At length on the summit of one of the ridges over which the road ran he had made a longer halt, and had begun to look about him to right and left, seeking, it seemed, for a track across the moss. Then he had caught sight of the carrier plodding up the next ridge at the tail of his cart, and he had started after him. But having almost overtaken him, he had reduced his pace and loitered as if his desire for human company had faded away. He had even paused as though to return. But a glance at the desolate waste had determined him. He had walked on again, and had overtaken and fallen to talking with the carrier. The latter on his part had been glad to have a companion, and had readily set down what was odd in the stranger's bearing to the cause which accounted for his costume. The tall gentleman was a Londoner.
"'You be content,' says I," quoth the old fellow again, his companion's tardy attention encouraging him to repeat his statement, "'and you will be all right.' I have told that to hundreds in my time."
"And you practise it yourself?" The tall gentleman's voice was husky. His eyes, now that they had found their way to the other's face, continued to dwell on it with a gleam in their depths which matched the pallor of his features. His forehead was high, his face long and thin, and lengthened by a dark brown beard which hid the working of his lips. A nervous man meeting his gaze might have had strange thoughts. But the carrier's were country nerves, and proof against anything short of electricity.
"Oh yes, I am pretty well content," Nickson answered sturdily. "I have twenty acres of land from the duke, and I turn a penny with the carrying, going into Sheffield twice a week, rain and shine. Then I have as good a wife as ever kissed her man, and neither chick nor child, and no more than three barren ewes this lambing."
"My God!" said the stranger.
The words seemed wrung from him by a twinge of mental pain, but whether the feeling was envy of the man's innocent joys, or disgust at his simplicity, did not appear. Whatever the impulse, the tall gentleman showed an immediate consciousness that he had excited his companion's astonishment. He began to talk rapidly, even gesticulating a little. "But is there no drawback?" he said--"no bitter in your life, man? This long journey--ten--eleven miles?--and the same journey home again? Do you never find it cold, hot, dreary, intolerable?"
"It is cold enough some days, and hot enough some days," the carrier replied heartily. "But dreary?--never! And cold and heat are but skin deep, you know."
The tall gentleman let his head fall on his breast, and for some distance walked on in silence. The carrier whistled to his horse, the cry of a peewit came shrilling across the moor, one wheel of the cart squeaked loudly for grease. The evening was grey and still, and rain impended.
"It is all downhill after this," Nickson said presently, pointing to the sky-line, now less than a hundred yards ahead. "You see that stone there, sir?" he continued, and pointing with his whip to a stone lying a little off the road. "There was a man died in the snow there. Three years back it would be. I went by him myself for a month and more, and took him for a dead sheep. At last a keeper passing that way turned him over with his foot, and--well, he was a sad sight, poor chap, by that time."
The carrier should have been pleased with the effect his story produced; for the stranger shuddered. His face even seemed a shade paler, but this might be the effect of the evening light. He did not make any comment, however, and the two stepped out until they gained the summit of the ridge. Here the moor fell away on every side--a dark sweep of waste bounded by uncouth round-backed hills, which rose shapeless and grey, with never a graceful outline or soaring peak to break the horizon.
"You will take a lift down the hill, sir?" the carrier asked, gathering up his reins and preparing to mount. "I am light to-day."
"No, I think not--I thank you," the stranger answered jerkily.
"You are welcome, if you will," persisted the carrier.
"No, I think not. I think I will walk," the tall gentleman answered. But he still stood, and watched the other's preparations with strange intentness. Even when Nickson, having wished him good day, drove briskly off, he continued to gaze after the cart until a dip in the descent--not far below--swallowed it up. Then he heaved a sigh, and looked round at the grey sky and darkening heath. He took off his hat.
"Hold up! what is the matter with the mare?" the carrier cried, coming to a stop as soon, as it chanced, as the dip in the road hid him from the other's eyes. "She has picked up a stone, drat it!"
He got down stiffly, and taking his knife from his pocket went to the mare's head. Having removed the stone he dropped the hoof, and stood a second while he closed the knife. In this momentary pause there came to his ear a sharp report like that of a gun, but brisker and less loud. It was difficult to suppose it the sound of a snapping stick; or of one stone struck against another. It puzzled Master Nickson, who climbed hastily to his seat again and drove on until he was clear of the dip. Then, swearing at himself for an old fool, he looked anxiously back at the top of the ridge, which had come into view again. He was looking for the tall gentleman. But the latter was not to be seen, either standing against the sky-line or moving on the intervening road. "Lord's sakes!" the carrier muttered uneasily, "what has become of him? He cannot have gone back!"
He continued to stare for some moments at the place where the stranger should have been. At last giving way to a sudden conviction, he got down from his cart, and, leaving it standing, hurried back through the dip, and so to the top of the ridge. The ascent was steep, and he was breathing heavily when he reached the summit and cast his eyes round him. No, the tall gentleman was not to be seen. The brown grass and heather stretched away on this side and that, broken by no human figure. Not even a rabbit was visible on the long white strip of road that in the far distance grew hazy with the fall of night.
"The devil!" the carrier said, shuddering, and feeling more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. "Then he has gone, and----"
He stopped. His eyes were on a dark bundle of clothes that lay a little aside from the road between two clumps of heather. Just a bundle of clothes it seemed, but Master Nickson drew in his breath at sight of it. The peewits and curlews had gone to rest. There was not a sound to be heard on the wide moor, save the beating of his heart.
He would have given pounds to drive on with a clear conscience, yet he forced himself to go up to the huddled form, and to turn it over until the face was exposed. There was a pistol near the right hand, and behind the ear there was a small, a very small hole, from which the blood welled sluggishly. Round this the skin was singed and blackened. The eyes were closed, and the pale face, thoughtful and placid, was scarcely disfigured.
Suddenly Master Nickson fell on his knees. "Dang me, if I don't think he is alive!" he whispered. "For sure, he breathes!"
Convinced of it, the carrier sprang to his feet a different man. He lost not a moment in bringing his cart to the spot and lifting the insensible form into it. Then he led the horse to the road, and started gingerly down the hill. "It is a mercy it happened right at the doctor's door," he muttered, as he turned off the road into a track which seemed to lead through the heather to nowhere in particular. "If he lives five minutes longer he will be in good hands."
A stranger would have wondered where the doctor lived; for there was no signs of a house to be seen. But when the wheels had rolled noiselessly over the sward a hundred yards a faint curl of smoke became visible, rising from the ground in front. A few more paces brought the tops of trees to view, and nestling among them the gables of an old stone house, standing below the level of the moor in a gully or ravine, that here began to run down from the watershed towards Bradfield and the Loxley. The track Nickson was following led to