CHAPTER VIIIMASTER AND MANAMANwas sitting on the low wall which enclosed the spectre of a garden trimming a ragged ash-plant into the plain dimensions of a walking-stick. He worked with the neatness displayed by many heavy-handed persons whose squarely-tipped fingers never hint at the dexterity dormant in them.It was easily seen that, in order to assign him a place in the social scale, one would have to go a good way down it; nevertheless, he reflected the facial type of his time as faithfully as any young blood enveloped in the latest whimsies of fashionable convention, though, naturally, in a less degree. The man of to-day who looks at a collection of drawings made in the early nineteenth century can find the face, with various modifications, everywhere; under the chimney-pot hat which (to his eye) sits so oddly on the cricketer, beneath the peaked cap of the mail-coach guard, above the shirt-sleeves of the artisan with his basket of tools on his back. As we examine the portraits of a by-gone master, Sir Peter Lely, Joshua Reynolds—whom you will—we are apt to ask ourselves whether the painter’s hand has not conveyed too much of his own mind to the canvas, making all sitters so conform to it as to reproduce some mental trait of his own, like children of one father reproducing a physical one. Those who find this may forget that there is an expression proper to each period, and that it runs through the gamut of society, from the court beauty to the kitchen wench, from the minister of State to the rat-catcher who keeps the great man’s property purged of such vermin. The comprehensive glance of the man on the wall as compared with the immobilityof his mouth, the wide face set in flat whiskers which stopped short in a line with the lobe of his ear, dated him as completely as if he had been a waxwork effigy set up in a museum with “Early Victorian Period” printed on a placard at his feet. His name was George Williams, and, in the eye of the law, he was a hedger and ditcher by occupation; on its blind side, he was something else as well.The garden, which formed a background to the stick-maker, was indeed a sorry place, forming, with the tumble-down cottage it surrounded, a sort of island in the barren hillside. A shallow stream on its way to the valley ran by so near the wall, that there was only room for a few clumps of thistle between it and the water. When the dweller in the cottage wished to reach civilization, he had to cross a plank to a disused cart-track making from the uplands down to the village. Hardly any one but the tenant of this unprofitable estate ever troubled the ancient way with his presence, but, in spite of this, Williams looked up expectantly now and then to where it cut the skyline a furlong or so mountainwards. Behind him the tall weeds which were choking the potato patch and the gooseberry bushes straggled in the grey forenoon light, and the hoar-frost clung to a few briars that stretched lean arms over the bed of the stream.The cottage was built of stone and boasted a slate roof, though, what between the gaps showing in it and the stonecrop which covered the solid parts, there was little slate visible. One could assume that the walls were thick from the extreme breadth of the window-sills, and the remote way in which the pane stared out like an eye sunk deep in its socket. The window on the left of the door was boarded up by a shutter which had once been green, the other one being nearly as impenetrable by reason of its distance from the surface. Were any one curious enough to examine the latter, he might see that it was surprisingly clean; the place was wild, inhospitable, weed-sown, but not dirty. A faint column of smoke escaped from one of the squat chimneys which adorned either end of the roof.The ash-plant which Williams was trimming had two strongsuckers sticking out of the root. When it was held upside down, the position in which it would eventually be carried, Nature’s intention of making it the distinct image of a rabbit’s head was clear to the meanest imagination. George’s imagination was not altogether mean, and he whittled away diligently, smiling as the thing grew more life-like in his hands, and so much absorbed that he gradually forgot to watch the track and did not see a small figure coming down it till it was within a few yards of him.The person arriving on the scene had such a remarkable gait that one might have singled him out from fifty men, had he been advancing in a line of his fellow-creatures instead of alone. As he came closer, it grew odder because the expression of his face could be seen to counteract the expression of his legs. The latter proclaimed indecision, while the former shone with a cheerful firmness; looking at him, one was prepared to see the legs fold inward like an easel, or widen out like a compass, plunge sideways up the bank, or dive forwards down the road. For this, as for all other phenomena in this world, there was a reason. The man had driven pigs for nearly fifty years of his life.The healthy red of his cheeks was an advertisement for this disquieting trade, and his twinkling eyes and slit of a mouth turned up at the corners as if they had caught something of their appearance from the pigs themselves. Prosperity cried from every part of James Bumpett, from the seams of his corduroy trousers to the crown of his semi-tall hat. He carried a stick, but he did not use it to walk with, for long habit had made him wave it smartly from side to side.Williams transferred his legs deferentially from the inside to the outside of the wall as the old man approached, and stood waiting for him to come up.The Pig-driver seated himself beside him and plunged immediately into his subject.“Is it aught with the business?” he asked. “I come down at once when I got your message.”“No,” replied the younger man, “it’s this way. It’s about Mr. Walters o’ Masterhouse. He’s there below—an’ his head nigh broke.” He pointed backwards to the cottage with his thumb.“Lord! Lord!” ejaculated Bumpett.“He told me to send word to you. ‘Bumpett,’ he says, ‘Mr. Bumpett at Abergavenny; don’t you forget,’ an’ he went off with his head agin my shoulder. How I got him along here I don’t rightly know. He’s a fair-sized man to be hefting about.”The old man looked keenly into George’s face.“What did he want with me?” he inquired.“Indeed I never thought for to ask him,” said Williams simply. “’Twas two nights ago, I was going up by Red Field Farm to look round a bit”—here both men’s eyes dropped—“and about one o’clock I was nigh them steep bits o’ grazing, an’ come straight on to him. Lying down in the ditch he was, not twenty yards from Crishowell Lane. I didn’t know what to make of it.”“Well, to be sure!” exclaimed Bumpett. “Was it drink?” he asked after a pause.“Drink? no!” cried George. “I took a piece of ice from the road and put it on his head. He come to then. I never saw such a look as he give me when he saw me, and he fought like a wild beast, that he did, when he felt my hand on him, though he was as weak as a rabbit when I got him up. ’Tis plain enough now why, though indeed I did wonder then. He’s done for Vaughan the toll-keeper, too; knocked him stone dead.”Bumpett stared blankly. For once in his life he was quite taken aback.“He was out wi’ Rebecca,” explained Williams. “I guessed that by the strange hair he had tied all over his head so firm it were hard to get it loose.”“What did you do with it?” inquired the Pig-driver sharply.“Brought it with me,” said the young man. “Was I to leave it for some o’ they constables to find?”“Well, indeed,” observed Bumpett, “you’re a smarter lad than I took ye for. I don’t mind telling ye that I thought to see him along o’ me in Abergavenny by now.”“You’ve had to tell me a thing or two before this,” said George rather sullenly.“Ye’ve told no one?” inquired Bumpett suspiciously.“Not I,” said George. “What’s the use of pulling a man out of the law’s way if you’re to shove him back after? I thought once I’d have to get the doctor, he was that bad, ranting and raving, but he’s stopped now.”“I suppose I’d better go down and see him,” said the Pig-driver, rubbing the back of his head meditatively with his hand. “What are we to do with him, Williams?”“I can’t turn him out,” answered the young man, “I don’t like to do that.”“By G’arge, he couldn’t have got into no safer place too,” chuckled Bumpett. “We’ll keep him a bit, my lad, an’ he might lend a hand when he gets better. He’ll have to know what sort of a nest he’s lighted on, sooner or later, if he stops here.”Williams gave a kind of growl.“When the country’s quieted down a bit we’ll have to get him off out o’ this. Straight he’ll have to go too, and not be talkin’ o’ what he’s seen. Did they take any of the others, did ye hear?”“They got Turnbull the auctioneer, and about a dozen men from Llangarth; them on the horses were that rigged up wi’ mountebank clothes you couldn’t tell who was who—so I heard tell in Crishowell. And they were off over the Wye, an’ into the woods like so many quists. The yeomanry tried the wrong places in the water, and some of them was pretty nigh drowned. There was no talk of chasing—they’d enough to do pulling one another out.”“Well, well, to be sure!” exclaimed the Pig-driver againwith infinite relish, his cheeks widening into a grin as he listened, and his eyes almost disappearing into his head. Then he sighed the sigh of a man who broods upon lost opportunities.George whirled his legs back into the garden in the same way that he had whirled them out, and steered through the gooseberry bushes towards the cottage followed by his companion. Entering they found themselves in a small room, dark and bare.Although smoke might be seen to issue from the chimney at this side of the house, it was curious that not a vestige of fire was in the fire-place. A table stood under the window, a few garments hung on a string that stretched across a corner, and two bill-hooks, very sharp and bright, leaned sentimentally towards each other where they stood against the wall. A piece of soap, a bucket of water, and a comb were arranged upon a box; at the end of the room were a cupboard, and a wooden bedstead containing neither bedclothes nor mattress. Besides these objects, there was nothing in the way of furniture or adornment.Bumpett glanced round and his eye reached the bedstead.“Name o’ goodness, what have ye done with your bedding?” he inquired, pausing before the naked-looking object.“It’s down below.”A partition divided the cottage into two, and George opened a door in this by which they entered the other half of the building. Chinks in the closed-up window let in light enough to show a few tools and a heap of sacks lying in a corner. These were fastened down on a board which they completely concealed. The Pig-driver drew it aside, disclosing a hole large enough to admit a human figure, with the top of a ladder visible in it about a foot below the flooring. The young man stood aside for Bumpett to descend, and when the crown of the Pig-driver’s hat had disappeared, he followed, drawing the board carefully over the aperture.The room below ran all the length of the house, and a fireat the further end accounted for the smoke in the chimney. Fresh air came in at a hole in the wall, which was hidden outside by a gooseberry bush planted before it; occasional slabs of stone showed where the place had been hollowed from the original rock, and the ceiling was studded with iron hooks. Near the fire was a great heap of sheepskins, surmounted by George’s mattress and all his scanty bedding, on which lay Rhys Walters, his head bound round by a bandage, and a cup of water beside him which he was stretching out his hand for as they entered.“Here’s Mr. Bumpett,” announced Williams, going gently up to the bed.“Well,” said Rhys in a weak, petulant voice, “this is a bad look-out, isn’t it?”“Indeed, and so it is,” answered the old man, as if he had been struck by a new idea.“And I don’t know when I can get up out of here.”“Bide you where you are,” interrupted the Pig-driver. “You couldn’t be safer, not if you was in Hereford jail itself,” he concluded cheerfully, sitting down on the bed.Rhys frowned under his bandage.“That’s where I may be yet,” he said, “curse the whole business.”“I’d been lookin’ out for ye at Abergavenny,” said Bumpett, “an’ not seein’ ye, I thought all had been well, and ye’d gone off licketty smack to Evans’s.”“If I could get hold of Evans, I’d half kill him,” said Rhys between his teeth. “He cried out my name, and I had to ride for it, I can tell you. Give me a drop more water, Williams.”George went to the opposite wall and drew out a stone, letting in the pleasant babbling noise of the brook. The foundations of the cottage were so near the water that he stretched his arm through, holding the mug, and filled it easily. In flood-time the room was uninhabitable.“I thought there was nothing that could touch that mare ofmine,” continued the sick man, as George went up the ladder and left the two together, “but young Fenton’s mind was made up to catch me, though I’d have distanced him if this damned frost hadn’t been against me. I could have dodged him in the mountain and got him bogged, maybe.”“Well, well, you’re lucky to be where you are,” remarked Bumpett. “There’s no one but Williams and me do know of this place. Best bide a bit, and when they give up searchin’ for ye, ye can get down to Cardiff somehow.”Rhys made no reply; his thoughts went to Great Masterhouse, to its fields, to the barns round which he had played as a child, to its well-stocked stable, to the money it was worth, and he groaned. He was a beggar practically, an outlaw, and the life behind him was wiped out. Many things rose in his mind in a cloud of regret, many interests but few affections; nevertheless, now that she was absolutely lost to him, he longed for Mary.For some time neither of the two men spoke.“’Tis a bad job indeed,” broke in Bumpett as he got up to leave. He was a man of his tongue and the silence irked him.“Where are you going to now?” said Rhys listlessly.“Down Crishowell way,” answered the Pig-driver. “I’ve got business there. Mr. Walters, I’ve got a word to say to you afore I go. Do you know that this place you’re in belongs to me?”“To you?” said Rhys; “I thought Williams rented it from Red Field Farm.”“Ah, ’tis called Williams’,” replied Bumpett, sitting down again, “but I do pay for it. I may make free with you in what I’m saying, for I’m helping to keep you from the law, and it’s right you should help to keep me. Give me the oath you’ll swaller down what I’m telling you and never let it up again.”“What can I do to you, even if I want to?” asked Rhys bitterly.“Swear, I tell ye.”“I swear it, so help me God,” repeated Rhys, his curiosity roused.“Though I began drivin’ o’ pigs, I’m the biggest butcher in trade at Abergavenny, am I not?” cried the old man, putting his hand on Rhys’ knee and giving it a shake. “Well, I sell more mutton than I ever buy. Do ye understand that? Do ye see what you’re lyin’ on?” He pointed to the sheepskins. “George is my man and he finds it for me—him an’ others I needn’t speak of. We’ve taken toll of you before this.”And, as he chuckled, his eyes disappeared again.Walters tried to sit up, but grew giddy at once and dropped back on his pillow. He drew a long breath and lay still. The last words made him hate the Pig-driver, but as, at present, he owed him everything, he reflected that hatred would be of little use to him.“How do you get it all up to Abergavenny?” he inquired at last.“Ah, you may well ask. And ’tis best you should know, for I’ll be glad to get a hand from you when you’re up again. Do ye know the Pedlar’s Stone? There’s not one o’ they zanys along here will go a-nigh it.”Rhys knew the place well. On the way to the mountain, about a mile further up, a little rough, stone cross stuck out of the bank, its rude arms overhanging the hedge. It marked the spot where a pedlar had been murdered some hundred years back, and none of the working people would pass it after dark, for even in the daytime it was regarded with suspicion.“The sheep comes here first, George he knows how. Do ye see them hooks in the ceiling? Did ye take note of the trap ye come down here by? No, I warrant ye didn’t, ye was that mazed when ye come. It’s all cut up here, an’ after that it goes up jint by jint to the place I’m telling you. Williams, he can get two sheep up between ten o’clock and one i’ the morning. If ye go along the hedge behind the stone, there’s a big bit o’ rock close by with a hole scraped in underneath it. It’s deep down among the nettles, so ye wouldn’t see it if yedidn’t know. That’s where they lie till I come round afore daylight wi’ the cart on my way to Crishowell. Crishowell folks thinks I’m at Abergavenny, and Abergavenny folks thinks I’m at Crishowell.”Though in his heart Rhys hated the Pig-driver for what he had been doing to him and others like him, he could not help admiring his astuteness; but he made no comment, for admiration came from him grudgingly as a rule where men were concerned.“Now,” said the old man, “I’ll say good-day to ye, Mr. Walters, I must be gettin’ on.”He clambered up the ladder, leaving Rhys alone.
AMANwas sitting on the low wall which enclosed the spectre of a garden trimming a ragged ash-plant into the plain dimensions of a walking-stick. He worked with the neatness displayed by many heavy-handed persons whose squarely-tipped fingers never hint at the dexterity dormant in them.
It was easily seen that, in order to assign him a place in the social scale, one would have to go a good way down it; nevertheless, he reflected the facial type of his time as faithfully as any young blood enveloped in the latest whimsies of fashionable convention, though, naturally, in a less degree. The man of to-day who looks at a collection of drawings made in the early nineteenth century can find the face, with various modifications, everywhere; under the chimney-pot hat which (to his eye) sits so oddly on the cricketer, beneath the peaked cap of the mail-coach guard, above the shirt-sleeves of the artisan with his basket of tools on his back. As we examine the portraits of a by-gone master, Sir Peter Lely, Joshua Reynolds—whom you will—we are apt to ask ourselves whether the painter’s hand has not conveyed too much of his own mind to the canvas, making all sitters so conform to it as to reproduce some mental trait of his own, like children of one father reproducing a physical one. Those who find this may forget that there is an expression proper to each period, and that it runs through the gamut of society, from the court beauty to the kitchen wench, from the minister of State to the rat-catcher who keeps the great man’s property purged of such vermin. The comprehensive glance of the man on the wall as compared with the immobilityof his mouth, the wide face set in flat whiskers which stopped short in a line with the lobe of his ear, dated him as completely as if he had been a waxwork effigy set up in a museum with “Early Victorian Period” printed on a placard at his feet. His name was George Williams, and, in the eye of the law, he was a hedger and ditcher by occupation; on its blind side, he was something else as well.
The garden, which formed a background to the stick-maker, was indeed a sorry place, forming, with the tumble-down cottage it surrounded, a sort of island in the barren hillside. A shallow stream on its way to the valley ran by so near the wall, that there was only room for a few clumps of thistle between it and the water. When the dweller in the cottage wished to reach civilization, he had to cross a plank to a disused cart-track making from the uplands down to the village. Hardly any one but the tenant of this unprofitable estate ever troubled the ancient way with his presence, but, in spite of this, Williams looked up expectantly now and then to where it cut the skyline a furlong or so mountainwards. Behind him the tall weeds which were choking the potato patch and the gooseberry bushes straggled in the grey forenoon light, and the hoar-frost clung to a few briars that stretched lean arms over the bed of the stream.
The cottage was built of stone and boasted a slate roof, though, what between the gaps showing in it and the stonecrop which covered the solid parts, there was little slate visible. One could assume that the walls were thick from the extreme breadth of the window-sills, and the remote way in which the pane stared out like an eye sunk deep in its socket. The window on the left of the door was boarded up by a shutter which had once been green, the other one being nearly as impenetrable by reason of its distance from the surface. Were any one curious enough to examine the latter, he might see that it was surprisingly clean; the place was wild, inhospitable, weed-sown, but not dirty. A faint column of smoke escaped from one of the squat chimneys which adorned either end of the roof.
The ash-plant which Williams was trimming had two strongsuckers sticking out of the root. When it was held upside down, the position in which it would eventually be carried, Nature’s intention of making it the distinct image of a rabbit’s head was clear to the meanest imagination. George’s imagination was not altogether mean, and he whittled away diligently, smiling as the thing grew more life-like in his hands, and so much absorbed that he gradually forgot to watch the track and did not see a small figure coming down it till it was within a few yards of him.
The person arriving on the scene had such a remarkable gait that one might have singled him out from fifty men, had he been advancing in a line of his fellow-creatures instead of alone. As he came closer, it grew odder because the expression of his face could be seen to counteract the expression of his legs. The latter proclaimed indecision, while the former shone with a cheerful firmness; looking at him, one was prepared to see the legs fold inward like an easel, or widen out like a compass, plunge sideways up the bank, or dive forwards down the road. For this, as for all other phenomena in this world, there was a reason. The man had driven pigs for nearly fifty years of his life.
The healthy red of his cheeks was an advertisement for this disquieting trade, and his twinkling eyes and slit of a mouth turned up at the corners as if they had caught something of their appearance from the pigs themselves. Prosperity cried from every part of James Bumpett, from the seams of his corduroy trousers to the crown of his semi-tall hat. He carried a stick, but he did not use it to walk with, for long habit had made him wave it smartly from side to side.
Williams transferred his legs deferentially from the inside to the outside of the wall as the old man approached, and stood waiting for him to come up.
The Pig-driver seated himself beside him and plunged immediately into his subject.
“Is it aught with the business?” he asked. “I come down at once when I got your message.”
“No,” replied the younger man, “it’s this way. It’s about Mr. Walters o’ Masterhouse. He’s there below—an’ his head nigh broke.” He pointed backwards to the cottage with his thumb.
“Lord! Lord!” ejaculated Bumpett.
“He told me to send word to you. ‘Bumpett,’ he says, ‘Mr. Bumpett at Abergavenny; don’t you forget,’ an’ he went off with his head agin my shoulder. How I got him along here I don’t rightly know. He’s a fair-sized man to be hefting about.”
The old man looked keenly into George’s face.
“What did he want with me?” he inquired.
“Indeed I never thought for to ask him,” said Williams simply. “’Twas two nights ago, I was going up by Red Field Farm to look round a bit”—here both men’s eyes dropped—“and about one o’clock I was nigh them steep bits o’ grazing, an’ come straight on to him. Lying down in the ditch he was, not twenty yards from Crishowell Lane. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Well, to be sure!” exclaimed Bumpett. “Was it drink?” he asked after a pause.
“Drink? no!” cried George. “I took a piece of ice from the road and put it on his head. He come to then. I never saw such a look as he give me when he saw me, and he fought like a wild beast, that he did, when he felt my hand on him, though he was as weak as a rabbit when I got him up. ’Tis plain enough now why, though indeed I did wonder then. He’s done for Vaughan the toll-keeper, too; knocked him stone dead.”
Bumpett stared blankly. For once in his life he was quite taken aback.
“He was out wi’ Rebecca,” explained Williams. “I guessed that by the strange hair he had tied all over his head so firm it were hard to get it loose.”
“What did you do with it?” inquired the Pig-driver sharply.
“Brought it with me,” said the young man. “Was I to leave it for some o’ they constables to find?”
“Well, indeed,” observed Bumpett, “you’re a smarter lad than I took ye for. I don’t mind telling ye that I thought to see him along o’ me in Abergavenny by now.”
“You’ve had to tell me a thing or two before this,” said George rather sullenly.
“Ye’ve told no one?” inquired Bumpett suspiciously.
“Not I,” said George. “What’s the use of pulling a man out of the law’s way if you’re to shove him back after? I thought once I’d have to get the doctor, he was that bad, ranting and raving, but he’s stopped now.”
“I suppose I’d better go down and see him,” said the Pig-driver, rubbing the back of his head meditatively with his hand. “What are we to do with him, Williams?”
“I can’t turn him out,” answered the young man, “I don’t like to do that.”
“By G’arge, he couldn’t have got into no safer place too,” chuckled Bumpett. “We’ll keep him a bit, my lad, an’ he might lend a hand when he gets better. He’ll have to know what sort of a nest he’s lighted on, sooner or later, if he stops here.”
Williams gave a kind of growl.
“When the country’s quieted down a bit we’ll have to get him off out o’ this. Straight he’ll have to go too, and not be talkin’ o’ what he’s seen. Did they take any of the others, did ye hear?”
“They got Turnbull the auctioneer, and about a dozen men from Llangarth; them on the horses were that rigged up wi’ mountebank clothes you couldn’t tell who was who—so I heard tell in Crishowell. And they were off over the Wye, an’ into the woods like so many quists. The yeomanry tried the wrong places in the water, and some of them was pretty nigh drowned. There was no talk of chasing—they’d enough to do pulling one another out.”
“Well, well, to be sure!” exclaimed the Pig-driver againwith infinite relish, his cheeks widening into a grin as he listened, and his eyes almost disappearing into his head. Then he sighed the sigh of a man who broods upon lost opportunities.
George whirled his legs back into the garden in the same way that he had whirled them out, and steered through the gooseberry bushes towards the cottage followed by his companion. Entering they found themselves in a small room, dark and bare.
Although smoke might be seen to issue from the chimney at this side of the house, it was curious that not a vestige of fire was in the fire-place. A table stood under the window, a few garments hung on a string that stretched across a corner, and two bill-hooks, very sharp and bright, leaned sentimentally towards each other where they stood against the wall. A piece of soap, a bucket of water, and a comb were arranged upon a box; at the end of the room were a cupboard, and a wooden bedstead containing neither bedclothes nor mattress. Besides these objects, there was nothing in the way of furniture or adornment.
Bumpett glanced round and his eye reached the bedstead.
“Name o’ goodness, what have ye done with your bedding?” he inquired, pausing before the naked-looking object.
“It’s down below.”
A partition divided the cottage into two, and George opened a door in this by which they entered the other half of the building. Chinks in the closed-up window let in light enough to show a few tools and a heap of sacks lying in a corner. These were fastened down on a board which they completely concealed. The Pig-driver drew it aside, disclosing a hole large enough to admit a human figure, with the top of a ladder visible in it about a foot below the flooring. The young man stood aside for Bumpett to descend, and when the crown of the Pig-driver’s hat had disappeared, he followed, drawing the board carefully over the aperture.
The room below ran all the length of the house, and a fireat the further end accounted for the smoke in the chimney. Fresh air came in at a hole in the wall, which was hidden outside by a gooseberry bush planted before it; occasional slabs of stone showed where the place had been hollowed from the original rock, and the ceiling was studded with iron hooks. Near the fire was a great heap of sheepskins, surmounted by George’s mattress and all his scanty bedding, on which lay Rhys Walters, his head bound round by a bandage, and a cup of water beside him which he was stretching out his hand for as they entered.
“Here’s Mr. Bumpett,” announced Williams, going gently up to the bed.
“Well,” said Rhys in a weak, petulant voice, “this is a bad look-out, isn’t it?”
“Indeed, and so it is,” answered the old man, as if he had been struck by a new idea.
“And I don’t know when I can get up out of here.”
“Bide you where you are,” interrupted the Pig-driver. “You couldn’t be safer, not if you was in Hereford jail itself,” he concluded cheerfully, sitting down on the bed.
Rhys frowned under his bandage.
“That’s where I may be yet,” he said, “curse the whole business.”
“I’d been lookin’ out for ye at Abergavenny,” said Bumpett, “an’ not seein’ ye, I thought all had been well, and ye’d gone off licketty smack to Evans’s.”
“If I could get hold of Evans, I’d half kill him,” said Rhys between his teeth. “He cried out my name, and I had to ride for it, I can tell you. Give me a drop more water, Williams.”
George went to the opposite wall and drew out a stone, letting in the pleasant babbling noise of the brook. The foundations of the cottage were so near the water that he stretched his arm through, holding the mug, and filled it easily. In flood-time the room was uninhabitable.
“I thought there was nothing that could touch that mare ofmine,” continued the sick man, as George went up the ladder and left the two together, “but young Fenton’s mind was made up to catch me, though I’d have distanced him if this damned frost hadn’t been against me. I could have dodged him in the mountain and got him bogged, maybe.”
“Well, well, you’re lucky to be where you are,” remarked Bumpett. “There’s no one but Williams and me do know of this place. Best bide a bit, and when they give up searchin’ for ye, ye can get down to Cardiff somehow.”
Rhys made no reply; his thoughts went to Great Masterhouse, to its fields, to the barns round which he had played as a child, to its well-stocked stable, to the money it was worth, and he groaned. He was a beggar practically, an outlaw, and the life behind him was wiped out. Many things rose in his mind in a cloud of regret, many interests but few affections; nevertheless, now that she was absolutely lost to him, he longed for Mary.
For some time neither of the two men spoke.
“’Tis a bad job indeed,” broke in Bumpett as he got up to leave. He was a man of his tongue and the silence irked him.
“Where are you going to now?” said Rhys listlessly.
“Down Crishowell way,” answered the Pig-driver. “I’ve got business there. Mr. Walters, I’ve got a word to say to you afore I go. Do you know that this place you’re in belongs to me?”
“To you?” said Rhys; “I thought Williams rented it from Red Field Farm.”
“Ah, ’tis called Williams’,” replied Bumpett, sitting down again, “but I do pay for it. I may make free with you in what I’m saying, for I’m helping to keep you from the law, and it’s right you should help to keep me. Give me the oath you’ll swaller down what I’m telling you and never let it up again.”
“What can I do to you, even if I want to?” asked Rhys bitterly.
“Swear, I tell ye.”
“I swear it, so help me God,” repeated Rhys, his curiosity roused.
“Though I began drivin’ o’ pigs, I’m the biggest butcher in trade at Abergavenny, am I not?” cried the old man, putting his hand on Rhys’ knee and giving it a shake. “Well, I sell more mutton than I ever buy. Do ye understand that? Do ye see what you’re lyin’ on?” He pointed to the sheepskins. “George is my man and he finds it for me—him an’ others I needn’t speak of. We’ve taken toll of you before this.”
And, as he chuckled, his eyes disappeared again.
Walters tried to sit up, but grew giddy at once and dropped back on his pillow. He drew a long breath and lay still. The last words made him hate the Pig-driver, but as, at present, he owed him everything, he reflected that hatred would be of little use to him.
“How do you get it all up to Abergavenny?” he inquired at last.
“Ah, you may well ask. And ’tis best you should know, for I’ll be glad to get a hand from you when you’re up again. Do ye know the Pedlar’s Stone? There’s not one o’ they zanys along here will go a-nigh it.”
Rhys knew the place well. On the way to the mountain, about a mile further up, a little rough, stone cross stuck out of the bank, its rude arms overhanging the hedge. It marked the spot where a pedlar had been murdered some hundred years back, and none of the working people would pass it after dark, for even in the daytime it was regarded with suspicion.
“The sheep comes here first, George he knows how. Do ye see them hooks in the ceiling? Did ye take note of the trap ye come down here by? No, I warrant ye didn’t, ye was that mazed when ye come. It’s all cut up here, an’ after that it goes up jint by jint to the place I’m telling you. Williams, he can get two sheep up between ten o’clock and one i’ the morning. If ye go along the hedge behind the stone, there’s a big bit o’ rock close by with a hole scraped in underneath it. It’s deep down among the nettles, so ye wouldn’t see it if yedidn’t know. That’s where they lie till I come round afore daylight wi’ the cart on my way to Crishowell. Crishowell folks thinks I’m at Abergavenny, and Abergavenny folks thinks I’m at Crishowell.”
Though in his heart Rhys hated the Pig-driver for what he had been doing to him and others like him, he could not help admiring his astuteness; but he made no comment, for admiration came from him grudgingly as a rule where men were concerned.
“Now,” said the old man, “I’ll say good-day to ye, Mr. Walters, I must be gettin’ on.”
He clambered up the ladder, leaving Rhys alone.