The light disappeared, David crept in, and the two children crouched together in a glow of excitement.
"Is"t Uncle Reuben?" whispered Louie, pressing her face against the side of the rocks, and trying to look through the c.h.i.n.k between it and the covering stone.
"Aye--wi a lantern. But there"s talkin--theer"s someone else. Jim Wigson, mebbe."
"If it"s Jim Wigson," said Louie, between her small, shut teeth, "I"ll bite him!"
"Cos yo"re a gell! Gells and cats bite--they can"t do nowt else!"
Whereupon Louie pinched him, and David, giving an involuntary kick as he felt the nip, went into first a fit of smothered laughter, and then seized her arm in a tight grip.
"Keep quiet, conno yo? Now they"re coomin, an I bleeve they"re coomin this way!"
But after another minute"s waiting, he was quite unable to obey his own injunction and he crept out on the stone overlooking the precipice to look.
"Coom back! They"ll see yo." cried Louie, in a shrill whisper; and she caught him by the ankle.
David gave a kick. "Let goo; if yo do "at I shall fall an be kilt!"
She held her breath. Presently, with an exclamation, he knelt down and looked over the edge of the great sloping block which served them for roof.
"Wal, I niver! Theer"s n.o.bory but Uncle Reuben, an he"s talkin to hissel. Wal, this is a rum skit!"
And he stayed outside watching, in spite of Louie"s angry commands to him to come back into the den. David had no fears of being discovered by Uncle Reuben. If it had been Jim Wigson it would have been different.
Presently, on the path some sixty feet above them, but hidden from them by the ma.s.s of tumbled rocks through which they had descended, they heard someone puffing and blowing, a stick striking and slipping on the stones, and weird rays of light stole down the mountain-side, and in and out of the vast blocks with which it was overstrewn.
"He"s stopt up theer," said David, creeping in under the gable, "an I mun hear what he"s sayin. I"m gooin up nearer. If yo coom we"ll be caught."
"Yo stoopid!" cried Louie. But he had crawled up the narrow chimney they had come down by in a moment, and she was left alone. Her spirit failed her a little. She daren"t climb after him in the dark.
David clambered in and out, the fierce wind that beat the side of the mountain masking whatever sounds he may have made, till he found himself directly under the place where Reuben Grieve sat, slowly recovering his breath.
_"O Lord! O Lord!_ They"re aw reet, Sandy--they"re aw reet!"
The boy crouched down sharply under an overhanging stone, arrested by the name--Sandy--his father"s name.
Once or twice since he came to Kinder he had heard it on Uncle Reuben"s lips, once or twice from neighbours who had known James Grieve"s sons in their youth. But Sandy had left the farm early and was little remembered, and the true story of Sandy"s life was unknown in the valley, though there were many rumours. What the close and timid Reuben heard from Mr. Gurney, the head of Sandy"s firm, after Sandy"s death, he told to no one but Hannah. The children knew generally, from what Hannah often let fall when she was in a temper, that their mother was a disgrace to them, but they knew no more, and, with the natural instinct of forlorn creatures on the defensive, studiously avoided the subject within the walls of Needham Farm. They might question old "Lias; they would suffer many things rather than question their uncle and aunt.
But David especially had had many secret thoughts he could not put away, of late, about his parents. And to hear his father"s name dropped like this into the night moved the lad strangely. He lay close, listening with all his ears, expecting pa.s.sionately, he knew not what.
But nothing came--or the wind carried it away. When he was rested, Reuben got up and began to move about with the lantern, apparently throwing its light from side to side.
"David! Louie!"
The hoa.r.s.e, weak voice, strained to its utmost pitch, died away on the night wind, and a weird echo came back from the cliffs of the Downfall.
There was no menace in the cry--rather a piteous entreaty. The truant below had a strange momentary impulse to answer--to disclose himself. But it was soon past, and instead, he crept well out of reach of the rays which flashed over the precipitous ground about him. As he did so he noticed the Mermaid"s Pool, gleaming in a pale ray of moonlight, some two hundred feet below. A sudden alarm seized him, lest Reuben should be caught by it, put two and two together and understand.
But Reuben was absorbed in a discomfort, half moral, half superst.i.tious, and nothing else reached the slow brain--which was besides preoccupied by Jim Wigson"s suggestion. After a bit he picked up his stick and went on again. David, eagerly watching, tracked him along the path which follows the ridge, and saw the light pause once more close to the Downfall.
So far as the boy could see, his uncle made a long stay at a point beyond the stream, the bed of which was just discernible, as a sort of paler streak on the darkness.
"Why, that"s about whar th" Edale path cooms in," thought David, wondering. "What ud he think we"d be doin theer?"
Faint sounds came to him in a lull of the wind, as though Reuben were shouting again--shouting many times. Then the light went wavering on, defining in its course the curved ridge of the further moor, till at last it made a long circuit downwards, disappearing for a minute somewhere in the dark bosom of Kinder Low, about midway between earth and sky. David guessed that Uncle Reuben must be searching the smithy. Then it descended rapidly, till finally it vanished behind the hill far below, which was just distinguishable in the cloudy moonshine. Uncle Reuben had gone home.
David drew a long breath. But that patient quest in the dark--the tone of the farmer"s call--that mysterious word _Sandy_, had touched the boy, made him restless. His mood grew a little flat, even a little remorseful. The joy of their great adventure ebbed a little.
However, he climbed down again to Louie, and found a dark elfish figure standing outside their den, and dancing with excitement.
"Wouldn"t yo like to ketch us--wouldn"t yo?--wouldn"t yo?"
screeched the child, beside herself. She too had been watching, had seen the light vanish.
"Yo"ll have t" parish up after yo if yo doan"t howd your tongue,"
said David roughly.
And creeping into their den he relit the lantern. Then he pulled out a watch, borrowed from the same friend who had provided the lantern. Past nine. Two hours and more before they need think of starting downwards for the Pool.
Louie condescended to come in again, and the stone was drawn close.
But how fierce the wind had grown, and how nipping was the air!
David shivered, and looked about for the rugs. He wrapt Louie in the horse-rug, which was heaviest, and tucked the blanket round himself.
"Howd that tight round yo," he commanded, struck with an uneasy sense of responsibility, as he happened to notice how starved she looked, "an goo to sleep if yo want to. I"ll wake yo--I"m gooin to read."
Louie rolled the rug round her chrysalis-like, and then, disdaining the rest of David"s advice, sat bolt upright against the rock, her wide-open eyes staring defiantly at all within their ken.
The minutes went by. David sat close up against the lantern, bitterly cold, but reading voraciously. At last, however, a sharper gust than usual made him look up and turn restive. Louie still sat in the opposite corner as stiffly as before, but over the great staring eyes the lids had just fallen, sorely against their owner"s will; the head was dropping against the rock; the child was fast asleep. It occurred to David she looked odd; the face seemed so grey and white. He instinctively took his own blanket and put it over her. The silence and helplessness of her sleep seemed to appeal to him, to change his mood towards her, for the action was brotherly and tender. Then he pushed the stone aside and crept out on to the moor.
There he stood for a while, with his hands in his pockets, marking time to warm himself. How the wind bit to be sure!--and it would be colder still by dawn.
The pool showed dimly beneath him, and the gruesome hour was stealing on them fast. His heart beat quick. The weirdness and loneliness of the night came home to him more than they had done yet. The old woman dragged to her death, the hooting crowd, the inexorable parson, the struggle in the water, the last gurgling cry--the vision rose before him on the dark with an ever ghastlier plainness than a while ago on the mountain-top. _How_ had "Lias seen her that the sight had changed him so? Did she come to him with her drowned face and floating grey hair--grip him with her cold hands? David, beginning to thrill in good earnest, obstinately filled in the picture with all the horrible detail he could think of, so as to harden himself. Only now he wished with all his heart that Louie were safe at home.
An idea occurred to him. He smiled at it, turned it over, gradually resolved upon it. She would lead him a life afterward, but what matter?--let her!
From the far depths of the unseen valley a sound struck upwards, piercing through the noises of river and wind. It was the clock of Clough End church, tolling eleven.
Well, one could not stand perishing there another hour. He stooped down and crawled in beside Louie. She was sleeping heavily, the added warmth of David"s blanket conducing thereto. He hung over her, watching her breathing with a merry look, which gradually became a broad grin. It was a real shame--she would be just mad when she woke up. But mermaids were all stuff, and Jenny Crum would "skeer" her to death. Just in proportion as the adventure became more awesome and more real did the boy"s better self awake. He grew soft for his sister, while, as he proudly imagined, iron for himself.
He crept in under the blanket carefully so as not to disturb her.
He was too tired and excited to read. He would think the hour out.
So he lay staring at the opposite wall of rock, at its crevices, and creeping ants, at the odd lights and shadows thrown by the lantern, straining his eyes every now and then, that he might be the more sure how wide awake they were.
Louie stretched herself. What was the matter? Where was she? What was that smell? She leant forward on her elbow. The lantern was just going out, and smelt intolerably. A cold grey light was in the little den. What? Where?
A loud wail broke the morning silence, and David, sleeping profoundly, his open mouth just showing above the horse-rug, was roused by a shower of blows from Louie"s fists. He stirred uneasily, tried to escape them by plunging deeper into the folds, but they pursued him vindictively.
"Give ower!" he said at last, striking back at random, and then sitting up he rubbed his eyes. There was Louie sitting opposite to him, crying great tears of rage and pain, now rocking her ankle as if it hurt her, and now dealing cuffs at him.