbed the small hands, Walterson found his voice.
"What folly--what cursed folly is this?" he cried, his words vibrating with rage. "What have we to do with the child or your vengeance, or this d----d folly--that you should bring the hunt upon us? We were snug here."
"And ain"t we snug now?" Lunt, the man who had carried the child, asked.
"Snug? We"ll be snug behind bars in twenty-four hours!" Walterson rejoined, his voice rising almost to a scream, "if that child is Squire Clyne"s child!"
"Oh, he"s that right enough, master," Giles, the other man, struck in.
A kind of ferocious irony was natural to him.
"Then you"ll have the whole country on us before noon to-morrow!"
Walterson retorted. "I tell you he"ll follow you and track you and find you, if he follows you to h.e.l.l"s gate! I know the man."
"So do I," said Thistlewood coolly. "And I say the same."
"Yet," Giles retorted impudently, "you"ve got a neck as well as another."
"You can leave my neck out of the question," Thistlewood replied. "And me!" And he turned his back on them contemptuously.
"Well, you"ve got a neck," Giles answered, addressing Walterson, who was almost hysterical with rage. "And I suppose you have some care for it, if he has none!" with a gesture of the thumb in Thistlewood"s direction. "You"d as soon as not, keep your neck unstretched, I suppose?"
"Sooner," Bess said, flinging a glance of contempt at her lover.
"Here, let me teach him," she continued bluntly; the child had begun to murmur in a low, painful note. "They came on the kid by chance and s.n.a.t.c.hed it, and we"ve put ten miles of water between the place and us."
"And snow on the ground!" Walterson retorted, pointing to the thin powder that still lay white in the folds of her shawl.
"We came up through the wood," she answered. "Trust us for that!
But that"s not the point. The point is, that your pink-and-white fancy-girl never came. She"d more sense than I thought she had. But you were willing to s.n.a.t.c.h her, my lad. And why is the risk greater with the child?"
"But----"
"It"s less," the girl continued, before he could put his objection into words. "It"s less, I tell you, for the child"s more easily tucked away. I"ve a place we can put it, where they"ll not find it if they search for a twelvemonth!"
"They"ll soon search here," he said sullenly. "There"s not a house they"ll not search if they trace the boat. Nor a bothy on the hills."
"May be," she answered confidently. "But when they search you"ll not be here, nor the kid. Nor in a bothy!"
"If you are going to trust Tyson----"
"You leave that to me," she replied, bending her brows.
But he was not to be silenced.
"He"ll sell you!" he cried. "He"ll sell you! He"ll give you fair words and you think you can fool him. But when he comes to know there"s a reward out, and what he"ll suffer if he is found hiding us, and when he knows that all the country is up--and for this child they"d hang us on the nearest tree--he"ll give us up and you too. Though you do think you have bewitched him. And so I tell all here!" he added pa.s.sionately.
With a dark look, "Stow it, my lad," she said, as he paused for want of breath. "And leave Tyson to me."
But the men who had listened to the debate looked something startled.