Chapter Nineteen.The New Horror.They did not know exactly where to go, for the guidance afforded by a sound is very deceptive, but there had been the splash of water, so that the shot must have been from somewhere at the foot of the Toft, down where the meadow land gave place to rough marsh, bog, and reedy water.Dick listened as he ran; but there was no splash now—no sound of footstep.As the lads advanced the dawning light increased, and a startled bird flew out from the bushes, another from a tuft of dry grass; and once more there was thechink—chinkof a blackbird. The day was awakening, and Dick Winthorpe asked himself what the dawn was to show.It was still dark enough to necessitate care, and over the mere as they neared it a low mist hung, completely screening its waters as they vainly attempted to pierce the gloom.Plash, plash through the boggy parts of the mere fringe, for Dick had not paused to follow any track, stumbling among tufts of grass and marsh growth, they hurried on with eager eyes, longing to shout, but afraid, for there was a growing horror upon both the lads of having to be shortly in presence of some terrible scene.They neither of them spoke, but mutually clung together for support, though all the time there was a strange repugnance in Dick’s breast as he now began to realise the strength of the suspicion he entertained.But if they dared not shout, there was some one near at hand ready to utter a lusty cry, which startled them as it rang out of the gloom from away down by the labourers’ cottages and the wheelwright’s.“Ahoy! Hillo!” rang out.“Hillo, Hicky!” yelled Tom. “Here!”“Where away, lads?” came back; and then there was the dull low beat of feet, and they heard the wheelwright shout to his apprentice to follow him.The two little parties joined directly, to stand in the mist all panting and excited, the wheelwright half-dressed, and his bare head rough from contact with the pillow.“Hey, lads,” he cried, “was that you two shouting?”Dick tried to speak, but he could not frame a word.“No; we heard it from somewhere down here,” panted Tom.“I heered it too,” cried Jacob, “and wackened the mester.”“Ay, that’s a true word,” cried Hickathrift. “What does it mean?”“Hicky,” panted Dick in piteous tones, “I don’t know—I’m afraid I—my father’s out here somewhere.”“Hey! The squire?” cried Hickathrift with a curious stare at first one and then the other. “Yow don’t think—”He paused, and Dick replied in a whisper:“Yes, Hicky, I do.”“Here, let’s search about; it’s getting light fast. Now, then,” cried the wheelwright, “yow go that way, Jacob; I’ll go this; and you two lads—”“No, no,” said Dick. “It must be somewhere close by here, near the water. Let’s keep together, please.”“Aw reight!” muttered the wheelwright; and following Dick they went as close to the water’s edge as they could go, and crept along, with the bushes and trees growing more plain to view, and the sky showing one dull orange fleck as the advance guard of the coming glory of the morn.They went along for a couple of hundred yards in one direction, but there was nothing to be seen; then a couple of hundred yards in the other direction, but there was nothing visible there. And as the light grew stronger they sought about them, seeing clearly now that the ghastly figure Dick dreaded to find was nowhere as far as they could make out inshore.“Hillo!” shouted Hickathrift again and again; “squire!”There was no reply, and the chill of horror increased as the feeling that they were searching in vain out and in pressed itself upon all, and they knew that the man they sought must be in the water.“Here, howd hard,” cried Hickathrift. “What a moodle head I am! You, Jacob, run back and let loose owd Grip.”The apprentice ran back as hard as he could, and the group remained in silence till they saw him disappear behind the shed. Then there was a loud burst of barking.Hickathrift whistled, and the great long-legged lurcher came bounding over the rough boggy land, to leap at his master and then stand panting, open-mouthed, eager, and ready to dart anywhere his owner bade.“Here, Grip, lad, find him, then—find him, boy!”The dog uttered one low, growling bark, and then bounded off, hurrying here and there in the wildest way, while the boys watched intently.“Will he find him, Hicky?” said Dick huskily.“Ay, or anyone else,” said the wheelwright, who alternately watched the dog, and swept the surface of the mere wherever the mist allowed.“There! Look at that!” he cried, as, after a minute, the dog settled down to a steady hunt, with his nose close to the ground, and rapidly followed the track lately taken by someone who had passed.“But perhaps he is following our steps!” said Dick excitedly.“Nay, not he. Theer, what did I tell you?” cried Hickathrift as the dog suddenly stopped by the water, opposite to a thick bed of reeds a dozen yards or so from the bank.Dick turned pale; the wheelwright ran down to the edge of the mere; and as the dog stood by the water barking loudly, Hickathrift waded in without hesitation, the boys following, with Grip swimming and snorting at their side, and taking up the chase again as soon as he reached the reeds.It was only a matter of minutes now before the dog had rushed on before them, disappeared in the long growth, and then they heard him barking furiously.“Let me go first, Mester Dick,” said Hickathrift hoarsely. “Nay, don’t, lad.”There was a kindly tone of sympathy in the great fellow’s voice, but Dick did not give way. He splashed on through the reeds, his position having placed him in advance of his companions, and parting the tall growth he uttered a cry of pain.The others joined him directly, and stood for a moment gazing down at where, standing on the very edge of the mere, Dick was holding up his father’s head from where he lay insensible among the reeds, his face white and drawn, his eyes nearly closed, and his hands clenched and stretched out before him.Hickathrift said not a word, but, as in similar cases before, he raised the inanimate form, hung it over his shoulder, and waded back to firm ground.“Hey, Mester Dick,” he said huskily, as he hurried towards his cottage, “I nivver thowt to hev seen a sight like this.”“No, no,” cried Dick; “not there.”“Yes, I’ll tak’ him home to my place,” whispered Hickathrift. “You’d scare your mother to dead. Here, Jacob, lad, don’t stop to knock or ask questions, but go and tak’ squire’s cob, and ride him hard to town for doctor.”“Tell my father as you go by, Jacob,” cried Tom excitedly; and as the apprentice dashed off, Tom’s eyes met those of Dick.“Don’t look so wild and strange, Dick, old chap,” whispered the lad kindly; and he laid a hand upon Dick’s shoulder, but the boy shrank from him with a shudder which the other could not comprehend.Hickathrift shouted to his wife, who had risen and dressed in his absence, and in a short time the squire was lying upon a mattress with Hickathrift eagerly searching for the injury which had laid him low; but when he found it, the wound seemed so small and trifling that he looked wondering up at Dick.“That couldn’t have done it,” he said in a whisper.The wheelwright was wrong. That tiny blue wound in the strong man’s chest had been sufficient to lay him there helpless, and so near death that a feeling of awe fell upon those who watched and waited, and tried to revive the victim of this last outrage.It was a terrible feeling of helplessness that which pervaded the place. There was nothing to do save bathe the wounded man’s brow and moisten his lips with a little of the smuggled spirit with which most of the coast cottages were provided in those distant days. There was no blood to staunch, nothing to excite, nothing to do but wait, wait for the doctor’s coming.Before very long Farmer Tallington arrived, and as he encountered Dick’s eyes fixed upon him he turned very pale, and directly after, when he bent over the squire’s couch and took his hand, the lad saw that he trembled violently.“It’s straänge and horrible—it’s straänge and horrible,” he said: “only yesterday he was like I am: as strong and well as a man can be; while now—Hickathrift, my lad, do you think he’ll die?”The wheelwright shook his head—he could not trust himself to speak; and Dick stood with a sensation of rage gathering in his breast, which made him feel ready to spring at Farmer Tallington’s throat, and accuse him of being his father’s murderer.“The hypocrite—the cowardly hypocrite!” he said to himself; “but we know now, and he shall be punished.”The boy’s anger was fast growing so ungovernable that he was about to fly out and denounce his school-fellow’s father, but just then a hasty step was heard outside, and a familiar voice exclaimed:“Where is my husband?”The next minute Mrs Winthorpe was in the room, wild-eyed and pale, but perfectly collected in her manner and acts.“How long will it be before the doctor can get here?” she said hoarsely, as she passed her arm under the injured man’s neck, and pressed her lips to his white brow.“Hickathrift’s lad went off at a hard gallop,” said Farmer Tallington in a voice full of sympathy. “Please God, Mrs Winthorpe, we’ll save him yet.”Dick uttered a hoarse cry and staggered out of the room, for the man’s hypocrisy maddened him, and he knew that if he stayed he should speak out and say all he knew.As he reached the little garden there was a step behind him, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, another grasped his arm.“I can’t talk and say things, Dicky,” said Tom in a low half-choking voice; “but I want to comfort you. Don’t break down, old fellow. The doctor will save his life.”This from the son of the man whom he believed to have shot his father! and the rage Dick felt against the one seemed to be ready to fall upon the other. But as his eyes met those of his old school-fellow and companion full of sorrowful sympathy, Dick could only grasp Tom’s hands, feeling that he was a true friend, and in no wise answerable for his father’s sins.“Ay, that’s right,” said a low, rough voice. “Nowt like sticking together and helping each other in trouble. Bud don’t you fret, Mester Dick. Squire’s a fine stark man, and the missus has happed him up waärm, and you see the doctor will set him right.”“Thank you, Hicky,” said Dick, calming down; and then he stood thinking and asking himself how he could denounce the father of his old friend and companion as the man who, for some hidden reason of his own, was the plotter and executor of all these outrages.At one moment he felt that he could not do this. At another there was the blank suffering face of his father before his eyes, seeming to ask him to revenge his injuries and to bring a scoundrel to justice.For a time Dick was quite determined; but directly after there came before him the face of poor, kind-hearted Mrs Tallington, who had always treated him with the greatest hospitality, while, as he seemed to look at her eyes pleading upon her husband’s behalf, Tom took his hand and wrung it.“I’m going to stick by you, Dick,” he said; “and you and I are going to find out who did this, and when we do we’ll show him what it is to shoot at people, and burn people’s homesteads, and hough their beasts.”Dick gazed at him wildly. Tom going to help him run his own father down and condemn him by giving evidence when it was all found out! Impossible! Those words of his old companion completely disarmed him for the moment, and to finish his discomfiture, just then Farmer Tallington came out of the cottage looking whiter and more haggard than before.He came to where the wheelwright was standing, and spoke huskily.“I can’t bear it,” he said. “It is too horrible. Might hev been me, and what would my poor lass do? Hickathrift, mun, the villain who does all this must be found out.”“Ay, farmer, but how?”“I don’t know how,” said the farmer, gazing from one to the other. “I on’y know it must be done. If I’d gone on this morning I might have found out something, but I went back.”Dick gazed at him searchingly, but the farmer did not meet his eyes.“I’ve been straänge and fidgety ever since my fire,” continued the farmer; “and it’s med me get out o’ bed o’ nights and look round for fear of another. I was out o’ bed towards morning last night, and as I looked I could see yonder on the mere what seemed to be a lanthorn.”“You saw that?” said Dick involuntarily.“Ay, lad, I saw that,” said the farmer, rubbing his hands together softly; “and first of all I thowt it was a will-o’-the-wisp, but it didn’t go about like one o’ they, and as it went out directly and came again, I thought it was some one wi’ a light.”“What, out on the watter?” said Hickathrift.“Yes, my lad; out on the watter,” said the farmer; “and that med me say to mysen: What’s any one doing wi’ a light out on the watter at this time? and I could on’y think as they wanted it to set fire to some one’s plaäce, and I couldn’t stop abed and think that. So I got up, and went down to the shore, got into my owd punt, and loosed her, and went out torst wheer I’d seen the light.”“And did you see it, mester?” said Hickathrift.“Nay, my lad. I went on and on as quietly as I could go, and round the reed-bed, but all was as quiet as could be.”“Didn’t you see the poont?” said the wheelwright.“What punt?” said Tom sharply.Hickathrift looked confused.“Poont o’ him as hed the light, I meant,” he said hurriedly.“Nay, not a sign of it,” said Farmer Tallington; “and at last I turned back and poled gently home, keeping a sharp look-out and listening all the way, but I niver see nowt nor heered nowt. But if I’d kept out on the waiter I should p’raps have seen and saved my poor owd neighbour.”“You might, mebbe,” said the wheelwright thoughtfully; while, after gazing in the faces of the two men and trying to read the truth, Dick turned away with his suspicions somewhat blunted, to go to his mother’s side, and watch with her till the sound of hoofs on the rough track told that the messenger had returned.
They did not know exactly where to go, for the guidance afforded by a sound is very deceptive, but there had been the splash of water, so that the shot must have been from somewhere at the foot of the Toft, down where the meadow land gave place to rough marsh, bog, and reedy water.
Dick listened as he ran; but there was no splash now—no sound of footstep.
As the lads advanced the dawning light increased, and a startled bird flew out from the bushes, another from a tuft of dry grass; and once more there was thechink—chinkof a blackbird. The day was awakening, and Dick Winthorpe asked himself what the dawn was to show.
It was still dark enough to necessitate care, and over the mere as they neared it a low mist hung, completely screening its waters as they vainly attempted to pierce the gloom.
Plash, plash through the boggy parts of the mere fringe, for Dick had not paused to follow any track, stumbling among tufts of grass and marsh growth, they hurried on with eager eyes, longing to shout, but afraid, for there was a growing horror upon both the lads of having to be shortly in presence of some terrible scene.
They neither of them spoke, but mutually clung together for support, though all the time there was a strange repugnance in Dick’s breast as he now began to realise the strength of the suspicion he entertained.
But if they dared not shout, there was some one near at hand ready to utter a lusty cry, which startled them as it rang out of the gloom from away down by the labourers’ cottages and the wheelwright’s.
“Ahoy! Hillo!” rang out.
“Hillo, Hicky!” yelled Tom. “Here!”
“Where away, lads?” came back; and then there was the dull low beat of feet, and they heard the wheelwright shout to his apprentice to follow him.
The two little parties joined directly, to stand in the mist all panting and excited, the wheelwright half-dressed, and his bare head rough from contact with the pillow.
“Hey, lads,” he cried, “was that you two shouting?”
Dick tried to speak, but he could not frame a word.
“No; we heard it from somewhere down here,” panted Tom.
“I heered it too,” cried Jacob, “and wackened the mester.”
“Ay, that’s a true word,” cried Hickathrift. “What does it mean?”
“Hicky,” panted Dick in piteous tones, “I don’t know—I’m afraid I—my father’s out here somewhere.”
“Hey! The squire?” cried Hickathrift with a curious stare at first one and then the other. “Yow don’t think—”
He paused, and Dick replied in a whisper:
“Yes, Hicky, I do.”
“Here, let’s search about; it’s getting light fast. Now, then,” cried the wheelwright, “yow go that way, Jacob; I’ll go this; and you two lads—”
“No, no,” said Dick. “It must be somewhere close by here, near the water. Let’s keep together, please.”
“Aw reight!” muttered the wheelwright; and following Dick they went as close to the water’s edge as they could go, and crept along, with the bushes and trees growing more plain to view, and the sky showing one dull orange fleck as the advance guard of the coming glory of the morn.
They went along for a couple of hundred yards in one direction, but there was nothing to be seen; then a couple of hundred yards in the other direction, but there was nothing visible there. And as the light grew stronger they sought about them, seeing clearly now that the ghastly figure Dick dreaded to find was nowhere as far as they could make out inshore.
“Hillo!” shouted Hickathrift again and again; “squire!”
There was no reply, and the chill of horror increased as the feeling that they were searching in vain out and in pressed itself upon all, and they knew that the man they sought must be in the water.
“Here, howd hard,” cried Hickathrift. “What a moodle head I am! You, Jacob, run back and let loose owd Grip.”
The apprentice ran back as hard as he could, and the group remained in silence till they saw him disappear behind the shed. Then there was a loud burst of barking.
Hickathrift whistled, and the great long-legged lurcher came bounding over the rough boggy land, to leap at his master and then stand panting, open-mouthed, eager, and ready to dart anywhere his owner bade.
“Here, Grip, lad, find him, then—find him, boy!”
The dog uttered one low, growling bark, and then bounded off, hurrying here and there in the wildest way, while the boys watched intently.
“Will he find him, Hicky?” said Dick huskily.
“Ay, or anyone else,” said the wheelwright, who alternately watched the dog, and swept the surface of the mere wherever the mist allowed.
“There! Look at that!” he cried, as, after a minute, the dog settled down to a steady hunt, with his nose close to the ground, and rapidly followed the track lately taken by someone who had passed.
“But perhaps he is following our steps!” said Dick excitedly.
“Nay, not he. Theer, what did I tell you?” cried Hickathrift as the dog suddenly stopped by the water, opposite to a thick bed of reeds a dozen yards or so from the bank.
Dick turned pale; the wheelwright ran down to the edge of the mere; and as the dog stood by the water barking loudly, Hickathrift waded in without hesitation, the boys following, with Grip swimming and snorting at their side, and taking up the chase again as soon as he reached the reeds.
It was only a matter of minutes now before the dog had rushed on before them, disappeared in the long growth, and then they heard him barking furiously.
“Let me go first, Mester Dick,” said Hickathrift hoarsely. “Nay, don’t, lad.”
There was a kindly tone of sympathy in the great fellow’s voice, but Dick did not give way. He splashed on through the reeds, his position having placed him in advance of his companions, and parting the tall growth he uttered a cry of pain.
The others joined him directly, and stood for a moment gazing down at where, standing on the very edge of the mere, Dick was holding up his father’s head from where he lay insensible among the reeds, his face white and drawn, his eyes nearly closed, and his hands clenched and stretched out before him.
Hickathrift said not a word, but, as in similar cases before, he raised the inanimate form, hung it over his shoulder, and waded back to firm ground.
“Hey, Mester Dick,” he said huskily, as he hurried towards his cottage, “I nivver thowt to hev seen a sight like this.”
“No, no,” cried Dick; “not there.”
“Yes, I’ll tak’ him home to my place,” whispered Hickathrift. “You’d scare your mother to dead. Here, Jacob, lad, don’t stop to knock or ask questions, but go and tak’ squire’s cob, and ride him hard to town for doctor.”
“Tell my father as you go by, Jacob,” cried Tom excitedly; and as the apprentice dashed off, Tom’s eyes met those of Dick.
“Don’t look so wild and strange, Dick, old chap,” whispered the lad kindly; and he laid a hand upon Dick’s shoulder, but the boy shrank from him with a shudder which the other could not comprehend.
Hickathrift shouted to his wife, who had risen and dressed in his absence, and in a short time the squire was lying upon a mattress with Hickathrift eagerly searching for the injury which had laid him low; but when he found it, the wound seemed so small and trifling that he looked wondering up at Dick.
“That couldn’t have done it,” he said in a whisper.
The wheelwright was wrong. That tiny blue wound in the strong man’s chest had been sufficient to lay him there helpless, and so near death that a feeling of awe fell upon those who watched and waited, and tried to revive the victim of this last outrage.
It was a terrible feeling of helplessness that which pervaded the place. There was nothing to do save bathe the wounded man’s brow and moisten his lips with a little of the smuggled spirit with which most of the coast cottages were provided in those distant days. There was no blood to staunch, nothing to excite, nothing to do but wait, wait for the doctor’s coming.
Before very long Farmer Tallington arrived, and as he encountered Dick’s eyes fixed upon him he turned very pale, and directly after, when he bent over the squire’s couch and took his hand, the lad saw that he trembled violently.
“It’s straänge and horrible—it’s straänge and horrible,” he said: “only yesterday he was like I am: as strong and well as a man can be; while now—Hickathrift, my lad, do you think he’ll die?”
The wheelwright shook his head—he could not trust himself to speak; and Dick stood with a sensation of rage gathering in his breast, which made him feel ready to spring at Farmer Tallington’s throat, and accuse him of being his father’s murderer.
“The hypocrite—the cowardly hypocrite!” he said to himself; “but we know now, and he shall be punished.”
The boy’s anger was fast growing so ungovernable that he was about to fly out and denounce his school-fellow’s father, but just then a hasty step was heard outside, and a familiar voice exclaimed:
“Where is my husband?”
The next minute Mrs Winthorpe was in the room, wild-eyed and pale, but perfectly collected in her manner and acts.
“How long will it be before the doctor can get here?” she said hoarsely, as she passed her arm under the injured man’s neck, and pressed her lips to his white brow.
“Hickathrift’s lad went off at a hard gallop,” said Farmer Tallington in a voice full of sympathy. “Please God, Mrs Winthorpe, we’ll save him yet.”
Dick uttered a hoarse cry and staggered out of the room, for the man’s hypocrisy maddened him, and he knew that if he stayed he should speak out and say all he knew.
As he reached the little garden there was a step behind him, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, another grasped his arm.
“I can’t talk and say things, Dicky,” said Tom in a low half-choking voice; “but I want to comfort you. Don’t break down, old fellow. The doctor will save his life.”
This from the son of the man whom he believed to have shot his father! and the rage Dick felt against the one seemed to be ready to fall upon the other. But as his eyes met those of his old school-fellow and companion full of sorrowful sympathy, Dick could only grasp Tom’s hands, feeling that he was a true friend, and in no wise answerable for his father’s sins.
“Ay, that’s right,” said a low, rough voice. “Nowt like sticking together and helping each other in trouble. Bud don’t you fret, Mester Dick. Squire’s a fine stark man, and the missus has happed him up waärm, and you see the doctor will set him right.”
“Thank you, Hicky,” said Dick, calming down; and then he stood thinking and asking himself how he could denounce the father of his old friend and companion as the man who, for some hidden reason of his own, was the plotter and executor of all these outrages.
At one moment he felt that he could not do this. At another there was the blank suffering face of his father before his eyes, seeming to ask him to revenge his injuries and to bring a scoundrel to justice.
For a time Dick was quite determined; but directly after there came before him the face of poor, kind-hearted Mrs Tallington, who had always treated him with the greatest hospitality, while, as he seemed to look at her eyes pleading upon her husband’s behalf, Tom took his hand and wrung it.
“I’m going to stick by you, Dick,” he said; “and you and I are going to find out who did this, and when we do we’ll show him what it is to shoot at people, and burn people’s homesteads, and hough their beasts.”
Dick gazed at him wildly. Tom going to help him run his own father down and condemn him by giving evidence when it was all found out! Impossible! Those words of his old companion completely disarmed him for the moment, and to finish his discomfiture, just then Farmer Tallington came out of the cottage looking whiter and more haggard than before.
He came to where the wheelwright was standing, and spoke huskily.
“I can’t bear it,” he said. “It is too horrible. Might hev been me, and what would my poor lass do? Hickathrift, mun, the villain who does all this must be found out.”
“Ay, farmer, but how?”
“I don’t know how,” said the farmer, gazing from one to the other. “I on’y know it must be done. If I’d gone on this morning I might have found out something, but I went back.”
Dick gazed at him searchingly, but the farmer did not meet his eyes.
“I’ve been straänge and fidgety ever since my fire,” continued the farmer; “and it’s med me get out o’ bed o’ nights and look round for fear of another. I was out o’ bed towards morning last night, and as I looked I could see yonder on the mere what seemed to be a lanthorn.”
“You saw that?” said Dick involuntarily.
“Ay, lad, I saw that,” said the farmer, rubbing his hands together softly; “and first of all I thowt it was a will-o’-the-wisp, but it didn’t go about like one o’ they, and as it went out directly and came again, I thought it was some one wi’ a light.”
“What, out on the watter?” said Hickathrift.
“Yes, my lad; out on the watter,” said the farmer; “and that med me say to mysen: What’s any one doing wi’ a light out on the watter at this time? and I could on’y think as they wanted it to set fire to some one’s plaäce, and I couldn’t stop abed and think that. So I got up, and went down to the shore, got into my owd punt, and loosed her, and went out torst wheer I’d seen the light.”
“And did you see it, mester?” said Hickathrift.
“Nay, my lad. I went on and on as quietly as I could go, and round the reed-bed, but all was as quiet as could be.”
“Didn’t you see the poont?” said the wheelwright.
“What punt?” said Tom sharply.
Hickathrift looked confused.
“Poont o’ him as hed the light, I meant,” he said hurriedly.
“Nay, not a sign of it,” said Farmer Tallington; “and at last I turned back and poled gently home, keeping a sharp look-out and listening all the way, but I niver see nowt nor heered nowt. But if I’d kept out on the waiter I should p’raps have seen and saved my poor owd neighbour.”
“You might, mebbe,” said the wheelwright thoughtfully; while, after gazing in the faces of the two men and trying to read the truth, Dick turned away with his suspicions somewhat blunted, to go to his mother’s side, and watch with her till the sound of hoofs on the rough track told that the messenger had returned.
Chapter Twenty.The Doctor’s Dictum.Dick leaped up and came to the window as soon as he heard the beating of the horse’s hoofs; and to his great joy, as the mounted man turned the corner he saw that it was the doctor, whom he ran down to meet.“Hah, my lad! here is a bad business!” exclaimed the doctor as he dismounted. “Well, come, they cannot say this was your doing. You wouldn’t shoot your own father, eh?”“Oh, pray, come up, sir, and don’t talk,” cried Dick excitedly. “Poor father is dying!”“Oh, no,” said the doctor; “we must not let him die.”“But be quick, sir! You are so long!” cried Dick.“Don’t be impatient, my lad,” said the doctor smiling. “We folks have to be calm and quiet in all we do. Now show me the way.”Dick led him to the room, the doctor beckoning Hickathrift to follow; and as soon as he reached the injured man’s side he quietly sent Mrs Winthorpe and Dick to wait in the next room, retaining the great wheelwright to help him move his patient.The time seemed interminable, and as mother and son sat waiting, every word spoken in the next room sounded like a moan from the injured man. Mrs Winthorpe’s face appeared to be that of a woman ten years older, and her agony was supreme; but like a true wife and tender mother—ah, how little we think of what a mother’s patience and self-denial are when we are young!—she devoted her whole energies to administering comfort to her sorely-tried son.A dozen times over Dick felt that he could not keep the secret that troubled him—that he must tell his mother his suspicions and ask her advice; but so sure as he made up his mind to speak, the fear that he might be wrong troubled him, and he forebore.Then began the whole struggle again, and at last he was nearer than ever to confiding his horrible belief in their neighbour’s treachery, when the doctor suddenly appeared.Dick rose from where he had been kneeling by his mother’s side, and she started from her seat to grasp the doctor’s hand.She did not speak, but her eyes asked the one great question of her heart, and then, as the doctor’s hard sour face softened and he smiled, Mrs Winthorpe uttered a piteous sigh and clasped her hands together in thankfulness to Heaven.“Then he is not very bad, doctor?” cried Dick joyfully.“Yes, my boy, he is very bad indeed, and dangerously wounded,” replied the doctor; “but, please God, I think I can pull him through.”“Tell me—tell me!” faltered Mrs Winthorpe piteously.“It is a painful thing to tell a lady,” said the doctor kindly; “but I will explain. Mrs Winthorpe, he has a terrible wound. The bullet has passed obliquely through his chest; it was just within the skin at the back, and I have successfully extracted it. As far as I can tell there is no important organ injured, but at present I am not quite sure. Still I think I may say he is in no immediate danger.”Mrs Winthorpe could not trust herself to speak, but she looked her thanks and glided toward the other room.“Do not speak to him and do not let him speak,” whispered the doctor. “Everything depends upon keeping him perfectly still, so that nature may not be interrupted in doing her portion of the work.”Mrs Winthorpe bowed her head in acquiescence, and with a promise that he would return later in the day the doctor departed.Dick found, a short time after, that the news had been carried to the works at the drain, where Mr Marston was busy; and no sooner did that gentleman hear of the state of affairs than he hurried over to offer his sympathy to Mrs Winthorpe and Dick.“I little thought that your father was to be a victim,” he said to the latter as soon as they were alone. “I have been trying my hand to fix the guilt upon somebody, but so far I have failed. Come, Dick, you and I have not been very good friends lately, and I must confess that I have been disposed to think you knew something about these outrages.”“Yes, I knew you suspected me, Mr Marston.”“Not suspected you, but that you knew something about them; but I beg your pardon: I am sorry I ever thought such things; and I am sure you will forgive me, for indeed I do not think you know anything of the kind now.”Dick quite started as he gazed in Mr Marston’s face, so strangely that the engineer wondered, and then felt chilled once more and stood without speaking.Mr Marston took a step up and down for a few moments and then turned to Dick again.“Look here, my lad,” he said. “I don’t like for there to be anything between us. I want to be friends with you, for I like you, Richard Winthorpe; but you keep on making yourself appear so guilty that you repel me. Speak to me, Dick, and say out downright, like a man, that you know nothing about this last affair.”Dick looked at him wildly, but remained silent.“Come!” said Mr Marston sternly, and he fixed the lad with his eye; “there has been a dastardly outrage committed and your father nearly murdered. Tell me plainly whether you know whose hand fired the shot.”No answer.“Dick, my good lad, I tell you once more that I do not suspect you—only that you know who was the guilty party.”Still no answer.“It is your duty to speak, boy,” cried Mr Marston angrily. “You are not afraid to speak out?”“I—I don’t know,” said Dick.“Then you confess that you do know who fired at your father?”“I did not confess,” said Dick slowly. “I cannot say. I only think I know.”“Then who was it?”No answer.“Dick, I command you to speak,” cried Mr Marston, catching his arm and holding him tightly.“I don’t know,” said Dick.“You do know, cried Mr Marston angrily, and I will have an answer. No man’s life is safe, and these proceedings must be stopped.”For answer Dick wrested himself free.“I don’t know for certain,” he said determinedly, “and I’m not going to say who it is I suspect, when I may be wrong.”“But if the person suspected is innocent, he can very well prove it. Ah, here is Tom Tallington! Come, Tom, my lad, you can help me here with your old companion.”“No,” cried Dick angrily, “don’t ask him.”“I shall ask him,” said Mr Marston firmly. “Look here, Tom; our friend Dick here either knows or suspects who it was that fired that shot; and if he knows that, he can tell who fired the other shots, and perhaps did all the other mischief.”“Do you know, Dick?” cried Tom excitedly.“I don’t know for certain, I only suspect,” said Dick sadly.“And I want him to speak out, my lad, while he persists in trying to hide it.”“He won’t,” said Tom. “He thinks it is being a bit of a coward to tell tales; but he knows it is right to tell, don’t you, Dick?”“No,” said the latter sternly.“You do, now,” said Tom. “Come, I say, let’s know who it was. Here, shall I call father?”“No, no,” cried Dick excitedly, “and I won’t say a word. I cannot. It is impossible.”“You are a strange lad, Dick Winthorpe,” said the engineer, looking at them curiously.“Oh, but he will speak, Mr Marston! I can get him to,” cried Tom. “Come, Dick, say who it was.”Dick stared at him wildly, for there was something so horrible to him in this boy trying now to make him state what would result in his father’s imprisonment and death, that Tom seemed for the moment in his eyes quite an unnatural young monster at whose presence he was ready to shudder.“How can you be so obstinate!” cried Tom. “You shall tell. Who was it?”Dick turned from him in horror, and would have hurried away, but Mr Marston caught his arm.“Stop a moment, Dick Winthorpe,” he said. “I must have a few words with you before we part. It is plain enough that all these outrages are directed against the persons who are connected with the drainage scheme, and that their lives are in danger. Now I am one of these persons, and to gratify the petty revenge of a set of ignorant prejudiced people who cannot see the good of the work upon which we are engaged, I decline to have myself made a target. I ask you, then, who this was. Will you speak?”Dick shook his head.“Well, then, I am afraid you will be forced to speak. I consider it to be my duty to have these outrages investigated, and to do this I shall write up to town. The man or men who will be sent down will be of a different class to the unfortunate constable who was watching here. Now, come, why not speak?”“Mr Marston!” cried Dick hoarsely.“Yes! Ah, that is better! Now, come, Dick; we began by being friends. Let us be greater friends than ever, as we shall be, I am sure.”“No, no,” cried Dick passionately. “I want to be good friends, but I cannot speak to you. I don’t know anything for certain, I only suspect.”“Then whom do you suspect?”“Yes; who is it?” cried Tom angrily.“Hold your tongue!” said Dick so fiercely that Tom shrank away.“I say you shall speak out,” retorted the lad, recovering himself.“For your father’s sake speak out, my lad,” said Mr Marston.Dick shook his head and turned away, to go back into the wheelwright’s cottage, where, suffering from a pain and anguish of mind to which he had before been a stranger, he sought refuge at his mother’s side, and shared her toil of watching his father as he lay there between life and death.
Dick leaped up and came to the window as soon as he heard the beating of the horse’s hoofs; and to his great joy, as the mounted man turned the corner he saw that it was the doctor, whom he ran down to meet.
“Hah, my lad! here is a bad business!” exclaimed the doctor as he dismounted. “Well, come, they cannot say this was your doing. You wouldn’t shoot your own father, eh?”
“Oh, pray, come up, sir, and don’t talk,” cried Dick excitedly. “Poor father is dying!”
“Oh, no,” said the doctor; “we must not let him die.”
“But be quick, sir! You are so long!” cried Dick.
“Don’t be impatient, my lad,” said the doctor smiling. “We folks have to be calm and quiet in all we do. Now show me the way.”
Dick led him to the room, the doctor beckoning Hickathrift to follow; and as soon as he reached the injured man’s side he quietly sent Mrs Winthorpe and Dick to wait in the next room, retaining the great wheelwright to help him move his patient.
The time seemed interminable, and as mother and son sat waiting, every word spoken in the next room sounded like a moan from the injured man. Mrs Winthorpe’s face appeared to be that of a woman ten years older, and her agony was supreme; but like a true wife and tender mother—ah, how little we think of what a mother’s patience and self-denial are when we are young!—she devoted her whole energies to administering comfort to her sorely-tried son.
A dozen times over Dick felt that he could not keep the secret that troubled him—that he must tell his mother his suspicions and ask her advice; but so sure as he made up his mind to speak, the fear that he might be wrong troubled him, and he forebore.
Then began the whole struggle again, and at last he was nearer than ever to confiding his horrible belief in their neighbour’s treachery, when the doctor suddenly appeared.
Dick rose from where he had been kneeling by his mother’s side, and she started from her seat to grasp the doctor’s hand.
She did not speak, but her eyes asked the one great question of her heart, and then, as the doctor’s hard sour face softened and he smiled, Mrs Winthorpe uttered a piteous sigh and clasped her hands together in thankfulness to Heaven.
“Then he is not very bad, doctor?” cried Dick joyfully.
“Yes, my boy, he is very bad indeed, and dangerously wounded,” replied the doctor; “but, please God, I think I can pull him through.”
“Tell me—tell me!” faltered Mrs Winthorpe piteously.
“It is a painful thing to tell a lady,” said the doctor kindly; “but I will explain. Mrs Winthorpe, he has a terrible wound. The bullet has passed obliquely through his chest; it was just within the skin at the back, and I have successfully extracted it. As far as I can tell there is no important organ injured, but at present I am not quite sure. Still I think I may say he is in no immediate danger.”
Mrs Winthorpe could not trust herself to speak, but she looked her thanks and glided toward the other room.
“Do not speak to him and do not let him speak,” whispered the doctor. “Everything depends upon keeping him perfectly still, so that nature may not be interrupted in doing her portion of the work.”
Mrs Winthorpe bowed her head in acquiescence, and with a promise that he would return later in the day the doctor departed.
Dick found, a short time after, that the news had been carried to the works at the drain, where Mr Marston was busy; and no sooner did that gentleman hear of the state of affairs than he hurried over to offer his sympathy to Mrs Winthorpe and Dick.
“I little thought that your father was to be a victim,” he said to the latter as soon as they were alone. “I have been trying my hand to fix the guilt upon somebody, but so far I have failed. Come, Dick, you and I have not been very good friends lately, and I must confess that I have been disposed to think you knew something about these outrages.”
“Yes, I knew you suspected me, Mr Marston.”
“Not suspected you, but that you knew something about them; but I beg your pardon: I am sorry I ever thought such things; and I am sure you will forgive me, for indeed I do not think you know anything of the kind now.”
Dick quite started as he gazed in Mr Marston’s face, so strangely that the engineer wondered, and then felt chilled once more and stood without speaking.
Mr Marston took a step up and down for a few moments and then turned to Dick again.
“Look here, my lad,” he said. “I don’t like for there to be anything between us. I want to be friends with you, for I like you, Richard Winthorpe; but you keep on making yourself appear so guilty that you repel me. Speak to me, Dick, and say out downright, like a man, that you know nothing about this last affair.”
Dick looked at him wildly, but remained silent.
“Come!” said Mr Marston sternly, and he fixed the lad with his eye; “there has been a dastardly outrage committed and your father nearly murdered. Tell me plainly whether you know whose hand fired the shot.”
No answer.
“Dick, my good lad, I tell you once more that I do not suspect you—only that you know who was the guilty party.”
Still no answer.
“It is your duty to speak, boy,” cried Mr Marston angrily. “You are not afraid to speak out?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Dick.
“Then you confess that you do know who fired at your father?”
“I did not confess,” said Dick slowly. “I cannot say. I only think I know.”
“Then who was it?”
No answer.
“Dick, I command you to speak,” cried Mr Marston, catching his arm and holding him tightly.
“I don’t know,” said Dick.
“You do know, cried Mr Marston angrily, and I will have an answer. No man’s life is safe, and these proceedings must be stopped.”
For answer Dick wrested himself free.
“I don’t know for certain,” he said determinedly, “and I’m not going to say who it is I suspect, when I may be wrong.”
“But if the person suspected is innocent, he can very well prove it. Ah, here is Tom Tallington! Come, Tom, my lad, you can help me here with your old companion.”
“No,” cried Dick angrily, “don’t ask him.”
“I shall ask him,” said Mr Marston firmly. “Look here, Tom; our friend Dick here either knows or suspects who it was that fired that shot; and if he knows that, he can tell who fired the other shots, and perhaps did all the other mischief.”
“Do you know, Dick?” cried Tom excitedly.
“I don’t know for certain, I only suspect,” said Dick sadly.
“And I want him to speak out, my lad, while he persists in trying to hide it.”
“He won’t,” said Tom. “He thinks it is being a bit of a coward to tell tales; but he knows it is right to tell, don’t you, Dick?”
“No,” said the latter sternly.
“You do, now,” said Tom. “Come, I say, let’s know who it was. Here, shall I call father?”
“No, no,” cried Dick excitedly, “and I won’t say a word. I cannot. It is impossible.”
“You are a strange lad, Dick Winthorpe,” said the engineer, looking at them curiously.
“Oh, but he will speak, Mr Marston! I can get him to,” cried Tom. “Come, Dick, say who it was.”
Dick stared at him wildly, for there was something so horrible to him in this boy trying now to make him state what would result in his father’s imprisonment and death, that Tom seemed for the moment in his eyes quite an unnatural young monster at whose presence he was ready to shudder.
“How can you be so obstinate!” cried Tom. “You shall tell. Who was it?”
Dick turned from him in horror, and would have hurried away, but Mr Marston caught his arm.
“Stop a moment, Dick Winthorpe,” he said. “I must have a few words with you before we part. It is plain enough that all these outrages are directed against the persons who are connected with the drainage scheme, and that their lives are in danger. Now I am one of these persons, and to gratify the petty revenge of a set of ignorant prejudiced people who cannot see the good of the work upon which we are engaged, I decline to have myself made a target. I ask you, then, who this was. Will you speak?”
Dick shook his head.
“Well, then, I am afraid you will be forced to speak. I consider it to be my duty to have these outrages investigated, and to do this I shall write up to town. The man or men who will be sent down will be of a different class to the unfortunate constable who was watching here. Now, come, why not speak?”
“Mr Marston!” cried Dick hoarsely.
“Yes! Ah, that is better! Now, come, Dick; we began by being friends. Let us be greater friends than ever, as we shall be, I am sure.”
“No, no,” cried Dick passionately. “I want to be good friends, but I cannot speak to you. I don’t know anything for certain, I only suspect.”
“Then whom do you suspect?”
“Yes; who is it?” cried Tom angrily.
“Hold your tongue!” said Dick so fiercely that Tom shrank away.
“I say you shall speak out,” retorted the lad, recovering himself.
“For your father’s sake speak out, my lad,” said Mr Marston.
Dick shook his head and turned away, to go back into the wheelwright’s cottage, where, suffering from a pain and anguish of mind to which he had before been a stranger, he sought refuge at his mother’s side, and shared her toil of watching his father as he lay there between life and death.
Chapter Twenty One.Trouble Grows.The next fortnight was passed in a state of misery, which made Dick Winthorpe feel as if he had ceased to be a boy, and had suddenly become a grown-up man.He wanted to do what was right. He wished for the man who had shot his father in this cowardly way to be brought to justice; but he was not sure that Farmer Tallington was the guilty man, and he shrank from denouncing the parent of his companion from childhood, and his father’s old friend.Mr Marston came over again and tried him sorely. But the more Dick Winthorpe thought, the more he grew determined that he would not speak unless he felt quite sure.It was one day at the end of the fortnight that Mr Marston tried him again, and Dick told him that his father would soon be able to speak for himself, and till then he would not say a word.Mr Marston left him angrily, feeling bitterly annoyed with the lad, but, in spite of himself, admiring his firmness.Dick stood in the road gazing after him sadly, and was about to retrace his steps to the old house, to which his father had been carefully borne, when, happening to glance in the direction of the track leading to the town, he caught sight of Tom coming along slowly.Dick turned sullenly away, but Tom ran before him.“Stop a minute,” he cried; “let you and me have a talk. I don’t want to be bad friends, Dick.”“Neither do I,” said the latter sadly.“But you keep trying to be.”“No, I do not. You try to make me angry with you every time we meet.”“That’s not true. I want to have you do your duty and tell all you know. Father says you ought, as you know who it was.”“Have you told your father, then?”“Yes, I told him to-day, and he said you ought to do your duty and speak.”“Your father said that?”“Yes: and why don’t you—like a man.”Dick’s brow grew all corrugated as if Black Care were sitting upon the roof of his head and squeezing the skin down into wrinkles.“Come, speak out, and don’t be such a miserable coward. Father says you don’t speak because you are afraid that whoever did it may shoot you.”Dick’s brow grew more puckered than ever.“Now, then, let you and me go over and see Mr Marston and tell him everything at once.”Dick looked at the speaker with a feeling of anger against him for his obstinate perseverance that was almost vicious.“Now, are you coming?”“No, I am not.”“Then I’ve done with you,” cried Tom angrily. “Father says that a lad who knows who attacked his parent in that way, and will not speak out, is a coward and a cur, and that’s what you are, Dick Winthorpe.”“Tom Tallington,” cried Dick, with his eyes flashing, “you are a fool.”“Say that again,” said Tom menacingly.“You are a fool and an idiot, and not worth speaking to again.”Whack!That is the nearest way of spelling the back-handed blow which Tom Tallington delivered in his old school-fellow’s face, while the straightforward blow which was the result of Dick Winthorpe’s fist darting out to the full stretch of his arm sounded like an echo; and the next moment Tom was lying upon the ground.There was no cowardice in Tom Tallington’s nature. Springing up he made at Dick, and the former friends were directly after engaged in delivering furious blows, whose result must have been rather serious for both; but before they had had time to do much mischief, each of the lads was gripped on the shoulder by a giant hand, and they were forced apart, and held beyond striking distance quivering with rage, and each seeing nothing but the adversary at whom he longed to get.“Hey, lads, and I thowt you two was such friends!” cried the herald of peace, who had sung truce in so forcible and convincing a way.“Let go, Hicky! He struck me.”“Yes; let me get at him,” cried Tom. “He knocked me down.”“And I’ll do it again a dozen times,” panted Dick. “Let go, Hicky, I tell you!”“Nay, nay, nay, lads, I wean’t let go, and you sha’n’t neither of you fight any more. I’m ashamed of you, Mester Dick, with your poor father lying theer ’most dead, and the missus a-nigh wherritted to death wi’ trouble.”“But he struck me,” panted Dick.“And I’ll do it again,” cried Tom.“If you do, young Tom Tallington, I’ll just pick you up by the scruff and the breeches and pitch you into the mere, to get out as you may; so now then.”Tom uttered a low growl which was more like that of a dog than a human being; and after an ineffectual attempt to get at Dick, he dragged himself away to kneel down at the first clear pool to bathe his bleeding nose.“Theer, now, I’ll let you go,” said Hickathrift, “and I’m straänge and glad I was i’ time to stop you. Think o’ you two mates falling out and fighting like a couple o’ dogs! Why, I should as soon hev expected to see me and my missus fight. Mester Dick, I’m ’bout ’shamed o’ yow.”“I’m ashamed of myself, Hicky, and I feel as if I was never going to be happy again,” cried Dick.“Nay, nay, lad, don’t talk like that,” said the big wheelwright. “Why, doctor says he’s sewer that he can bring squire reight again, and what more do you want?”“To see the man punished who shot him, Hicky,” cried Dick passionately.“Ay, I’d like to see that, or hev the punishing of him,” said Hickathrift, stretching out a great fist. “It’s one o’ they big shacks (idle scoundrels, from Irishshaughraun) yonder up at the dree-ern. I’m going to find him out yet, and when I do— Theer, go and wesh thy faäce.”Dick was going sadly away when a word from Hickathrift arrested him; and turning, it was to see that the big fellow was looking at him reproachfully, and holding out a hand for him to grasp.“Ay, that’s better, lad,” said the wheelwright smiling. “Good-bye, lad, and don’t feight again!”The result of this encounter was that Dick found himself without a companion, and he went day by day bitterly about thinking how hard it was that he should be suspected and ill-treated for trying to spare Tom the agony of having his father denounced and dragged off to jail.Constables came and made investigations in the loose way of the time; but they discovered nothing, and after a while they departed to do duty elsewhere; but only to come back at the end of a week to re-investigate the state of affairs, for a large low building occupied by about twenty of the drainers was, one windy night, set on fire, and its drowsy occupants had a narrow escape from death.But there was no discovery made, the constables setting it down to accident, saying that the men must have been smoking; and once more the fen was left to its own resources.Mr Winthorpe grew rapidly better after the first fortnight, and Dick watched his convalescence with no little anxiety, for he expected to hear him accuse Farmer Tallington of being his attempted murderer. But Dick had no cause for fear. The squire told Mr Marston that he had seen a light on the mere, and dreading that it might mean an attempt to burn down some barn, he had gone out to watch, and he had just made out the shape of a punt on the water when he saw a flash, felt the shock, and fell helpless and insensible among the reeds.This was as near an account as he could give of the affair, for the injury seemed to have confused him, and he knew little of what had taken place before, nothing of what had since occurred.“But your life has been spared, Mr Winthorpe,” said Marston; “and some day I hope we shall know that your assailant and mine has received his due.”“Ay,” said the squire; “we must find him out, for fear he should spoil our plans, for we are not beaten yet.”“Beaten! no, squire,” said the engineer; “we are getting on faster than ever, and the success of the project is assured.”
The next fortnight was passed in a state of misery, which made Dick Winthorpe feel as if he had ceased to be a boy, and had suddenly become a grown-up man.
He wanted to do what was right. He wished for the man who had shot his father in this cowardly way to be brought to justice; but he was not sure that Farmer Tallington was the guilty man, and he shrank from denouncing the parent of his companion from childhood, and his father’s old friend.
Mr Marston came over again and tried him sorely. But the more Dick Winthorpe thought, the more he grew determined that he would not speak unless he felt quite sure.
It was one day at the end of the fortnight that Mr Marston tried him again, and Dick told him that his father would soon be able to speak for himself, and till then he would not say a word.
Mr Marston left him angrily, feeling bitterly annoyed with the lad, but, in spite of himself, admiring his firmness.
Dick stood in the road gazing after him sadly, and was about to retrace his steps to the old house, to which his father had been carefully borne, when, happening to glance in the direction of the track leading to the town, he caught sight of Tom coming along slowly.
Dick turned sullenly away, but Tom ran before him.
“Stop a minute,” he cried; “let you and me have a talk. I don’t want to be bad friends, Dick.”
“Neither do I,” said the latter sadly.
“But you keep trying to be.”
“No, I do not. You try to make me angry with you every time we meet.”
“That’s not true. I want to have you do your duty and tell all you know. Father says you ought, as you know who it was.”
“Have you told your father, then?”
“Yes, I told him to-day, and he said you ought to do your duty and speak.”
“Your father said that?”
“Yes: and why don’t you—like a man.”
Dick’s brow grew all corrugated as if Black Care were sitting upon the roof of his head and squeezing the skin down into wrinkles.
“Come, speak out, and don’t be such a miserable coward. Father says you don’t speak because you are afraid that whoever did it may shoot you.”
Dick’s brow grew more puckered than ever.
“Now, then, let you and me go over and see Mr Marston and tell him everything at once.”
Dick looked at the speaker with a feeling of anger against him for his obstinate perseverance that was almost vicious.
“Now, are you coming?”
“No, I am not.”
“Then I’ve done with you,” cried Tom angrily. “Father says that a lad who knows who attacked his parent in that way, and will not speak out, is a coward and a cur, and that’s what you are, Dick Winthorpe.”
“Tom Tallington,” cried Dick, with his eyes flashing, “you are a fool.”
“Say that again,” said Tom menacingly.
“You are a fool and an idiot, and not worth speaking to again.”
Whack!
That is the nearest way of spelling the back-handed blow which Tom Tallington delivered in his old school-fellow’s face, while the straightforward blow which was the result of Dick Winthorpe’s fist darting out to the full stretch of his arm sounded like an echo; and the next moment Tom was lying upon the ground.
There was no cowardice in Tom Tallington’s nature. Springing up he made at Dick, and the former friends were directly after engaged in delivering furious blows, whose result must have been rather serious for both; but before they had had time to do much mischief, each of the lads was gripped on the shoulder by a giant hand, and they were forced apart, and held beyond striking distance quivering with rage, and each seeing nothing but the adversary at whom he longed to get.
“Hey, lads, and I thowt you two was such friends!” cried the herald of peace, who had sung truce in so forcible and convincing a way.
“Let go, Hicky! He struck me.”
“Yes; let me get at him,” cried Tom. “He knocked me down.”
“And I’ll do it again a dozen times,” panted Dick. “Let go, Hicky, I tell you!”
“Nay, nay, nay, lads, I wean’t let go, and you sha’n’t neither of you fight any more. I’m ashamed of you, Mester Dick, with your poor father lying theer ’most dead, and the missus a-nigh wherritted to death wi’ trouble.”
“But he struck me,” panted Dick.
“And I’ll do it again,” cried Tom.
“If you do, young Tom Tallington, I’ll just pick you up by the scruff and the breeches and pitch you into the mere, to get out as you may; so now then.”
Tom uttered a low growl which was more like that of a dog than a human being; and after an ineffectual attempt to get at Dick, he dragged himself away to kneel down at the first clear pool to bathe his bleeding nose.
“Theer, now, I’ll let you go,” said Hickathrift, “and I’m straänge and glad I was i’ time to stop you. Think o’ you two mates falling out and fighting like a couple o’ dogs! Why, I should as soon hev expected to see me and my missus fight. Mester Dick, I’m ’bout ’shamed o’ yow.”
“I’m ashamed of myself, Hicky, and I feel as if I was never going to be happy again,” cried Dick.
“Nay, nay, lad, don’t talk like that,” said the big wheelwright. “Why, doctor says he’s sewer that he can bring squire reight again, and what more do you want?”
“To see the man punished who shot him, Hicky,” cried Dick passionately.
“Ay, I’d like to see that, or hev the punishing of him,” said Hickathrift, stretching out a great fist. “It’s one o’ they big shacks (idle scoundrels, from Irishshaughraun) yonder up at the dree-ern. I’m going to find him out yet, and when I do— Theer, go and wesh thy faäce.”
Dick was going sadly away when a word from Hickathrift arrested him; and turning, it was to see that the big fellow was looking at him reproachfully, and holding out a hand for him to grasp.
“Ay, that’s better, lad,” said the wheelwright smiling. “Good-bye, lad, and don’t feight again!”
The result of this encounter was that Dick found himself without a companion, and he went day by day bitterly about thinking how hard it was that he should be suspected and ill-treated for trying to spare Tom the agony of having his father denounced and dragged off to jail.
Constables came and made investigations in the loose way of the time; but they discovered nothing, and after a while they departed to do duty elsewhere; but only to come back at the end of a week to re-investigate the state of affairs, for a large low building occupied by about twenty of the drainers was, one windy night, set on fire, and its drowsy occupants had a narrow escape from death.
But there was no discovery made, the constables setting it down to accident, saying that the men must have been smoking; and once more the fen was left to its own resources.
Mr Winthorpe grew rapidly better after the first fortnight, and Dick watched his convalescence with no little anxiety, for he expected to hear him accuse Farmer Tallington of being his attempted murderer. But Dick had no cause for fear. The squire told Mr Marston that he had seen a light on the mere, and dreading that it might mean an attempt to burn down some barn, he had gone out to watch, and he had just made out the shape of a punt on the water when he saw a flash, felt the shock, and fell helpless and insensible among the reeds.
This was as near an account as he could give of the affair, for the injury seemed to have confused him, and he knew little of what had taken place before, nothing of what had since occurred.
“But your life has been spared, Mr Winthorpe,” said Marston; “and some day I hope we shall know that your assailant and mine has received his due.”
“Ay,” said the squire; “we must find him out, for fear he should spoil our plans, for we are not beaten yet.”
“Beaten! no, squire,” said the engineer; “we are getting on faster than ever, and the success of the project is assured.”
Chapter Twenty Two.After a Space.The time rolled on. The drain-making progressed, and for a while there was no further trouble. Mr Winthorpe improved in health, but always seemed to avoid any allusion to the outrage; and after the constables had been a few times and found out nothing, and the magistrates of the neighbourhood had held consultation, the trouble once more dropped.Dick Winthorpe always lived in apprehension of being examined, and pressed to tell all he knew, but his father never said a word, to his great relief, and the matter died out.“I can’t take any steps about it,” Dick said to himself, “if my father doesn’t;” and there were times when he longed to speak, others when he wished that he could forget everything about the past.“Yow two med it up yet?” Hickathrift used to ask every time he saw Dick; but the answer was always the same— “No.”“Ah, well, you will some day, my lad. It arn’t good for boys to make quarrels last.”There was no more warm friendship with Mr Marston, who, whenever he came over to the Toft, was studiously polite to Dick, treating him as if he were not one whose friendship was worth cultivating, to the lad’s great disgust, though he was too proud to show it; and the result was that Dick’s life at the Toft grew very lonely, and he was driven to seek the companionship of John Warren and his rabbits, and of Dave with his boat, gun, and fishing-tackle.Then all at once there was a change. The outrages, which had ceased for a time, broke out again furiously; and all through the winter there were fires here and there, the very fact of a person, whether farmer or labourer, seeming to favour the making of the drain, being enough to make him receive an unwelcome visit from the party or parties who opposed the scheme.So bad did matters grow that at last people armed and prepared themselves for the struggle which was daily growing more desperate; and at the same time a feeling of suspicion increased so strongly that throughout the fen every man looked upon his neighbour as an enemy.But still the drain grew steadily in spite of the fact that Mr Marston had been shot at twice again, and never went anywhere now without a brace of pistols in his pocket.One bright wintry morning John Warren came in with a long tale of woe, and his arm in a sling.It was the old story. He had been out with his gun to try and get a wild-goose which he had marked down, when, just in the dusk, about half-past four, he was suddenly startled by a shot, and received the contents of a gun in his arm.“But you’d got a gun,” said Hickathrift, who was listening with Dick, while Tom Tallington, who had business at the wheelwright’s that morning, stood hearing all. “Why didst na let him hev it again?”“What’s the use o’ shuting at a sperrit?” grumbled John Warren. “’Sides, I couldn’t see him.”“Tchah! it warn’t a sperrit,” said Hickathrift contemptuously.“Well, I don’t know so much about that,” grumbled John Warren. “If it weern’t a sperrit what was to mak my little dog, Snig, creep down in the bottom of the boat and howl? Yow mark my words: it’s sperrits, that’s what it is; and it’s because o’ that theer dreern; but they needn’t shute at me, for I don’t want dreern made.”“Going over to town to see the doctor, John?” said Dick.“Nay, lad, not I. It’s only a hole in my arm. There arn’t nowt the matter wi’ me. I’ve tied it oop wi’ some wet ’bacco, and it’ll all grow oop again, same as a cooten finger do.”“But someone ought to see it.”“Well, someun has sin it. I showed it to owd Dave, and he said it weer all right. Tchah! what’s the good o’ doctors? Did they cure my ager?”“Well, go up and ask mother to give you some clean linen rag for it.”“Ay,” said the rabbit-trapper with a grim smile, “I’ll do that.”So John Warren went to the Toft, obtained the clean linen rag, but refused to have his wound dressed, and went off again; while the squire knit his brow when he returned soon after, and, taking Dick with him, poled across in the punt to see Dave and make him promise to keep a sharp look-out.A week passed away, and the frost had come in so keenly that the ice promised to bear, and consequent upon this Dick was at the wheelwright’s one evening superintending the finishing up of his pattens, as they called their skates. Hickathrift had ground the blades until they were perfectly sharp at the edges, and had made a new pair of ashen soles for them, into which he had just finished fitting the steel.“There, Mester Dick,” said the bluff fellow with a grin; “that’s a pair o’ pattens as you ought ’most to fly in. Going out in the morning?”“Yes, Hicky, I shall go directly after breakfast.”“Ay, she’ll bear splendid to-morrow, and the ice is as hard and black as it can be. Hello, who’s this? Haw-haw! I thowt you’d want yours done,” he added, as he heard steps coming over the frozen ground, and the jingle of skates knocking together. “It’s young Tom Tallington, Mester Dick. Come, you two ought to mak friends now, and go and hev a good skate to-morrow.”“I’m never going to be friends with Tom Tallington again,” said Dick sternly; but he sighed as he said it.Just then Tom rushed into the workshop. “Here,” he cried, “Dick Winthorpe, come along. I’ve been to the house.”“What do you want?” said Dick coldly.“What do I want! Why, they don’t know!” cried Tom. “Look here!”He caught Dick by the collar, dragged him to the door, and pointed.“Fire!” he cried.“Hey!” cried the wheelwright. “Fire! So it is. But there’s no house or stack out theer.”“Only old Dave’s. Father said he thought it must be his place. Come on, Dick.”“But how are we to get there?” cried Dick, forgetting the feud in the excitement.“How are we to get there! Why, skate.”“Will it be strong enough, Hicky?”“Mebbe for you, lads; but it wouldn’t bear me, and I couldn’t get along the boat nor yet a sled.”Tom had already seated himself, and was putting on his skates, while Dick immediately began to follow suit, with the result that in five minutes both were ready and all past troubles forgotten. The memory of the terrible night when his father was shot did come for a moment to Dick, but the trouble had grown dull, and the excitement of Dave’s place being on fire carried everything before it.“Poor owd Dave!” said Hickathrift, as he gazed over the mere at the glow in the black frosty night. “He’s got off so far. Mebbe it’ll be my turn next. Come back and tell me, lads.”“Yes, yes,” they shouted, as they walked clumsily to the ice edge, Dick first, and as he glided on there was an ominous ringing crack which seemed to run right out with a continuous splitting noise.“Will it bear, Hicky?”“Ay, she’ll bear you, lad, only keep well out, and away from the reeds.”Tom dashed on, and as the wheelwright stood with the group of labourers, who were just beginning to comprehend the new alarm, the two lads went off stroke for stroke over the ringing ice, which cracked now and again but did not yield, save to undulate beneath them, as they kept gathering speed and glided away.Far ahead there was the ruddy glow, showing like a golden patch upon the dark sky, which overhead was almost black, and glittering with the brilliant stars. The ice gleamed, little puffs of white powder rose at every stroke of the skates, and on and on they went, gathering speed till they were gliding over the ringing metallic surface like arrows from a bow, while as soon as the first timidity had passed away they began to feel their feet, and in a few minutes were skating nearly as well as when the ice broke up last.The feud was forgotten, and it had lasted long enough. With a buoyant feeling of excitement, and a sensation of joy increased by the brisk beat of the freezing wind upon their cheeks, the two lads joined hands in a firm grip, kept time together, and sped on as Lincoln and Cambridge boys alone can speed over the ice.Not that they are more clever with their legs than the boys of other counties; but from the fact that skating has always been a favourite pastime with them, and that when others were longing for a bit of bearing ice, and getting it sometimes in a crowded place, the marsh and fen lads had miles of clear bright surface, over which they could career as a swallow flies.Away and away over the open ice, unmarked before by skate-iron and looking black as hardened unpolished steel, stroke for stroke, stroke for stroke, the wind whistling by them, and the ominous cracking forgotten as they dashed on past reed-bed and bog-clump, keeping to the open water where they had so often been by punt.“His reed-stack must be on fire,” panted Dick as they dashed on.“Ay, and his peat-stack and cottage too,” shouted Tom so as to be heard above the ringing of their skates. “Oh, Dick, if I only knew who it was did these things I think I could kill him!”Dick was silent for a minute, for his companion’s words jarred upon him.“How much farther is it?” he said at last.“Good mile and a half,” said Tom; “but it’s fine going. I say, look at the golden smoke. It must be at Dave’s, eh?”“Yes, it’s there, sure enough. Oh, Tom, suppose some one were to burn down the duck ’coy!”“It wouldn’t burn so as to do much harm. Look, there goes a flock of plovers.”They could just catch the gleam of the wings in the dark night, as the great flock, evidently startled by the strange glare, swept by.“I say!” cried Dick, as they dashed on as rapidly as the birds themselves.“What is it?”“Suppose poor Dave—”“Oh, don’t think things like that!” cried Tom with a shudder. “He’d be clever enough to get out. Come along. Look at the sparks.”What Tom called sparks were glowing flakes of fire which floated on, glittering against the black sky, and so furiously was the fire burning that it seemed as if something far more than the hut and stacks of the decoy-man must be ablaze.And now they had to curve off some distance to the right, for they came upon an embayment of the mere, so well sheltered from the icy blast that to have persevered in skating over the very thin ice must have meant serious accident to one, probably to both.For a long time past the ice had been blushing, as it were, with the warm glow from the sky; but now, as they drew nearer and passed a little copse of willows, they glided full into the view of the burning hut and stacks, and found that a bed of dry reeds was burning too. At this point of their journey the cold black ice was lit up, and as they advanced it seemed as if they were about to skim over red-hot glowing steel.“Now, then,” cried Dick excitedly, “a rush—as fast as we can go!”But they could get on at no greater speed, and rather slackened than increased as they drew near to the fire; while a feeling of thankfulness came over both as all at once they were aware of the fact that a tall thin figure was standing apparently with its back to them staring at the glowing fire, against which it stood out like a black silhouette.“Dave, ho!” shouted Dick.The figure turned slowly, and one hand was raised as if to shade the eyes.“Dave, ho!” shouted Tom.“Ay, ay!” shouted back the man; and the next minute the boys glided up to the firm earth and leaped ashore, as their old fishing and trapping friend came slowly to meet them.“How was it, Dave?” cried Dick.“Was it an accident?” cried Tom.“Accident! Just such an accident as folks hev as shoves a burning candle in a corn stack. Just you two slither out yonder straight away, and see if you can see anyone.”“But there can’t be anyone,” said Dick, looking in the direction indicated.“Ice wouldn’t bear, and they couldn’t come in a punt.”“Nay, they coom i’ pattens,” said Dave sharply. “I joost caught a blink of ’em as they went off, and I let ’em hev the whole charge o’ my goon.”“A bullet?” said Tom huskily.“Nay, lad; swan-shot. I’d been out after the wild-geese at the end of the bit o’ reed-bed here, when I see a light wheer there couldn’t be no light, and I roon back and see what they’d done, and let fly at ’em.”“And hit them, Dave?” said Dick.“Nay, lad, I can’t say. I fired and I heered a squeal. Ice wouldn’t bear for me to go and see.”“Come along, Tom,” cried Dick; and they skated away once more, to curve here and there in all directions, till a hail from the island took them back.“Can’t you find ’em?”“No.”“Then they must have got away; but they’ve took some swan-shot wi’ ’em, whoever they be.”“But, Dave, were there two?”“Don’t know, lad. I only see one, and fired sharp. Look ye here,” he continued, pointing to the glowing remains of his hut, “I nivver made no dreerns. They might have left me alone. Now they’ll come back some day and pay me back for that shot. All comes o’ your father makkin dreerns, Mester Dick, just as if we weren’t reight before.”“It’s very, very sad, Dave.”“Ay, bairn, and I feel sadly. Theer’s a whole pound o’ powder gone, and if I’d happened to be happed up i’ my bed instead of out after they geese, I should hev gone wi’ it, or been bont to dead. Why did they want to go meddling wi’ me?”“They’ve been meddling with every one, Dave,” said Tom.“’Cept you two,” grumbled Dave. “Theer was my sheepskin coat and a pair o’ leggin’s and my new boots.”“Were the nets there, Dave?” asked Dick.“Course they weer. Look, dessay that’s them burning now. All my shot too melted down, and my tatoes, and everything I have.”“Where was the dog?”“Over at John Warren’s. Wasn’t well. Nice sort o’ neighbour he is to stop away!”“But he couldn’t come, Dave,” said Tom in remonstrant tones. “The ice wouldn’t bear anyone but us boys.”“Why, I’d ha’ swimmed to him,” growled Dave, “if his place had been afire.”“No you wouldn’t, Dave. You couldn’t when it’s frozen. I say, couldn’t we put anything out?”“Nay, lads. It must bon right away, and then there’ll be a clear place to build again.”“But,” cried Dick, “a bucket or two, and we could do a good deal.”“Boocket’s bont,” said Dave sadly, “and everything else. They might hev left me alone, for I hates the dreerns.”The trio stood watching the fire, which was rapidly going down now for want of something to burn; but as they stood near, their faces scorched, while the cold wind drawn by the rising heat cut by their ears and threatened to stiffen their backs. The reeds and young trees which had been burning were now smoking feebly, and the only place which made any show was the peat-stack, which glowed warmly and kept crumbling down in cream-coloured ash. But when a fire begins to sink it ceases to be exciting, and as the two lads stood there upon their skates, with their faces burning, the tightness of their straps stopped the circulation, and their feet grew cold.“I say, Dave,” said Dick just then, “what’s to be done?”“Build ’em up again. I builded this, and I can build another, lad.”“Yes, but I mean about you. What’s to be done? The ice won’t bear you, and you’ve got no shelter.”The rough fellow shook his head.“Nay, but it wean’t rain, and I can sit close to the fire and keep mysen warm.”“But you ought to have some cover.”“Ay, I ought to hev some cover, and I’ll get my punt ashore, and turn her up, and sit under her.”“And no wraps! Look here, I shall be warm enough skating back. I’ll lend you my coat.”“Nay, nay, lad,” said Dave, with his eyes twinkling, and his face looking less grim. “Keep on thy coat, lad, I wean’t hev it. Thankye, though, all the same, and thou shalt hev a good bit o’ sport for that, Mester Dick. But, theer, you two had best go back.”“But we don’t like leaving you,” said Tom.“Thankye, lads, thankye. Bud nivver yow mind about me. Look at the times I’ve wetched all night in my poont for the wild-geese, and wi’out a fire, eh? Yow both get back home. Wouldn’t bear me to walk wi’ ye to sleep in one of the barns at the Toft, would it?”“I don’t think it would, Dave.”“Nay, it wouldn’t, lad; and I don’t want to get wet, so off with you.”The boys hesitated; but Dave was determined.“Here, give me a hand wi’ my poont,” he said; and going to where it was moored, he took hold of the boat, drew it close in, and then, he on one side, the two lads on the other, they ran it right up ashore, and close to the glowing peat-stack, where, with a good deal of laughter at their clumsiness in skates ashore, the punt was turned over, and Dave propped one side up with a couple of short pieces of wood.“Theer,” he said. “Looks like setting a trap to ketch a big bird. I’m the big bird, and I shall be warm enew faäcing the fire. When it goes out I can tak’ away the sticks and let the poont down and go to sleep. Come and see me again, lads, and bring me a moothful o’ something. Mebbe the ice’ll bear to-morrow.”“We’ll come, Dave, never fear,” said Dick, taking out his knife as he reached the ice, and cleaning the mud off his skates, for the ground was soft near the fire, though hard as iron everywhere else.“I don’t fear, lads,” said Dave smiling, and letting off his watchman-rattle laugh. “It’s a bad job, but not so bad as Farmer Tallington’s stables burning, or squire’s beasts heving theer legs cooten. I’ll soon get oop another house when I’ve been and seen neighbour Hickathrift for some wood. Now, then, off you go, and see who’s best man over the ice.”“One moment, Dave,” cried Dick, checking himself in the act of starting. “It was easy enough to come here with the fire to guide us, but we must know which way to go back.”“Ay, to be sure, lad,” cried Dave eagerly. “You mak’ straight for yon star and yow’ll be right. That star’s reight over the Toft. Now, then—off!”There was a momentary hesitation, and then the boys struck the ice almost at the same time. There was a ringing hissing sound, mingled with a peculiar splitting as if the ice were parting from where they started across the mere to the Toft, and then they were going at a rapidly increasing speed straight for home.
The time rolled on. The drain-making progressed, and for a while there was no further trouble. Mr Winthorpe improved in health, but always seemed to avoid any allusion to the outrage; and after the constables had been a few times and found out nothing, and the magistrates of the neighbourhood had held consultation, the trouble once more dropped.
Dick Winthorpe always lived in apprehension of being examined, and pressed to tell all he knew, but his father never said a word, to his great relief, and the matter died out.
“I can’t take any steps about it,” Dick said to himself, “if my father doesn’t;” and there were times when he longed to speak, others when he wished that he could forget everything about the past.
“Yow two med it up yet?” Hickathrift used to ask every time he saw Dick; but the answer was always the same— “No.”
“Ah, well, you will some day, my lad. It arn’t good for boys to make quarrels last.”
There was no more warm friendship with Mr Marston, who, whenever he came over to the Toft, was studiously polite to Dick, treating him as if he were not one whose friendship was worth cultivating, to the lad’s great disgust, though he was too proud to show it; and the result was that Dick’s life at the Toft grew very lonely, and he was driven to seek the companionship of John Warren and his rabbits, and of Dave with his boat, gun, and fishing-tackle.
Then all at once there was a change. The outrages, which had ceased for a time, broke out again furiously; and all through the winter there were fires here and there, the very fact of a person, whether farmer or labourer, seeming to favour the making of the drain, being enough to make him receive an unwelcome visit from the party or parties who opposed the scheme.
So bad did matters grow that at last people armed and prepared themselves for the struggle which was daily growing more desperate; and at the same time a feeling of suspicion increased so strongly that throughout the fen every man looked upon his neighbour as an enemy.
But still the drain grew steadily in spite of the fact that Mr Marston had been shot at twice again, and never went anywhere now without a brace of pistols in his pocket.
One bright wintry morning John Warren came in with a long tale of woe, and his arm in a sling.
It was the old story. He had been out with his gun to try and get a wild-goose which he had marked down, when, just in the dusk, about half-past four, he was suddenly startled by a shot, and received the contents of a gun in his arm.
“But you’d got a gun,” said Hickathrift, who was listening with Dick, while Tom Tallington, who had business at the wheelwright’s that morning, stood hearing all. “Why didst na let him hev it again?”
“What’s the use o’ shuting at a sperrit?” grumbled John Warren. “’Sides, I couldn’t see him.”
“Tchah! it warn’t a sperrit,” said Hickathrift contemptuously.
“Well, I don’t know so much about that,” grumbled John Warren. “If it weern’t a sperrit what was to mak my little dog, Snig, creep down in the bottom of the boat and howl? Yow mark my words: it’s sperrits, that’s what it is; and it’s because o’ that theer dreern; but they needn’t shute at me, for I don’t want dreern made.”
“Going over to town to see the doctor, John?” said Dick.
“Nay, lad, not I. It’s only a hole in my arm. There arn’t nowt the matter wi’ me. I’ve tied it oop wi’ some wet ’bacco, and it’ll all grow oop again, same as a cooten finger do.”
“But someone ought to see it.”
“Well, someun has sin it. I showed it to owd Dave, and he said it weer all right. Tchah! what’s the good o’ doctors? Did they cure my ager?”
“Well, go up and ask mother to give you some clean linen rag for it.”
“Ay,” said the rabbit-trapper with a grim smile, “I’ll do that.”
So John Warren went to the Toft, obtained the clean linen rag, but refused to have his wound dressed, and went off again; while the squire knit his brow when he returned soon after, and, taking Dick with him, poled across in the punt to see Dave and make him promise to keep a sharp look-out.
A week passed away, and the frost had come in so keenly that the ice promised to bear, and consequent upon this Dick was at the wheelwright’s one evening superintending the finishing up of his pattens, as they called their skates. Hickathrift had ground the blades until they were perfectly sharp at the edges, and had made a new pair of ashen soles for them, into which he had just finished fitting the steel.
“There, Mester Dick,” said the bluff fellow with a grin; “that’s a pair o’ pattens as you ought ’most to fly in. Going out in the morning?”
“Yes, Hicky, I shall go directly after breakfast.”
“Ay, she’ll bear splendid to-morrow, and the ice is as hard and black as it can be. Hello, who’s this? Haw-haw! I thowt you’d want yours done,” he added, as he heard steps coming over the frozen ground, and the jingle of skates knocking together. “It’s young Tom Tallington, Mester Dick. Come, you two ought to mak friends now, and go and hev a good skate to-morrow.”
“I’m never going to be friends with Tom Tallington again,” said Dick sternly; but he sighed as he said it.
Just then Tom rushed into the workshop. “Here,” he cried, “Dick Winthorpe, come along. I’ve been to the house.”
“What do you want?” said Dick coldly.
“What do I want! Why, they don’t know!” cried Tom. “Look here!”
He caught Dick by the collar, dragged him to the door, and pointed.
“Fire!” he cried.
“Hey!” cried the wheelwright. “Fire! So it is. But there’s no house or stack out theer.”
“Only old Dave’s. Father said he thought it must be his place. Come on, Dick.”
“But how are we to get there?” cried Dick, forgetting the feud in the excitement.
“How are we to get there! Why, skate.”
“Will it be strong enough, Hicky?”
“Mebbe for you, lads; but it wouldn’t bear me, and I couldn’t get along the boat nor yet a sled.”
Tom had already seated himself, and was putting on his skates, while Dick immediately began to follow suit, with the result that in five minutes both were ready and all past troubles forgotten. The memory of the terrible night when his father was shot did come for a moment to Dick, but the trouble had grown dull, and the excitement of Dave’s place being on fire carried everything before it.
“Poor owd Dave!” said Hickathrift, as he gazed over the mere at the glow in the black frosty night. “He’s got off so far. Mebbe it’ll be my turn next. Come back and tell me, lads.”
“Yes, yes,” they shouted, as they walked clumsily to the ice edge, Dick first, and as he glided on there was an ominous ringing crack which seemed to run right out with a continuous splitting noise.
“Will it bear, Hicky?”
“Ay, she’ll bear you, lad, only keep well out, and away from the reeds.”
Tom dashed on, and as the wheelwright stood with the group of labourers, who were just beginning to comprehend the new alarm, the two lads went off stroke for stroke over the ringing ice, which cracked now and again but did not yield, save to undulate beneath them, as they kept gathering speed and glided away.
Far ahead there was the ruddy glow, showing like a golden patch upon the dark sky, which overhead was almost black, and glittering with the brilliant stars. The ice gleamed, little puffs of white powder rose at every stroke of the skates, and on and on they went, gathering speed till they were gliding over the ringing metallic surface like arrows from a bow, while as soon as the first timidity had passed away they began to feel their feet, and in a few minutes were skating nearly as well as when the ice broke up last.
The feud was forgotten, and it had lasted long enough. With a buoyant feeling of excitement, and a sensation of joy increased by the brisk beat of the freezing wind upon their cheeks, the two lads joined hands in a firm grip, kept time together, and sped on as Lincoln and Cambridge boys alone can speed over the ice.
Not that they are more clever with their legs than the boys of other counties; but from the fact that skating has always been a favourite pastime with them, and that when others were longing for a bit of bearing ice, and getting it sometimes in a crowded place, the marsh and fen lads had miles of clear bright surface, over which they could career as a swallow flies.
Away and away over the open ice, unmarked before by skate-iron and looking black as hardened unpolished steel, stroke for stroke, stroke for stroke, the wind whistling by them, and the ominous cracking forgotten as they dashed on past reed-bed and bog-clump, keeping to the open water where they had so often been by punt.
“His reed-stack must be on fire,” panted Dick as they dashed on.
“Ay, and his peat-stack and cottage too,” shouted Tom so as to be heard above the ringing of their skates. “Oh, Dick, if I only knew who it was did these things I think I could kill him!”
Dick was silent for a minute, for his companion’s words jarred upon him.
“How much farther is it?” he said at last.
“Good mile and a half,” said Tom; “but it’s fine going. I say, look at the golden smoke. It must be at Dave’s, eh?”
“Yes, it’s there, sure enough. Oh, Tom, suppose some one were to burn down the duck ’coy!”
“It wouldn’t burn so as to do much harm. Look, there goes a flock of plovers.”
They could just catch the gleam of the wings in the dark night, as the great flock, evidently startled by the strange glare, swept by.
“I say!” cried Dick, as they dashed on as rapidly as the birds themselves.
“What is it?”
“Suppose poor Dave—”
“Oh, don’t think things like that!” cried Tom with a shudder. “He’d be clever enough to get out. Come along. Look at the sparks.”
What Tom called sparks were glowing flakes of fire which floated on, glittering against the black sky, and so furiously was the fire burning that it seemed as if something far more than the hut and stacks of the decoy-man must be ablaze.
And now they had to curve off some distance to the right, for they came upon an embayment of the mere, so well sheltered from the icy blast that to have persevered in skating over the very thin ice must have meant serious accident to one, probably to both.
For a long time past the ice had been blushing, as it were, with the warm glow from the sky; but now, as they drew nearer and passed a little copse of willows, they glided full into the view of the burning hut and stacks, and found that a bed of dry reeds was burning too. At this point of their journey the cold black ice was lit up, and as they advanced it seemed as if they were about to skim over red-hot glowing steel.
“Now, then,” cried Dick excitedly, “a rush—as fast as we can go!”
But they could get on at no greater speed, and rather slackened than increased as they drew near to the fire; while a feeling of thankfulness came over both as all at once they were aware of the fact that a tall thin figure was standing apparently with its back to them staring at the glowing fire, against which it stood out like a black silhouette.
“Dave, ho!” shouted Dick.
The figure turned slowly, and one hand was raised as if to shade the eyes.
“Dave, ho!” shouted Tom.
“Ay, ay!” shouted back the man; and the next minute the boys glided up to the firm earth and leaped ashore, as their old fishing and trapping friend came slowly to meet them.
“How was it, Dave?” cried Dick.
“Was it an accident?” cried Tom.
“Accident! Just such an accident as folks hev as shoves a burning candle in a corn stack. Just you two slither out yonder straight away, and see if you can see anyone.”
“But there can’t be anyone,” said Dick, looking in the direction indicated.
“Ice wouldn’t bear, and they couldn’t come in a punt.”
“Nay, they coom i’ pattens,” said Dave sharply. “I joost caught a blink of ’em as they went off, and I let ’em hev the whole charge o’ my goon.”
“A bullet?” said Tom huskily.
“Nay, lad; swan-shot. I’d been out after the wild-geese at the end of the bit o’ reed-bed here, when I see a light wheer there couldn’t be no light, and I roon back and see what they’d done, and let fly at ’em.”
“And hit them, Dave?” said Dick.
“Nay, lad, I can’t say. I fired and I heered a squeal. Ice wouldn’t bear for me to go and see.”
“Come along, Tom,” cried Dick; and they skated away once more, to curve here and there in all directions, till a hail from the island took them back.
“Can’t you find ’em?”
“No.”
“Then they must have got away; but they’ve took some swan-shot wi’ ’em, whoever they be.”
“But, Dave, were there two?”
“Don’t know, lad. I only see one, and fired sharp. Look ye here,” he continued, pointing to the glowing remains of his hut, “I nivver made no dreerns. They might have left me alone. Now they’ll come back some day and pay me back for that shot. All comes o’ your father makkin dreerns, Mester Dick, just as if we weren’t reight before.”
“It’s very, very sad, Dave.”
“Ay, bairn, and I feel sadly. Theer’s a whole pound o’ powder gone, and if I’d happened to be happed up i’ my bed instead of out after they geese, I should hev gone wi’ it, or been bont to dead. Why did they want to go meddling wi’ me?”
“They’ve been meddling with every one, Dave,” said Tom.
“’Cept you two,” grumbled Dave. “Theer was my sheepskin coat and a pair o’ leggin’s and my new boots.”
“Were the nets there, Dave?” asked Dick.
“Course they weer. Look, dessay that’s them burning now. All my shot too melted down, and my tatoes, and everything I have.”
“Where was the dog?”
“Over at John Warren’s. Wasn’t well. Nice sort o’ neighbour he is to stop away!”
“But he couldn’t come, Dave,” said Tom in remonstrant tones. “The ice wouldn’t bear anyone but us boys.”
“Why, I’d ha’ swimmed to him,” growled Dave, “if his place had been afire.”
“No you wouldn’t, Dave. You couldn’t when it’s frozen. I say, couldn’t we put anything out?”
“Nay, lads. It must bon right away, and then there’ll be a clear place to build again.”
“But,” cried Dick, “a bucket or two, and we could do a good deal.”
“Boocket’s bont,” said Dave sadly, “and everything else. They might hev left me alone, for I hates the dreerns.”
The trio stood watching the fire, which was rapidly going down now for want of something to burn; but as they stood near, their faces scorched, while the cold wind drawn by the rising heat cut by their ears and threatened to stiffen their backs. The reeds and young trees which had been burning were now smoking feebly, and the only place which made any show was the peat-stack, which glowed warmly and kept crumbling down in cream-coloured ash. But when a fire begins to sink it ceases to be exciting, and as the two lads stood there upon their skates, with their faces burning, the tightness of their straps stopped the circulation, and their feet grew cold.
“I say, Dave,” said Dick just then, “what’s to be done?”
“Build ’em up again. I builded this, and I can build another, lad.”
“Yes, but I mean about you. What’s to be done? The ice won’t bear you, and you’ve got no shelter.”
The rough fellow shook his head.
“Nay, but it wean’t rain, and I can sit close to the fire and keep mysen warm.”
“But you ought to have some cover.”
“Ay, I ought to hev some cover, and I’ll get my punt ashore, and turn her up, and sit under her.”
“And no wraps! Look here, I shall be warm enough skating back. I’ll lend you my coat.”
“Nay, nay, lad,” said Dave, with his eyes twinkling, and his face looking less grim. “Keep on thy coat, lad, I wean’t hev it. Thankye, though, all the same, and thou shalt hev a good bit o’ sport for that, Mester Dick. But, theer, you two had best go back.”
“But we don’t like leaving you,” said Tom.
“Thankye, lads, thankye. Bud nivver yow mind about me. Look at the times I’ve wetched all night in my poont for the wild-geese, and wi’out a fire, eh? Yow both get back home. Wouldn’t bear me to walk wi’ ye to sleep in one of the barns at the Toft, would it?”
“I don’t think it would, Dave.”
“Nay, it wouldn’t, lad; and I don’t want to get wet, so off with you.”
The boys hesitated; but Dave was determined.
“Here, give me a hand wi’ my poont,” he said; and going to where it was moored, he took hold of the boat, drew it close in, and then, he on one side, the two lads on the other, they ran it right up ashore, and close to the glowing peat-stack, where, with a good deal of laughter at their clumsiness in skates ashore, the punt was turned over, and Dave propped one side up with a couple of short pieces of wood.
“Theer,” he said. “Looks like setting a trap to ketch a big bird. I’m the big bird, and I shall be warm enew faäcing the fire. When it goes out I can tak’ away the sticks and let the poont down and go to sleep. Come and see me again, lads, and bring me a moothful o’ something. Mebbe the ice’ll bear to-morrow.”
“We’ll come, Dave, never fear,” said Dick, taking out his knife as he reached the ice, and cleaning the mud off his skates, for the ground was soft near the fire, though hard as iron everywhere else.
“I don’t fear, lads,” said Dave smiling, and letting off his watchman-rattle laugh. “It’s a bad job, but not so bad as Farmer Tallington’s stables burning, or squire’s beasts heving theer legs cooten. I’ll soon get oop another house when I’ve been and seen neighbour Hickathrift for some wood. Now, then, off you go, and see who’s best man over the ice.”
“One moment, Dave,” cried Dick, checking himself in the act of starting. “It was easy enough to come here with the fire to guide us, but we must know which way to go back.”
“Ay, to be sure, lad,” cried Dave eagerly. “You mak’ straight for yon star and yow’ll be right. That star’s reight over the Toft. Now, then—off!”
There was a momentary hesitation, and then the boys struck the ice almost at the same time. There was a ringing hissing sound, mingled with a peculiar splitting as if the ice were parting from where they started across the mere to the Toft, and then they were going at a rapidly increasing speed straight for home.