THE stolid calmness of Ned Mitchell’s every-day demeanor, which was but a mask for strong passions and still stronger resolutions, broke down entirely under his disappointment. If the mouldy old graveyard of St. Cuthbert’s had been a paradise of sweet sights and sounds and scents, he could not have been more maddened by the impossibility of entering it. Even the innocent child herself, whose presence among the ruined graves had prevented him from letting his hounds loose, shared his anger.
“They can’t keep the brat there always, that’s one thing,” he said to himself, as he limped along.
He found the return journey over the fields more tedious than he—a strong, healthy man, used to bear great fatigues without any ill effect—could have thought possible. The hounds were growing every moment more troublesome, straining harder at the leash, snapping and yelping the while. The wound in his injured leg was beginning to smart and burn, the muscles were swelling most painfully, and long before he reached Rishton Hill every step was causing him acute agony. The last field he had to cross brought him out into the road almost opposite the farmyard gate of Rishton Hall. Leaning against the gate and stroking the shaggy head of a poor old mongrel which had attached itself to the farm since she had been there, was Olivia Denison. She looked very sad, and stared out at the fields and the grey hills beyond with a face out of which all the bright girlish vivacity seemed for the moment to have gone. She started and blushed on seeing Ned Mitchell, who had succeeded in reducing his unruly pets to something like submission, but whose temper had been by no means improved in the task.
“Oh!” she cried, running through the gate and coming fearlessly within the range of the leash, “are these the dogs I’ve heard about?”
“How should I know what you’ve heard?” snapped Ned. “But I know what you’ll feel in a minute if you come within reach of the brutes’ jaws.”
For answer to this speech, Olivia stooped and laid her hand with a firm touch on the head of the animal nearest to her. Whether he had been cowed by Ned’s course of treatment, or whether there was something peculiarly sympathetic to the animals in her bold manner of approaching them, the dog only gave an ungracious growl, but made no attempt to resent her advances more actively.
“And are these—bloodhounds?” she asked, almost with bated breath.
“Yes, that’s what they are,” answered Ned, as if he had been challenged.
Olivia’s breath came more quickly as, still looking down at the brutes, and even playing with the ears of one of them, she listened and evidently read the meaning of his tone.
“What have you got them for?” she asked, raising her head suddenly, and looking at him askance.
“I’ve got them to play sexton for me in St. Cuthbert’s churchyard; to dig up some bones there that were buried with less ceremony than they ought to have had.”
“There are a good many bones in that old churchyard. How do you know your hounds will dig up the right ones?”
“It’s sixty years since any body was buried there—until ten years ago.”
“And if you should happen to come upon these bones, and even be sure they are the right ones, how will you be sure who put them there?”
“I don’t say I shall. But at any rate it will be a step in the right direction. And I shall have my eye on any likely folk who may be about, and see how they take the discovery.”
“It seems to me you’re no better than a detective,” burst out Olivia, hotly.
“Well, I hope I’m no worse,” said Ned, laconically.
Olivia turned her head away, looking hurt and anxious.
Ned, who liked and admired the girl, felt a little sorry. He moved off with his dogs, and began to whistle; but the pain of starting again made him break short off and draw his breath sharply through his teeth. This attracted Olivia’s attention; she watched him as he labored up the hill, and before he had gone very far she ran after him.
“What’s the matter with you, Mr. Mitchell?” she asked. “You walk lame to-night. Have you hurt yourself?”
“No. And what’s that to you if I have?” he answered curtly.
“Nothing, if you don’t think sympathy worth having.”
Ned stopped. The strong-limbed, plucky women he had got used to in Australia, and from whom he had chosen his own wife, were rather lacking in graceful feminine ways; so this pretty speech and gentle tone, coming from a girl whose spirit he admired, touched and softened him.
“What are you up to now?” he asked, gruffly enough, but not without betraying signs of a gentler feeling than he would have owned to. “I know better than to think you’d trouble your head about an old bear like me if you didn’t want to get something out of me.”
“Well, I want to get the pain out of you—and perhaps a little of the surliness too,” she added, archly.
“The first would take a doctor, and the second would take a magician.”
“Are you going to have a doctor?”
“No. I can’t go after one myself, and my establishment doesn’t include anybody I could send.”
“I’ll send for one. I’ll get one of the farm boys to go; or, if there isn’t one about, Mat Oldshaw will go, I know.”
Ned looked at her cynically.
“Poor Mat,” said he. “And to think I was fool enough myself once to run errands for a girl who thought herself as far above me as heaven from earth. When all the time she was dying of love for another chap too. Just the same—just the same.”
Olivia blushed and looked annoyed, but she answered, quietly—
“Mat would do a kind deed for any one, Mr. Mitchell. And I should be sorry for him to think that it is a sign of great wisdom to be discourteous to a woman.”
“Very good,” said Ned grimly. “Sorry I haven’t time to let you exercise your wit on me a little longer. Good-night.”
He hobbled up the hill with great and evident difficulty, his dogs slinking behind him. He was absolutely faint with pain by the time he reached home.
It was quite dark in the cottage when he arrived, and he made his way at once to a shelf in a passage where a box of matches and a candle were kept. But he felt from end to end of the shelf without being able to find either. The dogs, having become excited since their entrance, sniffed about the floor, yelped and pulled afresh at the leash, impeding his movements. He had shut the front door on entering, relying on his candle and match box; so that he could not even see the forms of the struggling animals to avoid them. Two or three times he stumbled and set them growling as he groped his way towards the room where he kept them shut up. A dizziness was creeping over him, which seemed from time to time almost to overcome him, while occasionally for a moment it seemed to leave his head again perfectly clear. He remembered, or thought he remembered, that he had left the door of the room wide open for ventilation; but now he went the whole length of the wall, feeling with his disengaged hand, without finding any opening.
The hounds meanwhile were growing more excited—more troublesome than ever; so that, in his dizzy and wearied condition he could not move or even think with his usual precision. Their behavior, however, at last roused a suspicion in his mind.
“Somebody’s been in here,” he muttered to himself. “And the dogs know it by the scent.”
He had grown bewildered in the darkness, and no longer knew in what part of the passage he was standing, as the dogs, still straining to get free, pulled him from side to side. Suddenly he heard the faint creaking of a door. The dizziness was coming upon him again, and he turned, in a half-blind, stupefied way; saw, or thought he saw, a faint light come as if through an open door, and the next moment found himself lying on the floor, while the sound of the hasty shutting of another door behind him fell upon his dull ears. After this he became unconscious. When Ned came to himself, it was a long time before he could remember, even in the vaguest manner, the experiences he had just gone through. He fancied himself in one of the dungeons he had read about in his boyhood, which bold, bad barons built under their castles for unlucky prisoners who fell into their hands. In strange contrast to the prosaic reflections which occupied his mind in every-day waking hours, the most fantastic fancies now passed through his brain; that he was a prisoner, flung down here by an enemy; that fetters of red-hot iron had been fastened to one his legs. He thought he heard the sounds of every-day life, muffled by the thick stone ceiling between, in the castle above him; the noises of animals; sounds of a man’s voice; then of a woman’s. He recognized the tones of the latter, he felt sure, though he could not remember the possessor’s name. Then suddenly a light was struck in his dungeon and a hand touched him, and it flashed upon him that he had come back, that he was in his own cottage lying on the stone floor of the passage, with a grey-bearded man kneeling beside him, and a woman’s skirt brushing against his feet.
“He must have fallen very heavily,” whispered the woman.
And Ned’s senses came fully back to him.
“Of course,” he murmured to himself, “it’s Miss Denison.”
“He can’t have fallen as heavily as that unassisted,” said the grey-bearded man, whom Ned now knew to be the doctor.
“Do you mean that he was thrown down?” asked Olivia, in a whisper of tragic earnestness.
“Yes. Look at the blood on the stones.”
“Oh!” The girl’s teeth chattered with horror.
There was a pause, while the doctor lifted him gently.
“That’s the leg he limps with,” said the girl.
The doctor touched the wounded limb gently, but the action made Ned moan.
“What shall I do with the dogs?” asked Olivia, presently, in the same low voice. “I think they are kept in one of these rooms. My father said so.”
“Turn the brutes loose in the garden.”
But Ned, though the movement caused him acute pain in his injured leg, struggled up on one arm and shook his head feebly.
“No, no,” he said, in a weak, husky voice; “I’m going to be ill, I know. Take me upstairs to my room, and put the dogs into the room on the opposite side of the landing.”
“Oh, come, we can’t have that. It wouldn’t be a proper arrangement at all—most unhealthy,” objected the doctor.
Ned glared at him, and instantly began to try, in a dogged manner, to get up.
“If you won’t do it, or let it be done, why, hang you! I’ll do it myself,” he panted out.
“I’ll do it, Mr. Mitchell,” said the girl’s clear voice.
Ned heard her go upstairs, soothing and encouraging the hounds, which scrambled and shuffled up after her.
“That’s a good plucky ’un,” he then remarked to the doctor.
And satisfied now that his savage pets were safely disposed of, he fell back on the doctor’s arm. For there was a curious buzzing noise in his ears, and his head felt alternately very heavy and very light. He wanted to keep his senses clear until the young girl should come down again, but it was only by a strong and exhausting effort that he succeeded. As soon as she reached the bottom stair, Olivia heard him addressing her in a faint voice.
“Thanks—thanks for what you’ve done. I’m not ungrateful. Now get me some one—to look after me—who’s got a little nerve. For I don’t care—how they treat me—but they must take care—of my dogs. For somebody wants to get at my dogs, I know. And they must be prevented—prevented. You’ll see to this. Promise me.”
“Yes, I will, I promise,” said Olivia, in a firm voice, afraid that she was speaking to a dying man.
She had scarcely uttered the words when he again became insensible.
Olivia was in sore distress as to the manner of fulfilling her promise. On the one hand, she had to keep her word by finding a nurse for him who would not be afraid of the hounds; on the other, she was particularly anxious that, if he should grow delirious, his ravings should not be heard by any one who would chatter about them.
“We must get him to bed,” said the doctor, as she stood debating this difficulty. “The young man who came for me—is he about?”
“Mat Oldshaw? Oh, yes, I expect so. He stayed in the garden when we came in. He wouldn’t go away without asking if there was anything more he could do.”
“Ask him to come in, if he is there, please.”
Olivia went out into the garden. As she passed under the porch, she saw a man slink limping away from the side of Mat, who was standing near the gate, and pass behind a bushy screen of evergreens. She sprang forward to the gate, but the man had gone out of sight.
“Mat,” she asked, in a frightened voice, “who was that?”
“Nobbut a tramp,” he answered. “Nobody to freight yer. It’s ten yeer an’ more since he wur in these parts.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” said Olivia, decidedly. “He was here four months ago. His name is Abel Squires, isn’t it?”
“Ay, that be his name, sure enough,” answered Mat, with surprise. “Wheer did you happen upon him?”
“Never mind. I want to know what he’s doing about here.”
“He wants to get a sight o’ Mester Mitchell, he says.”
“But what did he sneak away like that for when he saw me come out, instead of waiting to ask if he could see him?”
“He doan’t want to be seen aboot here, he says.”
“Mat,” cried the girl, earnestly, after a few moments’ thought, “Mr. Mitchell has been knocked down and hurt. The doctor wants you to help carry him upstairs. I wonder if it was this tramp who did it.”
“Noa, Miss, but Ah knaw who did,” said a rough voice so close to her that it startled her.
She turned and saw the one-legged man whose conversation with Vernon Brander she had overheard in the churchyard. The ground was so soft with recent rains that his wooden leg had made no noise as he approached. Olivia drew her breath sharply through her teeth and felt cold with terror as she looked at his weather-worn, strangely inexpressive face. Here, she thought, was the man whose silence about that miserable night’s work of ten years ago Vernon had had so much difficulty in procuring. And he had come with the express purpose of seeing Ned Mitchell, whom she looked upon as Vernon’s avowed enemy.
“You know who knocked Mr. Mitchell down?” she said, faintly.
“Ay,” said Abel Squires, with a nod.
She had a fancy that this man was trying to implicate Vernon, and she scarcely dared to frame her next question.
“You mean that you saw him do it?” she asked after a short pause.
“Ah werr standin’ in’s bit o’ garden at back theer,” said he, jerking his head in the direction of the cottage. “An’ Ah see a mon go in, and after a bit Ah see him coom aht. An’ if Mester Mitchell wur knocked deaun,” he went on, doggedly, “Ah say Ah knaw t’ mon as did it. An’ it beant no good to ask me who t’was, for Ah mean to keeap me awn counsel; Ah’m used to’t.”
Olivia did not know what to make of the man. Though his voice was rough, his manner of speech was mild, and betrayed no hostile feeling towards anybody.
“Are you a friend of Mr. Mitchell’s?” she asked tentatively.
“Ay,” nodded Abel, good-humoredly. “He’s never done naw harm to me.”
Seized with a bold idea, Olivia scanned the man narrowly from head to foot.
“Will you tell me what business brought you to see Mr. Mitchell?” she asked, frankly.
Abel Squires examined the girl’s face closely in his turn.
“What do you knaw abaht it?” he asked, shortly.
“I know that he is trying to find out a secret; a secret which I think you know.”
“Maybe Ah do; maybe Ah don’t; anyhow, Ah doan’t prate abaht it!”
“Then what do you want to see Mr. Mitchell for?”
“Ah think he got summat aht o’ me last toime Ah see him; Ah want to knaw how mooch.”
The girl’s face cleared.
“Could you nurse a sick man?” she asked. “Mr. Mitchell is ill, delirious, and I don’t want to trust him to any prattling old woman.”
“Ay,” said Abel, promptly; “Ah can do’t.”
“Come in with me, and let us see what the doctor says,” said Olivia, leading the way into the cottage with eager footsteps.
She was surprised at her own daring in taking this step; but she argued with herself that if the tramp, possessing Vernon’s secret, as she knew he did, should wish to turn informer, there was no possibility of preventing him, while he would be within reach of Vernon’s influence as long as he was attending on the sick man. If, on the other hand, he was loyally anxious to keep it, there could be no better person to watch over the man from whom she wished to keep the truth.
The doctor asked Abel a few questions, and agreed that he might be tried as sick nurse. Tramp though he was, Squires was a man of some intelligence, and had picked up many a scrap of practical knowledge in the wanderings in which his life had been almost wholly spent. Before the doctor and Olivia had left the house, they felt that the patient was in no unskilful hands, while the hounds were under control of a man entirely without fear.
As she left the cottage, after listening fearfully for some minutes to the incoherent mutterings of its unlucky tenant, Olivia met Mat, who was dutifully waiting in the garden to learn whether she had any more work for him. She stopped short on seeing him, and said, “Oh!” in some confusion.
“What is it?” asked Mat, whose loyal admiration for her made him quick of apprehension. “You want summat more done. Whatever it mebbe, Ah’m ready to do ’t.”
“You are good, Mat,” she said, gratefully, with a bright blush. “Nobody is ever as ready to help me as you, or so quick to know when one wants help.”
“Ah knaw more’n that,” said Mat, encouraged by her praise. “Ah knaw, Ah guess, what you want done.”
The color in Olivia’s cheeks grew deeper than ever. She said nothing, however; so Mat, after a short pause, went on—
“You want somebody to knaw what happened.”
Olivia laughed bashfully. “You’re an accomplished thought reader, Mat. Who is the person?”
“Parson Vernon.”
“Well, don’t you think he ought to know, as—as he’s a friend of Mr. Mitchell’s?”
“Ay,” said Mat. “Ah’ll go straight off to him neow.”
“Thank you, Mat. And be sure you don’t forget to tell him that Abel Squires is going to nurse him.”
“Ah’ll mahnd that. Good-night, Miss Olivia.”
“Good-night, Mat. I don’t know what I should have done without you this evening.”
Mat blushed. “You knaw, Miss,” he said, in a bashful, strangled voice, “you’re as welcome as t’ flowers in Meay to aught as Ah can do—neow and any toime.”
And he pulled off his cap awkwardly without looking at her, and ran off down the hill before he had even stopped to replace it; while Miss Denison, much more leisurely, started on her way home to the farm.
Long before Ned Mitchell’s illness was over, poor Olivia had grave reason to repent her choice of an attendant. Old Sarah Wall, who had been in the habit of coming in for a couple of hours daily to do the cleaning, was now installed permanently on the ground floor, which she had all to herself. The front door was kept on the chain, and to all inquirers it was Mrs. Wall’s duty to answer that Mr. Mitchell was getting on very well, but was not allowed to see any one. If any further questions were put to her, or a wish expressed to see his attendant, she put on a convenient deafness, and presently shut the door. No one was admitted but the doctor, even when Ned was well enough to sit up at the front window, with one or other of his fierce hounds at the side of his chair, and his odd-looking attendant in the back ground. The evident good understanding which existed between master and man filled Olivia with foreboding, and caused still deeper anxiety to Vernon Brander, who, having called at the cottage day after day, and failed to extract any information from Sarah Wall, deliberately walked round to the back garden and climbed into one of the windows of the upper floor by means of the water butt. Here he came face to face with Abel Squires, who, hearing the noise, came out of his master’s room to find out the cause. He tried to retreat on seeing Vernon, but the latter seized his arm and detained him.
“Look here,” said he, in a low voice, but very sternly; “you’ve broken faith, I see.”
Abel’s wooden face never changed.
“Well,” said he doggedly, “Ah doan’t say Ah haven’t. Boot it was forced aht o’ me when Ah wur droonk. That’s all Ah have to say.”
And to demonstrate this he folded his arms tightly, and met the clergyman’s eyes stubbornly and without flinching.
“So that man knows everything?” asked Vernon, in a low voice, glancing at the door of Ned Mitchell’s room.
“Pretty nigh all as Ah knaw.”
Vernon’s face was livid. He leaned against the window-sill and looked out fixedly into the Vicarage garden.
“He can’t do anything,” he muttered.
“He means to try,” said Abel. “Hast tha seen t’ dogs?”
“No, but I’ve heard about them; and they won’t help him much,” answered Vernon, quietly.
“Tarn’t easy to trick ’un,” said Abel, warningly. “He’s none so over sharp, but he’s sure.”
Vernon said nothing to this; after a short pause, he bade Abel good-day very shortly, and went downstairs. Old Sarah Wall was standing at the door, in colloquy with some one outside. She cried out when she felt a man’s hand on her shoulder; and Vernon, hastily telling her to be quiet, drew back the chain and let himself out. He started in his turn on finding himself face to face with Olivia Denison. Being overwhelmed with anxiety on his account, it was only a natural result of her girlish modesty that she should appear freezingly cold and distant in her manner towards him, even though her curt greeting caused him evident pain. After the exchange of a very few indifferent words, Vernon raised his cap stiffly and left her; while she, angry with him, still more angry with herself, walked slowly down the hill, more anxious, more miserable on his account than ever.
It was on the ninth day after the beginning of his illness that Ned Mitchell, whose impatience to be well materially retarded his recovery, could at last bear confinement no longer, and seized the opportunity of a short absence of Abel’s in the village to make his way once more down to St. Cuthbert’s churchyard. He wanted to take his hounds with him, but decided that it would be rash to do so until he was more sure of his own powers of reaching his destination. For he found, much to his own disgust, that he felt weak and giddy. However, he set out on his walk as quickly as he could, taking his way over the fields to escape observation. Evening was closing in—an evening in late June, warm and balmy. He chose to set down to the summer heat the dizziness which he felt creeping over him long before the ruined tower of St. Cuthbert’s came in sight.
When he reached the lane which divided the last field from the churchyard, his head swam and he staggered across the road and caught the gate for support. After a minute’s rest, he raised his head and looked over into the enclosure. Was he delirious again? Had the wild fancies of his illness come back to torment him? He saw before him, instead of broken, moss-grown headstones, rank weeds, and misshapen mounds of earth and rubbish, a churchyard as neat and trim as that of Rishton itself, with tombstones set straight in the ground, well gravelled paths, and borders of flowers. The churchyard wall was garnished along the top with broken glass, and two notice boards, respectively at the right- and left-hand of the gate, bore these words: “Visitors are requested not to pluck the flowers,” and “Dogs not admitted.”
This last inscription reassured Ned as to the state of his own brain. He laughed savagely to himself, and after a few minutes’ rest, which he spent in grim contemplation of the altered churchyard, he turned to go home.
Whether he had “got his second wind,” or whether the rage he felt stimulated his powers, Ned returned home much faster than he came. Just outside the cottage gate he met Sarah Wall, wringing her hands and muttering to herself in deepest distress.
“What’s the matter with the woman?” asked Ned, in his surliest tones.
“Oh, sir! the dogs, the dogs! It warn’t my fault; it warn’t indeed! How they got out I know no more than the babe unborn!”
“Get out!” shouted Ned, with fury. “What the d——. You wretched old woman. Are they lost? Have they got away?”
“Oh, sir, don’tee speak like that; don’tee look so; it warn’t my fault. Abel should have been there to look after ’em.”
Ned kept down his rage until he got out of her what he wanted to know.
“What happened then? Tell me at once, quietly. Where are the dogs?”
“Oh, sir, they’re in there,” said the old woman, pointing with a trembling finger to the cottage. “And now if you was to flay me alive could I tell you how—”
But Ned did not stay to listen. He was up the garden path and through the porch before she could utter half a dozen words. An oath and a howl of rage burst from his lips at the sight which met his eyes. Stretched on the floor of the stone passage lay the dead bodies of the two bloodhounds, foam and blood still on their jaws, their attitude showing that they had expired in great agony. Ned hung over them for a moment, touched them; they were scarcely cold. Then he stood bolt upright with a livid face.
“They have been poisoned!” he whispered, in a harsh, gurgling voice.