She gazed up at him, her breath coming quickly, a scared entreating look on her flushed face.
“No,” he answered gravely to the mute appeal. “I’m not going to offer you money. I’ve been a sinner, Betty, but I’m a gentleman. Only I shall remember, my dear—I shall remember.”
He bent and kissed the warm hand courteously. It trembled against his lips before he released it. Then he turned and walked out of the bar without another word.
And as, a few moments later, the ring of his horse’s hoofs echoed away down the road, the girl ran hurriedly into the little back-parlour, threw herself into a chair, and broke into a passion of crying.
Mr. Tukerode homewards in a very grave and preoccupied frame of mind. Perhaps he was conscious of a peril more nearly threatening his peace than any scheme of truculent knavery. Of the latter he could take every advantage that circumstance permitted him, without risk of self-accusation. The other was a more delicate question to face—a question of such moment that, pondering it, he must temporarily relegate to the background of his thoughts the issues involved in his adventure of the night.
Plainly, it amounted to this—was it to be control or abuse of the indefinite quantity known as a man’s honour?
He was not a coxcomb, or conceited; but he was an experienced worldling, and, as such, he could not pretend to misdeem, in any pretty maid, those premonitory symptoms of a disease of the heart that may be called aptly an “affection.”
Now—except when the stubborn devil in him was baited into cruelty—he was a good-natured and humane enough fellow, with a natural scorn of inflicting upon any other the pain he would himself shrink from enduring. Moreover he had sworn himself to a life of cleanliness and redemption of the past. Thirdly, and most important, did he or did he not seriously contemplate the possibility of a connection with a lady of gentle degree, to whom—if he offered his heart at all—he must make his presentation with washed hands and an unstained conscience?
What problems may not be involved in a demand for straight yes or no where the heart is called upon to answer! But then, what an inextricable problem is the heart itself. Its sympathies are so manifold that, would it be consistent, it must seal its every artery of distribution, and so, in serene isolation, beat self-contained and self-sufficient.
And here, where the brain, with its power of selection, picks out the indubitable course, comes in the heart to reinstate a tender little image that reason has ousted from its niche.
“Oh, Betty, Betty!” groans our gentleman. “I would I had never happened across you, you jade!”
Desperate over his inability to navigate an uncharted sea, he put his thoughts about on a course that promised plainer sailing.
The drugging of last night—what of that?
This of that—that too-eager knavery had reacted upon itself in the sense of, by some impolitic stroke, confirming the suspicions of the very antagonist it had sought secretly to circumvent.
Plainly, the rogues had drugged him to secure his non-interference during another determined attempt upon his house—with what success remained to be seen.
And now at least he was definitely acquainted with his enemies, if not with their object; though this, he could not but conclude, was to acquire possession of Luvaine’s legendary stone, which, for some unaccountable reason, they supposed was hidden away on his premises.
Here his way was clear; his justification for pronounced action obvious and inspiriting. He could feel a legitimate joy in striking at villainy that had recklessly ventured to throw off its disguise.
Thinking these thoughts, he came in sight of his gates, and was surprised to see them flung wide, and the rutted tracks of wheels going up the moss.
He rode in, his horse padding it softly on the thick carpet—rode in and drew rein abruptly with a muttered oath.
There, a little way off amongst the trees, was his henchman in earnest talk with the same gaunt hag he had seen him exchange speech with once before.
Now, he had little opportunity to note them; for, almost as he paused, the two separated, the man going off hurriedly towards the house, and the woman advancing in his own direction with a secret manner of haste.
As she plunged into the drive, she saw him and drew up with a startled jerk—then came slowly on, her eyes full of fear and defiance.
He set his horse across her path and awaited her.
“What do you here, woman?” he demanded sternly, as she stopped over against him.
She drew her thin shawl about her shoulders.
“He—the man,” she muttered, with a sort of fierceness breaking through instinctive deprecation, “does me many a little kindness. I came to see him.”
“And tempt him to dishonest traffic in his master’s goods? That is a double-dealing charity.”
She clinched her hands and her teeth. He saw “You lie” on her lips, though the words were not uttered. But he hardly resented the implication. He knew in his heart he slandered his servant—that he could never bring himself to do the man justice.
For a moment he scanned the seamed face set daringly opposite him. There were traces of a wild, lost beauty furrows of sorrow and want and despair in it to an unprejudiced mind. But that in this instance his was not.
“Harkee, mistress!” he said. “I was watching you two once before when you thought yourselves unobserved. Something then passed from him to you—here, in this drive. Do you deny it?”
“No,” she said.
“Then take warning, and carry your dealing to an open market. I want no secret pilferers about.”
He pulled his rein, nodded at her with set lips, and rode on his way.
Issuing from the drive a scene of animation, unwonted to that dead prospect, met his gaze. A couple of vans were pulled up before the porch, the horses that had drawn them standing apart and nosing in their bags. Men, a half-dozen of them, were busy going to and fro, lugging huge objects swathed in packing sheets into the house, and returning, hotly slouching and empty-handed. Further, under a tree, stood Darda holding a saddle-horse by the bridle; and on the lawn, walking hither and thither in earnest converse, strolled Whimple and the little baronet of “Chatters.”
Now, this latter sight, for all his reasoned conclusions, Mr. Tuke took in with something a scowling displeasure. No doubt the two were long acquainted, relatively as to their different conditions, and had so met and exchanged speech for years before he happened upon the district. None the less, their intimacy at the present juncture annoyed and a little distressed him. He could not be morally confirmed in his mistrust of the servant without questioning thebona fidesof any one to whom the latter appeared to give his confidence.
It was a foolish—indeed, it seemed an outrageous suspicion in face of the comically ingenuous personality of the poor little Sir David. But why the devil couldn’t the man let Whimple alone?
His new friend caught sight of him as he stood drawn up at the outlet of the drive; saluted, and came towards him with an air of the utmost importance and solemnity.
“Tuke,” he said, putting up his hand on the other’s saddle-bow and looking earnestly in his face—“where the deuce have you been?”
“Yes, yes,” he went on, conscious of a certain atmosphere. “It’s all right—it’s no business of mine, of course. Only, you’ve been wanted, my friend.”
“Oh!—by whom?”
“By Whimple, there. The man’s half-wild with fright.”
The other answered with a little contemptuous laugh.
“Oh!” said Sir David, flushing slightly. “We can’t all command courage, you know. You and me may be different; but——”
“Well, well, Blythewood, what’s it all about?”
“I’ll tell you. I rode over early to ask if you’d put up for the Wilton hunt, and found your furniture here unpackin’ and Dennis lookin’ on, like a wamble-cropped sentryman. ‘Hullo, my friend!’ says I, ‘hath Boneless been a-stalkin’ in your bed-chamber that you show the colour of a new sack?’ And, by Gad, Tuke, you ain’t in rosy condition yourself!”
“Never mind me.”
“Well, he was scared; and what d’ye suppose he told me?—that he’d feared an attempt on the house last night on the part of three bodeful ruffians that visited your grounds after dark.”
“Yes—well?”
“You take it coolly, upon my soul. Well—this. He was lookin’ out of one of the upper windows and saw them slinkin’ amongst the trees—three as bloody rogues as ever——”
“Yes, yes, I know. What did they do? What didhedo?”
“Umph! Why he did nothin’; but he kept watch and so did they, waitin’ no doubt for the lights to be extinguished; and presently there came a noise of wheels and up rolled your vans here from Winton. At that they retreated—cursing, for he could hear them—but not far, it seems; for all the time the first cargo was unloadin’, he could catch the white of their faces now and again amongst the shrubs. So, on some pretext or another, he stabled the horses and put up the porters against your comin’, thinkin’—as was right—that our gentlemen would shy at so brave a company. And then from room to room he walked all night; and he saw the rogues come out on the gravel and dance wi’ rage in the moonlight.”
“Why didn’t he take a posse of his bodyguard and ask the scoundrels their business?”
“Oh, come, Tuke! You ask too much of the man—upon my word you do. He ain’t exactly a free agent here, I gather. But don’t this follow queerly on what you told us the other night? And Dennis acquaints me there are signs of their having tried to force an entrance already.”
“Does he? He appears to give you confidences that he withholds from me.”
“Well,” answered Sir David, dryly and a little haughtily, “maybe I invite them more than you do.”
“That is possible, of course. Would it be an abuse of them to specify the nature of this presumed attempt?”
The little baronet took his hand from the saddle, and looked at the other with a puzzled and rather angry expression.
“’Tis round by the north wing, I understand,” said he coldly—“a grating that gives light to some secret hole below the basement,”—and with a brief “Good-day to you!” he turned and walked away.
Mr. Tuke made no attempt to follow and conciliate him. He was in fact worried out of all present geniality by the constant strain upon his faculties engendered of wearying suspicion. While he moved so blind and helpless, a friendship that was curious merely confounded him.
Therefore, instead of succumbing to a natural instinct of good-fellowship, he merely pricked his horse on, and rode round by the further wing of the house.
Hitherto he had taken no concern to examine the nature of the opening that admitted light and air to the “Priest’s Hole.” Now, he had little difficulty in identifying the actual spot, for, in addition to its being below a barred aperture in the house-side, which he felt convinced was that that belonged to the gloomy chamber within, its neighbourhood presented unmistakable signs of some recent trespass.
A massive grating of wrought-iron, sunk deep in the masonry of the wall, which it pierced at a basement depth of five or six feet, looked upon a sunless little area—a mere narrow box of cemented stones; and this, without doubt, was the object he sought. The excavation had been so matted in and overgrown with a generation of bramble and dog-wood and wayfaring tree, that no one might have guessed the pit sunk within the mass, had not a torn opening in the latter, bristling with white splints of branches, led him to investigation, as it led the horseman in the present instance.
He dismounted, and forcing his body through the aperture, came upon the dank twilight well, and looked down.
Then, as his eyes adapted their vision to the gloom, he saw that ineffectual hands had been busy at the grating—filing at it—chipping at the stones in which it was embedded—vainly, in that cabined space, endeavouring to force it from its iron grip.
“H’m!” muttered he, as he rent his way to the daylight once more. “Luck and Mr. Turk are my guardian angels hitherto. I must face this business in sober earnest.”
Walking round to the front again, he saw that Sir David had ridden away, and that Whimple was standing at the porch watching the operations of the men. Waiting until they were alone together for a moment—“Why did you never tell me of that attempt on the ‘Priest’s Hole’?” said he quietly.
Nothing of course in reply, but that same cursed look of distress and muttering of near inaudible evasions.
“Here,” he said in the same tone, “take my horse!”
He walked through the house till he came to a certain dreary stone chamber and to a ring set in the boards. Here he wrenched up the flap, and leapt into the dusky hole beneath.
There was no sign there of the least success having attended the efforts of the baffled rogues. The grating was immovable in its socket, stones and stanchions wedded endurably.
A narrow ledge for a seat projected from one side of the pit. Using this as a stepping-stone, he scrambled out and hurried off to superintend the placing of his furniture, leaving the flap open.
Itwas on the second day after the arrival of the furniture that the surcharged storm, that had so long been lowering over the caretaker’s head, burst in an explosion of thunder that was near attended with tragic consequences.
In the interval Mr. Tuke had been too greatly occupied with other business to give consideration to, or take action in, that little matter of the worthy Mr. Breeds and his far-too-heady wine. Glancing askance, indeed, at the subject with his mind’s eye now and again, he felt a degree of perplexity as to the course it would be anything less than futile for him to pursue; inasmuch as nothing definite in the way of roguery had succeeded his drugging, and it was quite open to the landlord to affirm that a dog-tired guest had fallen sound asleep over his bottle. But for the present, adequate debate of the subject must be adjournedsine die; and, in the meantime, the gentlemen of the “Dog and Duck” were leaving him, to all appearance, peaceably alone.
Now, on that particular morning, he took stock of his newly-equipped and carpeted rooms with a feeling of satisfaction such as a rescinded sentence of exile might have afforded him. A few days more would see the advent of such servants as he had thought himself justified in engaging through his agent; and then his house would be ordered for all immediate purposes, and he himself served and tended somewhat as befitted his condition.
“Delsrop” furnished was a very different living-place to the gusty and melancholy habitation of his hitherto experience; and for the first time since his arrival he was feeling a certain sense of homeliness—shadowy, indeed, but with a faint warmth in it that was a little earnest of comfort to come. Much, of course, remained to do—so much, in fact, that, in moments of depression, he would liken his present accomplishment to putting new wine into old bottles. The grounds were still a wilderness; the out-buildings tottering to their fall; the canker of decay was eaten into the very plaster-epidermis of the house itself. Still, the husk remained splendidly durable—a stubborn fortress from which to direct operations; and in this at least was matter for most sincere self-congratulation.
In the prospect of an established household, he was considerably exercised in his mind as to what course to pursue with Whimple and his overburdening sister. Did he consult his own common-sense, he would get rid of them both without any further humouring of indecision. But to this outright action he could not bring himself, and that from an aggravating sentiment no less than a motive of policy. As to the latter, he must needs hesitate before returning to the enemy their possible confederate, whose weakness lay in his unconsciousness of surveillance. As to the former, inexplicable and irritating as it was, he could not deny even to himself that, for some unaccountable reason, he took a secret interest in the poor creature’s personality—was aware of a perverse desire in his own heart that the man would by some means succeed in disabusing him of the prejudice he had formed against him, and end by becoming his devoted and confidential servant. Against this last wish or emotion, unformulated as it was, he would bitterly rebel; but the germ of it quickened in him nevertheless.
Now, having dined and smoked a pipe of good tobacco, he wandered off into his grounds, easy and ruminative, and gave thought pleasantly to the brighter side of things. Pushing, presently, into the dense shrubbery that skirted the Stockbridge road, he came suddenly upon a little clearing amongst the bushes, in the middle of which was a bricked dome or segment of masonry, something after the shape of an Esquimaux hut, which protruded from the ground and was accessible by way of a low door or trap of rotted wood. Against this last he kicked, driving it open, and was aware of a pit within, deepish, but half-choked with weedy rubbish—a disused ice-house, by every token of shape and situation.
“Mouth of Hades on the dead plains of Enna!” he murmured, with a little self-preening smile over his remembered classics; and he fell a-dreaming, as he strolled away, in that trance of paganism that enwraps many who give licence to their imaginations in silent woods.
“But who shall be my Persephone?” he breathed, and thought of one or other of two most meet for abduction. He felt his arms about—whom? No matter. The broken cellar served his fancy for a spell, and, unguessed by him, was to serve his experience by and by with tougher matter than day-dreams.
Suddenly, issuing from a dank, dumb little track amongst the bushes, he found himself looking over the ruined garden to the rear of the lodge. He jerked to a halt. Amongst the compact weediness of depraved vegetable stuff, thridding the cumbered paths and alleys of straggled fruit trees, moved the girl Darda. She sang to herself in that odd wild voice of hers, the stinging disharmonies of which seemed to flicker up in the flame of her hair. Then, in a moment she had drifted into the gloom of the porch and vanished.
At that the watcher came out into the open, and stepping softly, followed in silent pursuit. He could not have explained what impelled him to it. Only it seemed to him a natural counter-move in that game of secrecy and suspicion he had set his wits to master.
Stealthily he stole down the littered passage—stealthily put foot in the dusk room where the museum was. He might pad it like an Ojibbeway, but she heard him. She heard him and turned, her eyes openingchatoyant.
She was standing near the loaded shelves, fingering something—a round yellow flint-stone, by the look of it—that she had lifted from its place amongst the collection.
“What have you there?” said he, curious and masterful at once.
She did not answer. But she snatched the object to her bosom and glinted at him with adumbrated pupils.
“Let me see it,” he said, advancing a step.
At that she gave out a thin little tale of screams, like the cry of a shot rat, and, retreating into a black corner, hugged her treasure with a frantic closeness.
“It’s not for you!” she cried. “It’s his—Dennis’s. It was thrown through the window to him that night you went a-wooing to ‘Chatters.’”
“Thrown! by whom, you jade?”
“How should I know? The shadows were thick about the house. They cried to get back to their dark hole under the floor against daylight. But he wouldn’t let them, and they stormed and wept. I would have opened the door and given them passage; but he is wise, my wise brother, and he forbade me. ‘They must bid higher first,’ said he.”
It was as if a dark veil fell over the listener’s face.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“They cried to him; but he withdrew, and would give no answer. And they entreated long, till my heart sobbed for them. ‘Let them in, Dennis,’ I prayed. But he said, ‘They must bid higher.’ Then they threw this thing, and it cracked through the lattice; and he crept softly and took it up and read and cast it down again. ‘Make no sound,’ he whispered to me; ‘and they will think we are gone.’ But I went secretly and picked up the stone; and all night long the shadows moaned about the house.”
She screamed again, with a note of fury startled out of terror, for her master had pounced upon her and wrung the treasure from her grasp. She fought with him, clawing and spitting like a cat; but he beat her off, as he would have any wild animal, and rushed out to the light.
Here, in a moment’s gain of time, he looked and read what was roughly scrawled in pencil upon the smooth surface of the stone.
“Half the profits,” were the words—“if you lead us to the Lake of Wine.”
He had space to no more than decipher this when the wild creature was upon him again.
“Stand off!” he cried furiously, backing from her, with a white face. “Stand off! I must have a word with your brother.”
He heard her swift step behind him as he raced up the drive. He might have been conscious of a certain lack of dignity in the situation, had his passion allowed his reason a moment to itself.
It did not. It leapt—a white consuming blaze that seemed to roar the louder with the wind of his going.
For here, at last, he held in his very hand a damning proof of the guilt he had so long suspected. In the fierce triumph of its possession, he forgot caution, policy—everything but the lust to crush under a savage heel the reptile he had warmed and cherished at his hearth. No doubt that little rebellious emotion we wot of was reacting upon itself with a double hate of its own weakness. He writhed to think that he had ever admitted it to his counsels; but his revenge should be proportionate.
An evil chance drove him upon his victim on the very threshold of the hall; and he had him by the throat before the poor wretch could so much as guess his purpose.
“Here, here!” he yelled, holding up the stone. “I have the proof at length. You dog—you currish hypocrite, to be in the league against me!”
The man’s face had gone of a mortal whiteness. He struggled feebly.
“Master!” he gasped.
The other’s fury came to a bestial head. He threw down the stone and struck the poor creature on the mouth.
“Silence!” he shrieked. “I know it all!—I’ve heard all the truth, I tell you. You shall swing for it, by God! You shall——”
Mad to give expression to his ungovernable rage, he flung himself upon the shivering form, and seized and tore it along the passage, while it pleaded to him in hoarse terror, and clutched vainly at whatever projections came in its way.
Suddenly, conscious of his purpose, it gave up a shrill scream, and writhed frantically in his hands.
“No, no!” cried the man. “Not there—not there! Give me time to speak! Oh, my God! I shall go mad of the horror of that place!”
They had struggled to within a few feet of the “Priest’s Hole.” The flap yet remained open as Mr. Tuke had left it.
“You will go in,” panted the latter, beating under his victim by mere furious force of muscle. “You will go in, and lie and rot till I can carry you to Winton Gaol. Down with you!”
In his stumbling wrestle with the half-fainting creature, he twisted about, saw something, and let go his prey for a moment. Whimple fell back as if he were dying, and on the instant the other struck up and caught Darda by the wrist. A thin flash of steel went above their heads, and there was the sound of a knife ringing on the boards. There was no blood-letting; but the moral was as if there had been. The fever of passion in the man was subdued to a worser coldness of cruelty.
“Not yet!” he said, in a low voice, his eyes holding her like evil magnets. “Not yet, you pretty animal!”
In a moment he leapt at her, lifted her light form in his arms, and, clapping his hand over her shrill voluble mouth, bore her to the front of the house, and, rolling her without, closed and bolted the door upon her.
Then he returned with smiling lips to the other.
He lay as he had left him—cowering, exhausted, half-stupid with terror already, it seemed.
Tuke leaned and took the impassive form under the arms. With his foot he shuffled the limp trailing legs over into the pit, and so lowered the body with a single heave. It went down unresistingly, save for a broken moan or two, and sank into a huddled heap at the bottom.
He raised the flap, and stood an instant looking down. There was little motion below him, or sign of life but a weak fitful whimpering.
Feeling as one who stubbornly signs his own soul to the devil, he closed the pit-mouth, secured it, and walked away with his heart thumping. And there rose up to and pursued him a long dreary whine like that of a dog baying the moon.
Itwould seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement. A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another, later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably dictated by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country squire; and, though he subscribed with infinite complacency to the extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby hold his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding to his position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous lord of acres who should exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of neither.
But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed that Miss Angela, in her rustic retirement, made a cloisteral virtue of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-strings in the crowded orchestras of fashion. Certainly she never had a mind to fiddle second, and, possibly, shrunk on that account from the necessity of ever assuming herself out-rivalled in that claim for leadership so passionately advanced by successive strings of townélégantes.
However that may be, her capacity for situations was extreme; her sensitiveness to any least appeal of the emotions a perpetual excuse for what, in a less gifted creature, would have passed for a most engaging inconstancy. Indeed, to thwart her in some pursuit of an ideal, was to feel the full force of the passion that impelled her to the chase.
So, for some nine months of the year, she held at her brother’s house her little feudatory court, and found, in the faithful homage of her squireens, a spring of content so untinged by jealousy, or the necessity of it, as that it seemed the very rejuvenating water of life. There, did she tire of poetry, she smiled upon music in a way to make it almost in tune with itself; did she fall out of touch with Handel, she sickened, as it were, of art, and painted her name with an elegant flourish on the bright margin of the sky; did she weary of Tom, she handed him over for decent burial in a homelier heart, and coquetted with Dick during the whole of a St. Martin’s summer. And for all she did there was the appropriate background of woods and freshets and frisking lambs, that seemed to justify her most erratic courses. For the trees changed month by month, and the freshets swelled to torrents, and the lambs frisked into mutton with fat wool and were shorn.
Now, about the period of Mr. Tuke’s invasion of her fields of romance, she was in her state aurelian; and, bursting its shell, her butterfly fancy lighted on him. Never before had she happened upon so dear a flower for the engagement of her sensibilities. She tested him with her delicate antennæ, and found him full of a rough honey that charmed her palate exceedingly. He had thorns; but with her little nippers she could pinch the tips off these and make them harmless. She fell into a really parlous state, and seemed to learn her womanliness—though she was rising twenty-seven—in a single sweet hour.
His image had dwelt with her ever since. It was with her now, as she stepped over the threshold of “Chatters” in her riding-habit. For she was for a canter with her brother; and secretly she hoped to come acrosshimin the course of it.
Sir David was already in the saddle, and a groom held her horse.
At the very moment she came forth, she heard her brother utter an exclamation, and saw a light bounding figure fling itself towards him and, catching at his saddle-bow, make some appeal to him with a frenzy of gesture. It was the girl Darda, as she saw—hoodless, flushed and dishevelled; and the lady looked on a little amazed, and with a fine attitude of scorn towards a creature who could so forego the ethics of her sex under the stimulus of excitement.
“What is it, Davy?” she said, descending the steps, and coldly ignoring the wild-eyed young woman, who as indifferently returned her contempt with utter disregard of her presence.
Sir David looked perplexed and troubled.
“Hush!” he said to the girl, who still pleaded with him in a low clamour of words.
Darda fell silent; but she looked round on Miss Royston with lowered brows and her white teeth set doggedly.
“Rabbit it!” cried the little baronet in perturbation. “I’m foundered, Angel. What shall I do?”
“We are going for a ride, are we not?”
“Yes. But lookee here. The girl says Tuke accuses her brother of some villainy, and hath shut him up in the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“He can do as he likes with his own, I presume.”
Darda broke into a mad outcry.
“Shame on you!” she screamed—“that can lock your woman’s breast from pity with a key of gold! He’s poor and friendless, or such as you would never dare to speak so!”
“Silence, girl!” said Sir David sternly; but his sister had flushed up a very stormy red.
“The fellow hath no more than his deserts, I’ll warrant,” she said loudly. “It must be ill managing a craven and an idiot.”
Sir David vaulted from his saddle. Miss Angel’s fingers were nervous with her little riding-whip, and her pale eyes glinted like broken flints.
“Have reason, Angel,” he said quickly. “What if Ihavesmall ground to interfere? Dennis is my old friend; and, by cock, I can’t believe him guilty of aught but weakness at the worst. There must be some mistake. At least I can do no harm by seein’ the master.”
Darda caught his hand and kissed it passionately.
“You will let him free!” she cried. “Come, come, come! Every minute maddens him that he lies among the shadows. You don’t know what that is. Put my fine lady there and cure her of the vapours.”
Her fingers crooked with desire to mangle the fair face near her.
“Come!” she shrieked again—“or that devil will have his own. I tried to stab him, but he saw and struck the knife out of my hand.”
Sir David started back.
“Oh!” he cried, with a fallen face. “What’s that? I must ride over in good truth. Follow, you, Darda; and keep those wicked fingers out of the fire.”
Miss Royston stepped forward haughtily. The groom, a passive but greatly interested spectator of this pretty scene, touched his cap and held down his hand for stirrup.
“If you really intend it,” said the lady, making, on a sudden thought, a virtue of inclination, “I will come with you. There may be bad blood fired, where one interferes unwarrantably with the actions of another.”
“I think not,” said Sir David quietly; “if Mr. Tuke is the man I take him to be. But, come, Angel. You may serve as an argument where none of mine would carry.”
She gave a light laugh as she was lifted into her saddle.
“You flatter me, brother,” she said. “I will persuade in the language of flowers, and you by club-law. We will see which hath the better wit.”
She flicked up her horse, and, whether by accident or design, drove it brushing against Darda as she stood near.
The girl sprang back, almost with an oath on her lips.
“Some day, perhaps,” she muttered in her teeth—“some day, perhaps, you shall set your wit against bright steel, mistress, and see which is the sharper.”
She caught sight of Sir David turning in his saddle and beckoning her to follow, and waved to him and cried wildly, “I am coming!”
“To ’a view hulloa!” said the attentive groom, with a grin. “Run un to earth, gal, in the ‘Priest’s Hoal.’”
“Oh, my!” he cried jeeringly, as she struck at him aimlessly in passing and sped on her way.
Mr. Tukesat in his dining-hall, swollen and glowering as a ruffled tom-cat. He had not struck in haste to repent at leisure; but it is true that he was woefully exercised in his mind as to what to do next. The logical sequence of his action, he felt, should be incarceration for his prisoner in Winton Gaol on the strength of an information—his own—laid against him. Certainly. And how should the information be worded? It was at this point he always fell to gnawing his lips, and drumming on the table with his fingers, and glaring at a robin on the window-sill, as if he knew it could furnish the solution if it would only leave off hopping and twittering.
Now, he had done rightly and as he had engaged himself to act. He had bided his time, and struck on the first evidence of guilt. Still, now he came to think it over—with what impartiality he could command—he could not but acknowledge that the proofs might show extremely negative to an unbiased intelligence. For what did they amount to? Crime? No. But the invitation to it.
What would be the value of his solitarypièce de convictionin the eye of the law? A moral inference was too short a rope to hang a man with. He could say only his servant was tempted; but what was to show that it was to his undoing? Moreover, he had not even taken the precaution to retain possession of the condemning stone.
On this last thought, he sprang up and went hastily out into the hall. To and fro he searched; but without result. The flint, with its scrawled hieroglyphics, was gone. He unbolted and threw open the front door, half-expecting to find Darda huddled, accusatory, under the porch, whither he had pushed her near an hour ago. She was not there, nor anywhere about was the stone; and he returned to his lonely hall and his complex self-communings.
He was deep in them, when he heard the sound of hoofs on the gravel outside, and, a moment later, the voice of his friend of “Chatters” pronouncing his name.
“Here!” he cried; and grasped Sir David warmly by the hand as the latter pushed open the room door and entered.
He was unfeignedly glad to see him; the more so, perhaps, from a certain uneasy memory of his somewhat churlish attitude towards the little man when last they had met.
“What brings you over?” he cried gladly. “But you are welcome for any reason.”
“Darda fetched me,” said Sir David, with a little tremor in his voice.
“The devil she did!”
He was scanning the other’s face attentively and inquiringly.
“Well,” he said, “that saves me an explanation. She has told you? I am cursed in the fellow, Blythewood. I find him in league with those ruffians, and what to do with him the Lord knows.”
“Where is he?”
“I have him under bolt and board for the present.”
“In the ‘Priest’s Hole’?”
“Ah! she hath informed you? It serves as a lockhousepro tempore, and until I can hale the rogue before the leet of Winton and procure his committal.”
“How did you force him in there—into that hole, I mean? and he smitten with terror no doubt.”
“Smitten, as you say. He was half-dead with it. He went in like a log.”
“Harkee, Tuke. You must have him out again.”
The other stared.
“I mean it,” said the baronet firmly. “Saints forbid ’tis any concern of mine to interfere, do you elect to hold him fast. But dup the poor wretch in decent quarters, Tuke, and not in a hole ’twere a shame to fling a dog into.”
“I have my own methods and places,” said the lord of “Delsrop,” mighty haughtily. “Is that what you came to say?”
A flush of resentment crimsoned Sir David’s face.
“Yes,” said he; “and some more to a harder purpose.”
On the word he reigned in his anger shortly, and a smile broke from his lips.
“There!” he cried frankly. “I come set on discretion, and this is the result. ’Tis no business of mine, I allow. But I have an old tenderness for the man, Tuke, and it wrings me to think of him maddening down there.”
“I regret the necessity.”
“Is it one? Waiving the question of the ‘Priest’s Hole’—are you so convinced of his guilt?”
“Else would my treatment of him lack a warrant, Sir David Blythewood.”
“Ah! You are offended with me. I can’t help it. I—rabbit it, Tuke! ’twill out, ’twill out. I resent your treatment of the man. You come amongst us, a stranger, and God knows I would be friendly with ye. But ye start on a cross scent here, where an older member of the pack would hunt true, and you would have us all follow your lead. D’ye think I don’t know more about Dennis in twenty year than you have found out in a month, or two or three? I stake my faith you’re misled somewhere, and that the man’s innocent of evil intent, whatever the appearances.”
Mr. Tuke smiled very politely and acidly.
“’Tis always a pleasure to hear a gentleman’s opinions,” said he; “but a fact will knock the most stubborn of them on the head.”
“You mean—the girl quoted some folly o’ writin’ on a stone.”
“Just so. It happens to be a piece of incriminating evidence.”
“May I see it?”
“Really, Sir David, you must take my word. I know of only one course if you must insist upon questioning it.”
“I understand. I shall not be lacking if need comes, believe me. I tell you to your face you are arrogatin’ the rights of the executive, and more, in casting one into that foul pit on a whisper of suspicion. There are constables, sir; and a Justice of the Peace within a couple of miles of your door, and your proper course was to lay an information with him.”
“And see my bird fly meanwhile?”
“You could detain him; but not there.”
“I see my mistake, then. ’Twas the best bedroom should have been put at his service, and the window closed from draughts.”
Sir David turned to go with considerable dignity.
“Mr. Tuke,” he said over his shoulder, “I stake my reputation on the man’s honesty, and I say you are treating him vilely and inhumanly. I shall have the honour of sendin’ a friend to you.”
The other bowed grimly, and was advancing to show his visitor out, when both gentlemen were aware of an apparition in the doorway, standing white and rebukeful, with clasped hands.
“Fie, Angel!” cried the baronet. “You’ve been listening.”
Whether to cover her confusion at the charge, or to top the situation appropriately, Miss Angela at this flung herself down into the room and on to her brother’s breast.
“Davy, Davy!” she cried in an anguished voice, “you’re not going to fight?” And he answered fretfully: “Get up! You’re squashin’ my shirt-frill.”
Mr. Tuke came forward gallantly. The girl had stepped back with an air of frightened indecision. With one hand she adjusted a tumbled curl; the other she held out as if for an examination by Love the doctor.
Her knight assumed therôle, and, bending, kissed the little active pulse.
“You have been day-dreaming,” he said. “Your brother and I are great friends.”
She looked up at him chidingly.
“Mr. Tuke!” she implored. Then said she: “If you are great friends, take one another’s hands.”
The two glanced each at each comically; but neither moved.
“There!” she cried. “Is it for you to deceive a woman? You were going to fight; and what about?”
“Not you, my dear,” said Sir David.
“Fie!” she said, blushing. “’Tis never gentlewomen that set gallants by the ears. I would take it nohonour, brother, to call yours in question.”
The two had nothing to say.
“I demand to know!” she cried imperiously, stamping her foot.
“Madam,” stuttered Mr. Tuke—“it—it merely turns on a difference of opinion.”
She courtesied to him very prettily.
“The lion and the bear,” she said, “were e’en glad to lie down and take breath; when by comes a fox and seizes the prey they were too exhausted to dispute him the possession of. Doth the difference of opinion turn on one imprisoned hard by? Here enters the fox, good gentlemen, and offers herself an arbitrator.”
She stepped up to the master of the house and held out her palm.
“It is like a little cradle for a cupid,” he said.
“Nonsense, sir. I want the key of your dungeon. Have I not earned it?”
He laughed.
“There is none,” he said; “but a bolt in the floor.”
“May I shoot it back?”
“’Twould bruise your little fingers wofully.”
“But I have a heel, sir—that can kick against the pricks, I must add; or my gentle brother will say it for me.”
Mr. Tuke spoke more seriously.
“Well,” said he, “I leave the issue in your hands. I am loth to release the fellow. He hath conspired against me, I think and believe, and hath no more than his deserts. But, after all, it is a little thing if it please you; and I will not even hold you responsible for his safe custody.”
“Hold me!” cried Sir David eagerly; and he bent and whispered in his sister’s ear: “Thanks, Angel; you were right—you have the better wit.”
The girl was turning radiantly to her cavalier, when there came the sound of quick breathing at the door; and there stood Darda, her hand to her panting side, her face set in an expression of bitter resentment.
“Her!” she gasped, pointing at Miss Royston—“her, to plead for him and take the credit, to feed her beastly vanity withal? She shan’t—I’ll tear her wi’ my nails first.”
Tuke stood at watch.
“Release the man, if you will, Miss Royston,” he said. “Your brother will conduct and assist you. I must stay and look after this pretty member of my household.”
As he spoke, the mad creature sprung forwards; but he was quick and caught her in his arms, where she writhed, screaming.
“Make haste,” he said—“and is it not an enviablerôleto be a keeper of wild beasts?”
Sir David hurried his sister from the room. She threw her knight a very grateful rose of gratitude over her shoulder as she went.
As they passed out, Tuke tightened his grip, almost cruelly, on the struggling girl. Suddenly she fell passive in his hands. He looked down, and she up at him, her face running with tears.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said, with a catching sob. “I will be quiet.”
“Will you give me your word not to stir from here till I bid you?”
“Yes,” she answered, faint and pathetic.
“And not to touch the lady when she returns?”
“Yes.”
All in a moment she sank down at his feet, crying as if her heart were broken.
“He will see an angel in her,” she moaned; “and will love her for releasing him.”
Atbreakfast the next morning Darda waited upon her master, with swollen eyes and a very sullen manner of attention. He was in a strange mood himself, compound of perplexity and exaltation. In the girl’s piteous acknowledgment of his mastery over her, he had warmed to a toleration of her foibles that was almost a regard for her as something a possession of his own. He could secretly applaud that loyalty to her brother, when—after venting itself in rebellion against his own mandates—it sunk from arrogance to a heart-broken appeal to his mercy. Having subdued, he could be gentle with her. Moreover, reason resuming a certain sway over his passions, he felt he had acted hastily in that little question of the “Priest’s Hole.”
But, there was a third and very engaging side to his meditations—a thought that, by stooping his stiff neck to the thread of a little glossy sandal, he had tacitly pronounced himself in humble subjection to the owner thereof; in fact, that by submitting Miss Royston as his proxy of grace, he had indirectly suggested, in thin outline, a declaration to her.
His perplexity was for the brother, with whom matters stood as on the first entrance of Miss Angel; and with regard to whose threatenedaffaire d’honneur, no hint of apology had issued from either side. Assuredly he could not stand up to the manling and seek to let blood that was of a common source with that of his demi-goddess. As surely, for all his tender respect for that same heavenly ichor, he was not going to lend himself to a solitary peppering from motives of delicacy. But, who was to make the first advances?
He preferred putting this on one side, that he might obtain the better mental view of a picture that stuck very agreeably in his memory. This was of Angela, all flushed and softened, bending down to him from her horse as she sat mounted for her departure.
“He is very ill and overcome—the poor servant,” she had said. “Be gentle with him for my sake.”
And he had kissed her gloved hand, and taken rash oath that her whim should be his law. And beyond this, I will swear, he never reflected that she had made nothing of the presumed villainy of the man, as it affected his master’s safety, or that she had asked him, Robert Tuke, to take care ofhimselffor her sake.
He came out of luminous retrospection to find his maid’s eyes fixed upon him with intently mournful regard.
“Come here, Darda,” said he.
The girl obeyed at once; and stood mutely at his side.
“Your brother remains in bed, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Is he ill, or merely shamming?”
“He is broken down—broken down and very ill.”
She spoke in a low troubled voice—so low, that her master could barely distinguish the words. He shifted his position, so as to meet her full face. Her eyes answered the inquiry of his with some sad, crippled defiance.
“Darda,” he said, “you tried to kill me, you know. That was stupid and wicked; for only great trouble could have come to you both had you succeeded. But, I forgive you; for you struck in passion and out of your love for that other. Now, tell me—you saw the stone; and was I not justified in putting him there on the strength of it?”
“It would have killed him—the shadows would have killed him in a little time.”
“Ah! we men are made of tougher clay.”
“Not he—no, not he.”
“He conspired against me.”
“It is a lie. He never did.”
“But the stone says so.”
“Then it lies. Ask him. He will tell you the truth.”
“I have it in my mind to do so. I will go now.”
He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Halfway he turned and came back to the girl again.
“I have no wish to be harsh with either of you,” he said gently. “Could I convince myself you were faithful to my interests, I could prove, I think, a generous master.”
He took her by the chin, looked in her eyes earnestly a moment, and went from the room.
She stood a full minute, upright and rigid as he had left her. Then suddenly the tears were rolling down her passive face.
She murmured some inaudible words, bent and, with a passionate forlorn gesture, kissed the back of the chair on which he had been seated; and so flung herself down against it, and, twisting her arms about her head, remained quite still.
In the meantime Mr. Tuke was ascending the stairs to a little room in the north wing. He moved pre-occupied, with a certain pulse of embarrassment fluttering in his breast; and tapped on the door he sought, when he reached it, half-apologetically.
There might have been an answer from within—the mere shadow of a broken murmur. Without more ado he turned the handle and entered.
A figure startled up on the truckle-bed and gazed at him with terrified eyes. It was ghastly with the pallor of tortured nerves; and of a sudden it turned, staring over its shoulder, and clutched frantically at the headboard.
“Oh, God!” it whispered. “Not again. I can’t bear it!”
The implied deadly reproach; the conviction driven home that he, a humane man by nature, had in one gust of passion caused this mortal wreck and disaster, pierced the intruder’s heart with a keen blade of remorse. He stood where he had stopped.
“Whimple,” he said gently, “you need fear no more violence. If I meditated you such, I could not be guilty of the inhumanity in your present state.”
Something in his tone or his expression reassured the poor terrified creature. Gradually he loosened his hold of the bedhead, and, turning, sat up on his pillow.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
“I want to know one thing. I want to have a direct answer to a simple question. Are you conspiring against me?”
“Before God, no.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then said Mr. Tuke:
“Representations have been made to me. I own I acted with unconsidered haste. If I have wronged you, I am sorry. Swear to me that your part in the business of that stone was an unwitting one—that you are blameless, and I will believe you and ask your pardon.”
Suddenly the eyes of the weak fellow on the bed filled with tears.
“Sir! sir!” he cried in a full voice. “Oh! if you will only be good to me!—you will—I can see it—I can——”
The other saw him about to fling himself out of bed, and forestalled the act by stepping hastily up to him. Whimple seized his hand in a fervid clasp and looked up in his face.
“I swear it!” he said, half-choking. “From first to last, however the villains tempted me, I gave them no answer. I never knew the girl had got the stone, or that you would think to read my baseness in it. I have desired so earnestly to serve you faithfully from your first coming—to win into your favour and your confidence. But I saw you would never let me—that the curse of my inheritance was on me for ever and ever.”
“What inheritance, my poor fellow?”
The servant had bowed his head; but he looked up eagerly upon hearing the gentle tones.
“May I tell you?—no, not that. But, if you will let me—I have much to say that I have never dared to say yet. I am a coward and I dare so little. Perhaps living in the shadow of this haunted place has wrought upon and unnerved me. But now, if you will let me—I have so longed to ask your leave—to lean humbly upon your boldness and your strength and learn, if I could, to be a man at last.”
Tuke held up a warning finger.
“Ah, no!” said the other. “I am not exciting myself into a fever. Master, if you only knew how I have sickened with the desire to unburden myself to you! But I dared not; and I saw the suspicion and distrust grow in your eyes, and then I dared less and less.”
“Tell me now what it is you have wished to say.”
“Will you let me? Will you be content to take a humble servant’s word for the truth of what he states, when at the same time he implores you not to force him answer where he fain would be silent?”
“A thundering preface. Go on, my friend. I believe that what you do elect to tell me will be God’s truth.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes! Sir, I would ask you—do you know—did you ever hear who was the last tenant of ‘Delsrop’?”
“I have heard. ’Twas one Turk; some dull saturnine fellow that met an unchancy fate.”
“God help him! By such a name was he known. He took me into his employment here scarce a month before he was murdered.”
“The deuce he did.”
“Oh, sir! ’twas the first of my misdirected attitude towards you that I dreaded you would cast me forth did you learn my last service had been with a highwayman.”
“A highwayman!”
“He was indeed, were the truth confessed; as wicked and notorious an outlaw as ever hoodwinked the justices; and his name Cutwater.”
“Cutwater? Good heavens! Surely a past generation was familiar with it?”
“Well, I fear. This was the man—come hither to live on the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, and so to his dreadful fate. Mr. Tuke, he died—God pity him!—according to his deserts; but he left a terrible heritage of evil.”
The listener sat half-bewildered by the revelation. The little cloud that had once before gathered about his father’s memory, broadened and grew darker. From a thief of the road, then, had he passed on this pregnant estate to his son. Haunted in truth—perhaps as the price of blood, and the earnest of deeds too foul for mention.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“Once,” continued the servant in a low, fearful voice, “men came to the house, while I was there. He forced me to be present; and there followed a dreadful scene. The worst of them—bloody Jack Fern—was spokesman. Him you have seen, sir.”
“Have I? Aye, aye. I note the rascal’s white hair.”
“Yes, it is he. It seemed my master, the highwayman, held a great stone of value that they all claimed a share in. ’Twas called, as you will know, the Lake of Wine.”
“The plot opens out.”
“He denied them, with oaths of fury. They had been paid their price like any other clerks of office. They swore the stone was hid somewhere in the house and they would have it out. He barred the door and they made at him. It was numbers only that emboldened them, for he was bitter feared of all and a devil in strength and resource. He caught the first of them—oh, my God! I fall sick to think of it now—he was a blythe young fellow—and broke his neck across his knee. For years the snap and the cough sounded in my dreams.”
“Well, well. It was horrible, as you say.”
“At that, they all drew back, cowed as whipped dogs. I was half-fainting, and can remember little more. I was only a lad of eighteen at the time, and nerveless even then. But I know that they went carrying away their dead; andthatthey buried somewhere in the grounds. I have never dared to think where. Sir, it was only a day or two after that my master disappeared, and in the meantime I thought myself like to die, and fled upon his mere approach. But, on the night of his murder, they all came back—while he was swinging on the downs—and they forced entrance to the house. By Heaven’s mercy I escaped and hid myself in the woods. There I lay in hunger and wretchedness for days; till, desperate with starvation, I stole back for food. Then I saw the place ransacked and overturned—much as ’twas when you first came—and Mr. Creel taking inventory of the ruin. So ’twas evident a mad search had been conducted; but fruitless, as afterwards appeared.”
“A moment, my friend. I must needs marvel here a little. Why did you not quit Mr. Cutwater’s service when you were informed of Mr. Turk’s real character?”
Whimple slunk back against the bed-head, and put his hands before his face.
“And why did the gentleman take you of all people into his confidence?”
There was no reply.
“Well,” said Tuke, “I perceive this is a point you are sensitive of. Leave it unanswered, then.”
The man looked up gratefully.
“If you will only rest content, sir, with this—that he desired to wean me from honest courses, which failing, he pursued me with all the hatred of his heart.”
“A piece of unconscionable villainy. And had he taken you from other honest employ for the purpose?”
“It was so, sir. I was drudge hitherto in a lads’ school in old Melcombe Regis by the sea.”
“Ah!—well, you happened on Mr. Creel, and——”
“Heaven favour the good gentleman. How he had the news I know not. But so, it seemed, he represented the succeeding owner of ‘Delsrop.’ Sir, I crept back for food. Though the place was my horror and my despair, I had no stomach, feckless creature that I was, to force a living elsewhere. I crept back, and something drove me to tell Mr. Creel my whole unhappy tale. And he believed and pitied me, and put me in charge of the house that had been my bane and my prison. And here have I dwelt ever since; at first in great terror that the men would return, but gradually learning a sad serenity as the years passed and nought occurred to discomfort me.”
“And how would you account for your immunity from further trouble?”
“Ah!—twas e’en that they durst not return to the scene of their crime while yet the hue was up. And so, maybe, with such villains, one came to be hanged and another transported, till all were gone—all but him they called bloody Jack Fern, who hath reappeared after twenty peaceful years, to renew the search.”
“But the others—his present confederates?”
“They are new to me. He must have fellow-rogues, be sure, to whom he will confide—not like that other whom they murdered, who was of those few giants of crime that can be a tower of strength to themselves.”
“Why, my good soul I could swear to a note of enthusiasm in your voice.”
“Oh, sir! ’tis nothing but the natural homage of the weak to the strong; such as I would fain pay to my new master, would he let me.”
“No flattery. And so Mr. Fern turned up again?”
“It was the very day before your arrival that I first saw him. The thatch of his white hairs might not deceive me. And I thought I should ha’ died. After all those years! And the place gone to ruin in that long space, and only I its keeper. For this the fearful man had found out; but not of your coming, that should upset his plans—else had I been likely stiff by this time and rotting underground in some secret hole.”
“And he sought to bribe you?”
“He hath wrought upon me with menaces and promise of reward either to reveal the stone’s hiding-place—which he misdoubts I wot not of—or to give him secret search-warrant during your absences.”
“Yet I must wonder how he ventured to assume your infidelity, nor dreaded you would acquaint me of all.”
“Ah, sir! had he not known me in the pay of that other, his master? the which he used to threaten me, never doubting my old complicity.”
“And all this you have resisted, good fellow, with your heart choking in your mouth?”
“I have so desired—indeed, I have so desired, sir, to be thought clean and honest; and when your dislike fell upon me, I despaired of convincing you how I was no partner to any roguery; and the hopelessness of explaining wrought upon me till I half seemed to myself the very distrustful knave of your suspicions.”
“It is changed—it is all changed. We will circumvent the rascals, and net them in the toils of their own weaving.”
The servant bent forward, his fevered eyes sparkling.
“Such dear confidence as I have sickened for!” he cried. “To look upon your face, and see the bold light break from it, and know I am trusted and believed in!”
“That shall be so, Dennis. Now, one thing, I mind me, you have made no mention of—your sister.”
“She was brought to me, sir, the first year of my care-keeping, and here, by Mr. Creel’s permission, she remained.”
“Brought to you? Whence, and by Whom?”
The answer was near inaudible:
“By a woman that juggled in a travelling show. They had thought to use the mite to a like trade, but her wits ran crooked with their wants, and they were glad to be quit of an encumbrance. She was a natural from the first—a queer, wild midget that was for ever wandering by down and fell and storing, like a magpie, her pitiful wreck of treasures. She was but a snip of five or so when she brought that home—that home—oh, sir! the horrible gallows-tree, that I never dared within eyeshot of, but would walk a mile to avoid.”
Once more a pause fell.
“And so you have told me all?” said Mr. Tuke by and by.
Whimple’s colour heightened; but he was silent.
“All that is material, I mean. ’Twill serve, ’twill serve; and the rest go hang. Now, I have wronged you, Dennis, and we shall e’en be friends according to our positions.”
The man fell into thanks, with a broken voice.
“Nay,” said the other; “for all my strength you flatter, I can ill afford to walk my difficult path without support. And, tell me—you have no least knowledge or surmise of where this mighty gem lies hid?”
“I know no more, by my honour, sir, than bloody Jack himself—or whether, indeed, the fact of its existence be not a bug of evil men’s fancy.”
“ThatIcan answer; for I have heard from whom the jewel was stole in the first instance. And now, Mr. Dennis Whimple, I must ask if you relate all this for my private ear; for I must inform you the interests of another are gravely compromised in the matter.”
“Ah, sir! do you not offer me your noble protection? Before, I stood in bitter desperate loneliness. I place the issue joyfully in your hands, to act as you anyhow will upon my statement.”
“You shall not misprofit thereby. Take rest, good fellow, and we will come to further discussion hereafter.”
“I am well—I am restored. You have made a man of me.”