THE Reverend Meredith Brander had not been Vicar of Rishton and compulsory student of the wiles of frail humanity for fourteen years for nothing. When from his study window he saw Ned Mitchell—after many yawns, several sleepy stretchings out of his arms, and an occasional nod of the head—retire from his back door and shut himself in, it seemed to the vicar by no means certain that his neighbor had gone to bed. So he withdrew a little way into the shelter of his window curtains, and remained on the watch, beguiling the time by composing a very pretty opening for next Sunday morning’s sermon, wherein the rising moon, as it showed more and more of his laurels, was used to typify the grace of repentance illuminating the dark places of the heart.
And the result justified Mr. Brander’s doubts. Ned Mitchell did, it is true, go to bed, but he speedily got up again, impelled to this freak partly by the pain in his injured leg and partly by his unsatisfied curiosity concerning the accomplishments of his dogs. The vicar smiled as, after an hour and a half’s watching, he saw Ned’s candle glimmering weakly through the blinds; first on the upper floor of the cottage, and then on the lower. Presently Ned himself re-appeared at the back door, which he set wide open, before proceeding to draw on his hands a pair of stout leather gloves. Then he retreated into the cottage again, and gave the vicar time to open his window a little way very softly. As he did so, sounds of yelping and scuffling reached his ears from the cottage, and a few moments later the hounds rushed out into the garden.
The month was May, and in this cold north country the trees both in the vicar’s garden and in that of his neighbor were as yet only thinly covered with leaves; so that there was little to hide the movements of the animals, which, after a preliminary scamper round the house and an attempt to get through the bars of the gate, began to sneak about close to the walls and under the shrubs, sniffing, prowling, scratching, like uncanny creatures half seen in the moonlight, making the branches of the evergreens sway and rustle, and uttering from time to time a yelping, whining sound, as they grubbed and searched restlessly for food. The vicar pulled aside his curtain and watched with great interest. The hounds were getting—whether by accident or led by scent he could not yet tell—nearer and nearer to the shrub under which Ned Mitchell had buried the untempting bones. Ned himself, from the upper floor of the cottage, was intently watching them. Hither and thither the brutes roamed, in apparently random search for something to appease their hunger. With nose pointed always to the earth they crept slowly along, or bounded a few paces, sometimes raising the night echoes by a deep howl, more often uttering the low, wolfish sounds of half-starved savage creatures. But aimless as their wanderings seemed to be, often as they deviated from a straight course to it, they did both come, slowly but surely, nearer to the auricula. The vicar rose from his chair; Ned Mitchell hung his whole body out of his little window. As the animals drew closer to the place where the bones were hidden, they seemed to the careful eyes of the watcher to grow more excited, to yelp and whine more savagely, to sniff the cold earth with keener nostrils. At last the muzzle of one of the hounds touched the prickly leaves of one of the lowest branches of the auricula. He drew back with a snort of pain. A minute later, however, drawn by his irresistible instinct, he returned, and, making a furious attempt to pass under the low branches, retreated again, whining and savage from the effect of the pricks he had received. The third time both dogs drew near together, and this time—regardless of the scratches inflicted by the thorny boughs on their backs—they pushed their way under the auricula, and began to grub and to scratch up the earth with might and main.
In an incredibly short space of time, considering the depth of earth with which Ned had covered them, the bloodhounds had dug up the buried bones and were crunching them ravenously with their powerful jaws. Ned, uttering a short laugh of triumph, raised his head and caught sight of the vicar, who now, regardless of concealment, was pressing close to the window panes of his study a face which looked of a greenish pallor in the moonlight. Ned watched him with an intent, glaring gaze for a few seconds; then, shutting his little window rapidly and noiselessly, he slipped out of the cottage by the front door, and, making his way round to the back stealthily under cover of the evergreens, crept along in the shadow under the dividing wall until he stood, unseen by the vicar, almost under the latter’s window. After the lapse of a few moments his curiosity was rewarded.
“Poor Vernon! My poor brother!” murmured the vicar with a heavy sigh.
Then Ned, hugging himself and indulging in a knowing smile of satisfaction, heard the study window close.
He crept back into his little house by the way he had come, narrowly escaping the attentions of his hounds, which, having quickly finished the scanty meal the dry bones afforded them, seemed inclined to try, as more nourishing, the person of their master. He went indoors, armed himself with a plate of raw meat in one hand and a short whip in the other, and calling them into the house succeeded in shutting them up once more in the room they had previously occupied.
“Good dogs! good dogs!” he said, approvingly, as he stood at the crack of the door and watched them snarling over the food. “That’s nothing to the meal you shall have when you’ve hunted out the next lot of old bones I shall set you grubbing for.”
And with another grim chuckle as he closed the back door and gave a glance at the now deserted study window of the Vicarage, Ned Mitchell retired for the night with a light heart and a good conscience.
Next morning Ned was early on the watch, in spite of the fact that the wound in his leg gave him a good deal of pain. He saw the vicar go out a couple of hours earlier than usual; and instead of walking, as was his custom in the morning, he was on his cob. Ned nodded to him as he went by, and timed his absence by a ponderous gold watch which was with him night and day.
“An hour and twenty minutes,” he said to himself, as Mr. Brander returned at an ambling, clerical pace, and, meeting the nurse with his little son descending the hill for their morning walk, gave the boy a ride in front of him as far as the stables. “Yes, parson; just long enough to ride to St. Cuthbert’s, catch your brother before he started on his parish work, have a quarter of an hour’s chat—about the weather, let us say—and be back in time for your own morning walk.”
Perhaps Ned Mitchell’s shrewd face betrayed his suspicions; perhaps the wily vicar’s knowledge of men was greater than any that books on divinity could impart; for, seeing the colonist leaning as usual over his garden gate, his shrewd eyes lazily blinking in the spring sunshine, Mr. Brander nodded, wished him good-morning, and added, cheerfully—
“On the watch, eh?”
“Perhaps, vicar,” answered Ned, touching his hat, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.
“How are the pets this morning, after their night’s work?”
“Night’s work?” echoed Ned, who had entertained the mean suspicion that the vicar would not own to his nocturnal observations.
“Yes, I did a little bit of spying too last night,” answered Mr. Brander, who seemed to take a frank and boyish delight in an open and declared warfare with his neighbor. “How’s the leg this morning?”
Ned, who chose to think that the vicar might have prevented the injury to his limb if it had so pleased him, answered with a tone which was in marked contrast to the good humor of the other.
“It’ll do,” he said, shortly. “How’s your brother this morning?”
Again Mr. Brander seemed to take a buoyant pleasure in his antagonist’s cuteness.
“My brother is very well,” he said, smiling. “And I’m sure, whatever you may think, that he would be quite pleased to hear of your kind inquiries.”
“Well, we shall see about that,” said Ned. “Now, come, parson,” he went on, persuasively, “you might just as well confess what I know—that you rode over to St. Cuthbert’s this morning to put him on his guard against my tricks.”
“And may not one with good reason put an innocent man on his guard against an avowed enemy?”
“I am not your brother’s enemy, Mr. Brander. I am the enemy of the man who murdered my sister. It is you who are saying that they are one and the same.”
“No, no, no!” broke out the vicar, with vehemence unusual to him. “The fact is, you have come here with what you consider a strong case against the poor fellow, and everything you hear goes to pad up that case. If I believed in my brother’s guilt, do you suppose I should leave my little daughter in his care, as I have done for the last week, and intend to do for another fortnight?”
“Why not parson?” said Ned, very quietly. “Neither you nor I are simple enough to think the worse of a man because he happens to have made a little slip by the way. The man who murdered my sister didn’t say to himself, ‘I will change my whole course of life and become a murderer,’ as if it were a profession. No, he is going about the world at this moment just like you or me, doing his daily duty as well as he can, and perhaps feeling sorry enough for that little slip to better his life in atonement for it.”
“Indeed, indeed he is,” broke in the vicar, earnestly. “If you could see how my brother works: how he tries by every means—”
“Hadn’t we better leave your brother’s name out of the discussion?” asked Ned, with a touch of dry insolence. “You are not anxious to fix the noose round his neck yourself, I suppose.”
The poor vicar looked beyond measure crestfallen and disconcerted. After all his assertions of his brother’s innocence, to have betrayed himself like that! He stammered and tried to explain away his unfortunate admission; but not succeeding very well, he made haste to cut short the conversation and retreat into the house with his little son.
Ned Mitchell was not left long without an object to interest him. He remained sunning himself at his garden gate for some minutes after Mr. Brander’s disappearance, and then retired into his cottage, from one of the tree-shaded windows of which he soon saw a person approaching, at sight of whom his rugged features seemed to tighten, the only sign they ever gave of unusual excitement. It was Vernon Brander. From the curious glances which the clergyman cast in the direction of the room in which the bloodhounds, now asleep after a good meal, were still confined, it was clear he had been fully informed concerning them. He stopped before the garden fence, peering among the evergreens with evident interest. But as Ned appeared at the door, with the intention of a little talk with him, he hurried on towards the Vicarage without another glance at the cottage. Ned looked after him with a curling lip.
“I suppose some people would admire that fellow, with his lanky face and his good deeds. But I never did have any fancy for your martyrs, especially when their private life won’t bear looking into.”
And after watching the clergyman until he had turned into the private road, Ned directed his attention to two visitors, who, attracted by certain rumors about the occupant of the cottage, and the menagerie he had set up there, had joined their forces on the way to pay Mr. Mitchell a morning call.
These visitors were Mr. Denison and Fred Williams. Fred had by no means got the better of his violent admiration for Olivia Denison. But having found her persistently “out” when he called at the farm, and persistently curt when he met her out of doors, he had consoled himself for her frigidity by taking a trip to New York, whence he had now not long returned. To signalize his recent achievements in the way of travel, he wore a wide-brimmed hat and a sea-sick complexion, and carried a revolver in a leather belt. This was his first meeting with any of the Hall Farm people since his return, so that, on coming face to face with Mr. Denison, who was passing through the farmyard gate, he overwhelmed him by an outburst of effusive cordiality which astonished that gentleman beyond measure, but raised his spirits, and soothed him with the feeling that here was a friend.
Mr. Denison was one of those simple-natured men who are only too ready to find a friend in any one who addresses to them a kindly word. Things had been going badly with him. Having started farming with all the skin-deep energy of the enthusiastic amateur, he had long ere this discovered the perversity of the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms: the determination with which sheep die of the rot, pigs take the measles, beans and peas refuse to come up at the proper time and crops fail on the slightest provocation, or on none. A suspicion had begun to take root even in his ingenious mind that there was more in farming than one would have thought while going over a farm; and a stronger suspicion still that, if things did not soon “take a turn,” his new profession, instead of making his fortune, would land him in the Bankruptcy Court. He could not fail, moreover, to be alive to the sturdy animosity of his rival, John Oldshaw, and to the ever-increasing pleasure which that amiable person showed on meeting him, as his own prospects of finally getting the Hall Farm at an easy rent seemed to grow better. Olivia, who understood her father’s temperament too well to communicate to him the smallest fact which was likely to trouble him, had never uttered the name of Fred Williams in his presence, except to say with much haughtiness that he was a quite insufferable person. But Mr. Denison, who never disliked anybody, would have been quite ready to set her aversion down to groundless prejudice when Fred listened sympathetically to a rambling account of the last outbreak of the feud with Oldshaw.
“The fellow’s such a cad, too,” complained Mr. Denison, mildly. “Not that I should think the worse of him for not being a gentleman,” he added. “His son is a nice lad, a very nice lad, and we get on together admirably. If he were only in one’s own class there might be a Montague and Capulet end to the business, I fancy; for if he were a little better educated I should almost fancy he was in love with my daughter Olivia. You may have seen Olivia?” he continued, naively, with a touch of paternal pride.
Yes, Mr. Fred Williams might have seen Olivia, but was wise enough not to own to more than this at present.
“Well, the use that young fellow has been to me—me, a man old enough to be his father—is something remarkable. In fact, I don’t mind telling you” (Mr. Denison didn’t mind telling anybody), “that if it hadn’t been for his hints, I should never have been able to carry on the farm at all. Why, if I give him—on the strict Q. T. you know, for it mustn’t come to his father’s ears—a commission to buy me a few sheep, or a well-bred shorthorn, and his father sends him to market for the same purpose, he’ll contrive to get me the best, Mr. Williams—me the best—I assure you.”
“Indeed!” murmured Fred, with a deferential courtesy entirely new to him.
“Yes, I assure you it is so. Now I am not one of those old fools who fancy that a young man will do such a thing out of friendship for a man of his father’s generation. I see there is something behind it,” continued Mr. Denison, astutely. “And I confess,” he went on, growing more confidential as his small friend, while listening more sympathetically than ever, linked his arm within that of the farmer, “that I almost wish my daughter hadn’t been ‘brought up a lady,’ as the saying is, when I see what a very good thing young Oldshaw and I could have made of it together—he with his knowledge of practical farming, and I with my—with my knowledge, my—er—my knowledge of the world, in fact.”
“A very good idea, sir—a very good idea,” assented Fred, enthusiastically. “At the same time you might find a son-in-law who could help you without looking so far beneath you. I say so far,” he went on, “because there is a something about you that—er—makes you sort of different from other people, you know; a dignity or high breeding or something; and perhaps your daughter may have a touch of it. I say perhaps, you know, because I scarcely know Miss Denison.”
“Well,” said Mr. Denison, swallowing the bait with all simplicity, “I suppose there is, as you say, a certain cachet about a man who has lived so much in town or near town as I have. And whatever is best about me my Olivia has certainly inherited. But whoever my child marries, it must be for her own good; not for mine.”
Simple, selfish Mr. Denison thought there was something rather praiseworthy in this declaration. Fred listened shrewdly.
“It must be much worse to be badly off, or—or not to be exactly flourishing, when one has a family to care for and provide for,” he suggested.
Mr. Denison seized his hand.
“My dear lad, that’s just it,” said he, almost earnestly and in all sincerity. “A man on a farm by himself must be in heaven. On the same farm, with a family, he may be in—in quite another place.”
“I see, I see,” murmured Fred, pressing his arm against that of the older man. “Money market tight, and all that.”
“Tight, I believe you!” assented Mr. Denison, bubbling over with his confidences, as weak men do when they have had to exercise an unwonted self-repression. “You would scarcely believe what the tightness amounts to sometimes. A young man in your position couldn’t realize it.”
“Oh, yes, I could though. Nothing of that sort that you have ever borne is as bad as what my guvnor’s gone through lots of times. It was before he was blessed with me, and of course he don’t talk about it; but you may take my word it’s true.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Denison, as if this was almost inconceivable. Though in truth the airs of patronage the elder Mr. Williams liked to assume had often caused him to jibe gently in the bosom of his family at the waste of pounds by men who were better used to pence.
“But it seems worse for you, you know—don’t seem natural somehow. Seems as if it were the right and proper thing for you to have lots of money. Makes me uncomfortable to hear you haven’t, and—and all that sort of thing, you know.”
He gabbled out this broken speech with an air of modest confusion which touched Mr. Denison, whose finances were at a distressingly low ebb. He pressed the young fellow’s arm in silence—rather awkwardly, but with much feeling. Fred went on, quickly—
“Now don’t be offended; you mustn’t be offended. I’m not of enough account in the world for a man like you to be offended with me. But if you wouldn’t mind—you needn’t think anything of it—if you should be tight, I mean strait, anything like hard up, in fact, I should really feel it quite an honor if you would—”
Poor Mr. Denison was quite broken by this offer, which came upon him unexpectedly. He protested, stammered, grew red in the face, and dim in the eyes. He was a gentleman, sensitive, and not without pride. But he was weak-natured—harassed by difficulties he saw no way out of. Although he repeatedly refused Fred’s repeated offers and with perfect sincerity; he did so in a tone which encouraged the young man to think that his yielding was only a question of time and of an adroitly chosen moment.
“At any rate, you’re not offended with me for making the suggestion?” Fred asked at last.
He was glad to see that Mr. Denison looked rather disappointed to think that he was taken at his word.
“Offended! No, indeed, my dear boy. One can’t afford to be offended at a friendly offer nowadays.”
“I daresay, you know, I haven’t put it as nicely as I might, and that’s why you go on refusing. Of course my manners are not up to yours. You’re refined; I’m not. But I mean what I say, and that’s something; if you can’t be refined and all that, any way it’s something to be sincere.”
“It’s everything, in my opinion. I shall not forget your disinterested kindness, Williams. But what put it into your head I can’t think.”
“Came like a flash, you know,” answered the young fellow, promptly. “Gentleman—handsome, dignified gentleman, credit to the parish—looks humped. What’s the cause? Sure to be the old thing—money. Besides, we’ve a mutual interest, you and I; you’re fond of dogs. I suppose you’ve come up to see those hounds they say Mitchell’s got?” he suggested.
For, on reaching the garden paling of Church Cottage, they had both stopped, as if their journey were at an end.
“Well, yes—no; I had come to see Mitchell, certainly; and I had heard about these hounds he’s brought back with him. But that wasn’t altogether my reason for coming.”
He would have babbled out his reason with his usual ingenuousness if Ned had not interrupted the conversation by calling “Good-morning!” approaching them in a leisurely manner at the same time.
“I know what you’ve come for,” he said, with a nod to the younger man. “They’re in there. Don’t be too familiar, unless you want to leave a pound of flesh with them.”
And he jerked his head back in the direction of the room where the bloodhounds were kept. Fred Williams did not wait for further conversation, but raising his hat with great ceremony to Mr. Denison, and shaking his hand warmly, he went through the gate and up to the cottage window. Ned threw at him with some disdain what may be described as half a glance.
“Unlicked cub, that!” he said, not much caring whether the subject of his remark heard it or not.
The guileless and grateful Mr. Denison demurred at this, and Ned did not think the point worth discussing.
“I suppose you didn’t come up to talk about dogs?” he asked, drily.
“Why, no. As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Denison, with the hesitation of a person unused to come straight to the point, “I have heard odd reports about; I—I—”
“Have come to the wrong shop, Mr. Denison, if you expect to hear any village gossip from me.”
“Quite so, quite so. But everybody knows now why you’re here,” said Mr. Denison. “And as the man they say you’re after is an admirer of my daughter’s—”
“‘They say’ a lot of things, Mr. Denison, which I’d advise you not to listen to.”
“But I’ve been quite discourteous to this gentleman on the strength of your suspicions!”
“Well, I should find some stronger ground to go upon before I was discourteous again.”
“Then you don’t believe these dreadful stories?”
“I know nothing of any dreadful stories.”
“Mr. Mitchell, I beg you to be plain with me. Am I right in refusing to have anything to say to—a certain clerical neighbor of ours?”
“Mr. Denison, if my advice is worth anything, have nothing to do with any clerical neighbors.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, that is enough for me. I see you wish to steer clear of libel. But I understand your warning, and I thank you. Vernon Brander shall not enter my house again.”
He wished the colonist good-morning, and went back to his farm with a more satisfied conscience. His wife, then, had not been so far wrong in her estimate of the Vicar of St. Cuthbert’s, though her treatment might have been open to criticism. But Ned Mitchell looked after him with the tight-lipped smile of contempt with which he was always so ready.
“Does he really think a few mumbling words from him will turn that strong-willed lass, I wonder?” thought he.
And dismissing the subject with a short laugh of derision, his thoughts turned to his hounds, and to a plan which he was nourishing very near his heart.
That very day he resolved to put it into practice. In the early part of the afternoon, therefore, he strolled down to St. Cuthbert’s, found the churchyard gate securely fastened, and, making a circuit of the walls, discovered a point where it was of no very formidable height.
“I think my beauties could do that!” chuckled he to himself. And returning straight to his cottage, he remained within doors until the sun began to go down.
Then, going, as he now did without fear, into the room where the hounds, again ravenous with hunger, were yelping and savagely howling, he cowed them with a small whip, which he did not scruple to use cruelly, and securing the animals in a leash, left his little dwelling with them. The hounds were fierce, strong, and difficult to manage. Ned, who still limped in pain from the effects of the bite one of them had given him the night before, cursed them below his breath one moment and burst out into enthusiastic praises of them the next. He made his way with them direct to St. Cuthbert’s, going over the fields. It was growing dusk; the walk was a lonely one; he did not see a single human being as he made his way slowly along, surprised at the ever-increasing pain his wounded limb caused him.
At last he came in sight of the ruined tower, the patched-up walls of which bulged out dangerously, threatening constantly to fall, a mass of ill-assorted fragments of brick and stone, wood and tiles, into the disused graveyard beneath.
“Steady, my beauties, steady!” said he to the yelping hounds. “Your work is going to begin, my dears! Steady now, steady!”
And he made his way, with the hounds still straining at the leash, to the spot he had picked out that afternoon.
“There are some old bones for you in there, or I’m much mistaken, that will be worth a king’s ransom to me, and a good home for the rest of your days to you, my beauties.”
The hounds growled and sniffed, and leaped up about him, as if madly eager to begin their grim hunt. Close up to the wall of the old graveyard he came, and peered over at the irregular mounds, overgrown with rank grass and weeds. There was little daylight left, but his keen eyes could still see dimly into each dark corner, filled with old stones and decaying vegetation. His hands were trembling, stolid as he was, with his eagerness to let the hounds go. His eyes were hungrily roaming over the neglected enclosure where he believed the clue to his secret to lie, when suddenly a sound came to his ears which paralyzed his arms and seemed to stop his fast-drawn breath. It was the voice of a little child.
Looking again more intently than before into the chaos of broken and misplaced tombstones, he saw, peering out from behind a tuft of shaggy briar and weed, the face of a little child. It was tiny Kate Brander. Ned looked at the fierce brutes and shivered. Another moment and they would have been loose in the graveyard, ravenous and blood hungry. Then the expression of his face changed.
“Yes, he has got the best of this move; curse him! But the game’s not played out yet.”
And, with a lowering face, and slow, heavy gait, he turned, with his yelping brood, towards the road home.