Chapter Eleven.
Concerning a Midnight Ramble
“Quiet, Roy, old man! Don’t lift up that beautiful voice of yours, or your gallant grandparent will be for abolishing you altogether on the ground that you disturb his slumbers.” It seemed hard to restrain the affectionate creature’s delighted barks over the restoration to his master and temporary liberty. The dog pranced and squirmed; springing up at his master, and whining in suppressed glee. Then he would career up and down the sward, his white ruff gleaming in the moonlight. His master, however, strolled leisurely on. Leaving the ornamental water on his left, he turned out of the drive into a narrow secluded path through the shrubbery, which soon led him into the heart of one of the home coverts. The pathway lay in gloom overshadowed by black firs; the moonlight throwing a pale band across it here and there, when a gap occurred in the trees. Tangled bushes grew on either side right up to the pedestrian’s shoulder, and the air was heavy with a moist fungus-like odour, exuding from the dewy earth and luxuriant vegetation.
“Flap-flap.”
Away went a couple of startled cushats from their dark roost in the firs, followed by a dozen more, the flapping of their wings resounding like pistol-shots in the stillness of the covert. Then a faint rustle in the brake, as of a prowling stoat or weasel making off with stealthy glide. Rabbits scurried off down the path, and Roy, tremulous with excitement, looked up in his master’s face with an appealing whine, though he knew perfectly well that the least movement towards giving chase would be sternly checked. Suddenly the stroller stopped, and, as he gazed straight in front of him, a faint whistle of astonishment escaped his lips. What did he see?
Only a light.
He had reached a point where the ground fell away in front. Some thirty yards further the covert ended, and beyond lay the open fields. From where he stood the light was visible, and might be half a mile away. Seen through the focus of the narrow covert path it twinkled in the distance, looking like an ordinary candle placed in the latticed window of a cottage – which, in fact, it was.
But whatever it was, after gazing at it in astonishment for a few moments, the stroller turned and began to retrace his steps. As he did so the moon slowly soared over the tree-tops, flooding the narrow footpath with light. Suddenly Roy lifted his head, and uttering a quick, short bark, started off from his master’s side, growling ominously.
The path, being in moonlight, enhanced the blackness of the undergrowth. Roland, gazing eagerly in the direction of the cause of his dog’s alarm, could discern nothing in the cavernous gloom.
“Poachers,” he decided uneasily, with a rapid thought of the long odds against him in the event of his conjecture proving a true one; for only a large and daring gang of such marauders would venture to raid into the Cranston home coverts.
The dog’s rage increased. With every hair of his thick coat bristling and erect, he darted forward into the darkness, baying furiously; and in a moment the snap-snap of his jaws, together with a continuous and savage snarling, proclaimed him to be at very close quarters with something or somebody, who had the greatest difficulty in warding off his attack.
“Cawl the dorg off, master,” adjured a thick, gruff voice, not untinged with trepidation.
With some difficulty Roland complied, and in obedience to his peremptory mandate to come out and show himself, there stepped into the moonlight a powerful, thickset ruffian, armed with a cudgel. Mightily astonished, he recognised in the swarthy and scowling features no less a personage than Stephen Devine, the poacher, whom if he had thought of at all it would have been as in Battisford Gaol, doing a month’s hard labour, less about ten days already served.
“Didn’t expect to see me, eh, master?” said the fellow, with a grin, the other not breaking silence.
“Right you are – I didn’t. And now, may I ask, what the devil are you doing here?”
“Thort I was safe in quod, didn’t ’ee, young Squire?” rejoined Devine, advancing a step nearer, with the same evil grin. Roy, who had been crouching at his master’s feet, keeping up a running fire of growls, sprang up at this move, and with his fangs fixed would have made at the intruder, but found himself held by main force.
“Down, Roy! Quiet, sir! I think you’ll be safe in that institution again by this time to-morrow,” answered Roland. “Meanwhile, how the deuce did you get out of it to-day?”
“Haw-haw! Mr Turner ’e paid my fine and got me out. ’E’s a genelman, ’e is. ’E said I ort to be at home, lookin’ after my darter.”
“H’m! A fool and his money are soon parted. However, it’s a thousand pities the cash should be so utterly thrown away. Thrown away, because to-morrow you’ll return to your old quarters. For trespassing here, you understand.”
“Haw-haw! Oh, no, I won’t, sir – not I. You’ll say nuthin’ about to-night – not you?”
“No? And why not?”
“Because,” answered the fellow, lowering his voice, but speaking in an insolent tone – “because I should have such a nice little story to tell their warshups the beaks, and the laryers, and the parties wot comes to see poor coves tried. I should be able to tell how young Squire Dorrien wasn’t above steppin’ down to my cottage o’ nights to keep my gal company like, while her poor old dad’s in trouble. I could tell ’em how I went to get a breath o’ fresh air the night I come out o’ quod, and as how I see young Squire Dorrien a steppin’ along in the dark to see my gal. I could tell as how I follered him until he cotched sight of the bit of light my gal had stuck in the winder to let him know her old dad’s come home again, and young Squire wouldn’t be adsackly welcome that night – and as how ’stonished he looked when he seed it? Fine gal, my Lizzie, ain’t she, Squire?”
“Devilish fine girl! Since you ask my opinion, you’ve got it frankly, and for what it’s worth. And so that’s the little story you are going to amuse the court with, is it?”
“That’s the little story, Squire. No two mistakes about it,” retorted the other, with an impudent leer. “And strike me blind, but it’ll be worth doin’ another month for the fun o’ seein’ the old Squire’s face when I’m a-tellin’ of it.”
Roland laughed quietly, contemptuously – and there was something in his laugh that seemed to undermine the other’s self assurance.
“You may tell your story, Devine – and then – ”
“And then, Squire?”
“And then – you may go and be damned.” The perfect nonchalance of this reply was disconcerting in the extreme. The growing uneasiness which it inspired in the poacher found vent in bluster.
“Blast and blind me!” he snarled. “You don’t seem to care over-much. Yer don’t seem to have heard of Gipsy Steve. But there’s them here as has, and there’s them elsewhere as has, and to their cost. So mind me, Master Squire Dorrien, I say, and you’ll hear more o’ me yet.”
Roland slowly emitted a puff of smoke, and watched it mounting in blue circles upon the damp night air. Then he answered with sneering calmness:
“You were perfectly right in saying I didn’t seem to care over-much. I don’t – and for these among other reasons. In the first place, you won’t tell that story, because, if you do, it isn’t another month you’ll find yourself in for, but several years. Libel, with a view to blackmailing, means penal servitude in this country, remember. In the next place, if you do tell it your daughter will go into the witness-box and deny the whole thing on oath – for even granted the truth of your discovery, I needn’t remind a man of your ’cuteness that she would rather see you hung than give a word of evidence likely to damage me.”
He