As soon as Jim had eaten his supper, and Mike's wife had put up for him food enough to last him and such accessions to his party as he expected to secure during the night, and supplied him abundantly with wrappings, he went to the stable, mounted the low, strong wagon before which Mike had placed the horse, and with a hearty "good luck to ye!" from the Irishman ringing in his ears, started on the road to Sevenoaks. This portion of the way was easy. The road was worn somewhat, and moderately well kept; and there was nothing to interfere with the steady jog which measured the distance at the rate of six miles an hour. For three steady hours he went on, the horse no more worried than if he had been standing in the stable. At nine o'clock the lights in the farmers' cottages by the wayside were extinguished, and the families they held were in bed. Then the road began to grow dim, and the sky to become dark. The fickle spring weather gave promise of rain. Jim shuddered at the thought of the exposure to which, in a shower, his delicate friend would be subjected, but thought that if he could but get him to the wagon, and cover him well before its onset, he could shield him from harm.
The town clock was striking ten as he drove up to the stump where he was to meet Benedict's boy. He stopped and whistled. A whistle came back in reply, and a dark little object crept out from behind the stump, and came up to the wagon.
"Harry, how's your pa?" said Jim.
"He's been very bad to-day," said Harry. "He says he's going to Abraham's bosom on a visit, and he's been walking around in his room, and wondering why you don't come for him."
"Who did he say that to?" inquired Jim.
"To me," replied the boy. "And he told me not to speak to Mr. Buffum about it."
Jim breathed a sigh of relief, and saying "All right!" he leaped from the wagon. Then taking out a heavy blanket, he said:
"Now, Harry, you jest stand by the old feller's head till I git back to ye. He's out o' the road, an' ye needn't stir if any body comes along."
Harry went up to the old horse, patted his nose and his breast, and told him he was good. The creature seemed to understand it, and gave him no trouble. Jim then stalked off noiselessly into the darkness, and the boy waited with a trembling and expectant heart.
Jim reached the poor-house, and stood still in the middle of the road between the two establishments. The lights in both had been extinguished, and stillness reigned in that portion occupied by Thomas Buffum and his family. The darkness was so great that Jim could almost feel it. No lights were visible except in the village at the foot of the hill, and these were distant and feeble, through an open window—left open that the asthmatic keeper of the establishment might be supplied with breath—he heard a stertorous snore. On the other side matters were not so silent. There were groans, and yells, and gabble from the reeking and sleepless patients, who had been penned up for the long and terrible night. Concluding that every thing was as safe for his operations as it would become at any time, he slowly felt his way to the door of the ward which held Paul Benedict, and found it fastened on the outside, as he had anticipated. Lifting the bar from the iron arms that held it, and pushing back the bolt, he silently opened the door. Whether the darkness within was greater than that without, or whether the preternaturally quickened ears of the patients detected the manipulations of the fastenings, he did not know, but he was conscious at once that the tumult within was hushed. It was apparent that they had been visited in the night before, and that the accustomed intruder had come on no gentle errand.. There was not a sound as Jim felt his way along from stall to stall, sickened almost to retching by the insufferable stench that reached his nostrils and poisoned every inspiration.
On the morning of his previous visit he had taken all the bearings with reference to an expedition in the darkness, and so, feeling his way along the hall, he had little difficulty in finding the cell in which he had left his old friend.
Jim tried the door, but found it locked. His great fear was that the lock would be changed, but it had not been meddled with, and had either been furnished with a new key, or had been locked with a skeleton. He slipped the stolen key in, and the bolt slid back. Opening the outer door, he tried the inner, but the key did not fit the lock. Here was a difficulty not entirely unexpected, but seeming to be insurmountable. He quietly went back to the door of entrance, and as quietly closed it, that no sound of violence might reach and wake the inmates of the house across the road. Then he returned, and whispered in a low voice to the inmate:
"Paul Benedict, give us your benediction."
"Jim," responded the man in a whisper, so light that it could reach no ear but his own.
"Don't make no noise, not even if I sh'd make consid'able," said Jim.
Then, grasping the bars with both hands, he gave the door a sudden pull, into which he put all the might of his huge frame. A thousand pounds would not have measured it, and the door yielded, not at the bolt, but at the hinges. Screws deeply imbedded were pulled out bodily. A second lighter wrench completed the task, and the door was noiselessly set aside, though Jim was trembling in every muscle.
Benedict stood at the door.
"Here's the robe that Abram sent ye," said Jim, throwing over the poor man's shoulders an ample blanket; and putting one of his large arms around him, he led him shuffling out of the hall, and shut and bolted the door.
He had no sooner done this, than the bedlam inside broke loose. There were yells, and howls, and curses, but Jim did not stop for these. Dizzied with his effort, enveloped in thick darkness, and the wind which preceded the approaching shower blowing a fierce gale, he was obliged to stop a moment to make sure that he was walking in the right direction. He saw the lights of the village, and, finding the road, managed to keep on it until he reached the horse, that had become uneasy under the premonitory tumult of the storm. Lifting Benedict into the wagon as if he had been a child, he wrapped him warmly, and put the boy in behind him, to kneel and see that his father did not fall out. Then he turned the horse around, and started toward Number Nine. The horse knew the road, and was furnished with keener vision than the man who drove him. Jim was aware of this, and letting the reins lie loose upon his back, the animal struck into a long, swinging trot, in prospect of home and another "pail iv oats."
They had not gone a mile when the gathering tempest came down upon them. It rained in torrents, the lightning illuminated the whole region again and again, and the thunder cracked, and boomed, and rolled off among the woods and hills, as if the day of doom had come.
The war of the elements harmonized strangely with the weird fancies of the weak man who sat at Jim's side. He rode in perfect silence for miles. At last the wind went down, and the rain settled to a steady fall.
"They were pretty angry about my going," said he, feebly.
"Yes," said Jim, "they behaved purty car'less, but I'm too many for 'em."
"Does Father Abraham know I'm coming?" inquired Benedict. "Does he expect me to-night?"
"Yes," responded Jim, "an' he'd 'a' sent afore, but he's jest wore out with company. He's a mighty good-natered man, an' I tell 'im they take the advantage of 'im. But I've posted 'im 'bout ye, and ye're all right."
"Is it very far to the gulf?" inquired Benedict.
"Yes, it's a good deal of a drive, but when ye git there, ye can jest lay right down in the boat, an' go to sleep. I'll wake ye up, ye know, when we run in."
The miles slid behind into the darkness, and, at last, the rain subsiding somewhat, Jim stopped, partly to rest his smoking horse, and partly to feed his half-famished companions. Benedict ate mechanically the food that Jim fished out of the basket with a careful hand, and the boy ate as only boys can eat. Jim himself was hungry, and nearly finished what they left.
At two o'clock in the morning, they descried Mike Conlin's light, and in ten minutes the reeking horse and the drenched inmates of the wagon drove up to the door. Mike was waiting to receive them.
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