When Mrs. Garth reached home, after her interview with Rotha in the road, there was a velvety softness in her manner as of one who had a sense of smooth satisfaction with herself and her surroundings.
The blacksmith, who was working at a little bench which he had set up in the kitchen, was also in a mood of more than usual cheerfulness.
“Ey, he's caught—as good as caught,” said Mrs. Garth.
Her son laughed, but there was the note of forced merriment in his voice.
“Where do they say he is—Lancaster?”
“That's it, not a doubt on't.”
“Were they sure of him—the man at Lancaster?”
“No, but I were when they telt me what mak of man it was.”
The blacksmith laughed again over a chisel which he was tempering.
“It's nothing to me, is it, mother?”
“Nowt in the warld, Joey, ma lad.”
“They are after him for a traitor, but I cannot see as it's anything to me what they do with him when they catch hod on him; it's nothing to me, is it, mother?”
“Nowt.”
Garth chuckled audibly. Then in a low tone he added,—
“Nor nothing to me what comes of his kin afterwards.”
He paused in his work; his manner changed; he turned to where Mrs. Garth was coiled up before the fire.
“Had he any kin, mother?”
Mrs. Garth glanced quickly up at her son.
“A brother, na mair.”
“What sort of a man, mother?”
“The spit of hissel'.”
“Seen anything of him?”
“Not for twenty year.”
“Nor want to neither?”
Mrs. Garth curled her lip.
The night of the day on which the officers of the Sheriff's court of Carlisle visited Shoulthwaite, the night of Simeon Stagg's departure from Wythburn in pursuit of Ralph, the night of Rotha's sorrow and her soul's travail in that solitary house among the mountains, was a night of gayety and festival in the illuminated streets of old Lancaster. The morning had been wet and chill, but the rain-clouds swept northward as the day wore on, and at sundown the red bars belted the leaden sky that lay to the west of the towers of the gray castle on the hill.
A proclamation by the King had to be read that day, and the ancient city had done all that could be done under many depressing conditions to receive the royal message with fitting honors. Flags that had lain long furled, floated from parapet and pediment, from window and balcony, from tower and turret. Doors were thrown open that had not always swung wide on their hinges, and open house was kept in many quarters.
Towards noon a man mounted the steps in the Market Place, and read this first of the King's proclamations and nailed it to the Cross.
A company of red-coated soldiers were marched from the Castle Hill to the hill on the southwest, which had been thrown up six years before by the russet-coated soldiery who had attacked and seized the castle. Then they were marched back and disbanded for the night.
When darkness fell over highway and byway, fires were lit down the middle of the narrow streets, and they sent up wide flakes of light that brightened the fronts of the half-timbered houses on either side, and shot a red glow into the sky, where the square walls of the Dungeon Tower stood out against dark rolling clouds. Little knots of people were at every corner, and groups of the baser sort were gathered about every fire. Gossip and laughter and the click of the drinking-horn fell everywhere on the ear. But the night was still young, and order as yet prevailed.
The Market Place was the scene of highest activity. Numbers of men and boys sat and stood on the steps of the Cross, discussing the proclamation that had been read there. Now and again some youth of more scholarship than the rest held a link to the paper, and lisped and stammered through its bewildering sentences for the benefit of a circle of listeners who craned their necks to hear.
The proclamation was against public vice and immorality of various sorts which were unpunishable by law. It set forth that there were many persons who had no method of expressing their allegiance to their Sovereign but that of drinking his health, and others who had so little regard for morality and religion as to have no respect for the virtue of the female sex.
The loyaly of the Lancasterians might be unimpeachable, but their amusement at the proclamation was equally beyond question.
“That from Charles Stuart!” said one, with a laugh; and he added, with more familiarity of affection for his King than reverence for his august state, “What a sly dog he is, to be sure!”
“Who is that big man in the long coat?” said another, who had not participated in the banter of his companions on the Puritanical devices of Charles and his cronies. He was jerking his head aside to where a man whom we have known in other scenes was pushing his way through the crowd.
“Don't know; no one knows, seemingly,” answered the politician whose penetration had solved the mystery of the proclamation against vice and all loose livers.
“He's been in Lancaster this more nor a week, hasn't he?”
“Believe he has; and so has the little withered fellow that haunts him like his shadow. Don't seem over-welcome company, so far as I can see.”
“Where's the little one now?”
“I reckon he's nigh about somewhere.”
Ralph Ray borrowed a link from a boy who was near, and stood before the paper that was posted upon the Cross. Just then a short, pale-faced, elderly man, with quick eyes beneath shaggy brows, elbowed his way between the people and came up close at Ray's side.
It was clearly not his object to read the proclamation, for after a glance at it his eyes were turned towards Ralph's face. If he had hoped to catch the light of an expression there he was disappointed. Ralph read the proclamation without changing a muscle of his countenance. He was returning the link to its owner, when the little man reached out his long finger, and, touching the paper as it hung on the Cross, looked up into Ralph's eyes with a cunning leer, and said, “Unco' gude, eh?”
Ralph made no reply. As though determined to draw him into converse, the little man shrugged his shoulders, and added, “Clarendon's work that, eh?”
There was still no response, so the speaker continued: “It'll deceive none. It's lang sin' the like of it stood true in England—worse luck!”
The dialect in which this was spoken was of that mongrel sort which in these troublous days was sometimes adopted by degenerate Scotchmen who, living in England, had reasons of their own for desiring to conceal their nationality.
“I'll wager it's all a joke,” added the speaker, dropping his voice, but still addressing Ralph, and ignoring the people that stood around them.
Ralph turned about, and, giving but a glance to his interlocutor, passed out of the crowd without a word.
The little man remained a moment or two behind, and then slunk down the street in the direction which Ralph had taken.
There was to be a performance at the theatre that night, and already the people had begun to troop towards St. Leonard's Gate. Chairs were being carried down the causeway, with link-boys walking in front of them, and coaches were winding their way among the fires in the streets. Scarlet cloaks were mingling with the gray jerkins of the townspeople, and swords were here and there clanking on the pavement.
The theatre was a rude wooden structure that stood near the banks of the river, on a vacant plot of ground that bordered the city on the east and skirted the fields. It had a gallery that sloped upwards from the pit, and the more conspicuous seats in it were draped in crimson cloth. The stage, which went out as a square chamber from one side of the circular auditorium, was lighted by lamps that hung above the heads of the actors.
Before the performance began every seat was filled. The men hailed their friends from opposite sides of the house, and laughed and chaffed, and sang snatches of Royalist and other ballads. The women, who for the most part wore veils or masks, whispered together, flirted their fans, and returned without reserve the salutations that were offered them.
Ralph Ray, who was there, stood at the back of the pit, and close at his left was the sinister little man who had earlier in the evening been described as his shadow. Their bearing towards each other was the same as had been observed at the Cross: the one constantly interrogating in a low voice; the other answering with a steadfast glance or not at all.
When the curtain rose, a little butterfly creature, in the blue-and-scarlet costume of a man,—all frills and fluffs and lace and linen,—came forward, with many trips and skips and grimaces, and pronounced a prologue, which consisted of a panegyric on the King and his government in their relations to the stage.
It was not very pointed, conclusive, or emphatic, but it was rewarded with applause, which rose to a general outburst of delighted approval when the rigor of the “late usurpers” was gibbeted in the following fashion:—
“Pretty times, forsooth, of which one of that breed could be the mirror,” whispered the little man at Ralph's elbow.
The play forthwith proceeded, and proved to be the attempt of a gentleman of fashion to compromise the honor of a lady of the Court whom he had mistaken for a courtesan. The audience laughed at every indelicate artifice of the libertine, and screamed when the demure maiden let fall certain remarks which bore a double significance. Finally, when the lady declared her interest in a cage of birds, and the gentleman drew from his pocket a purse of guineas, and, shaking them before her face, asked if those were the dicky-birds she wished for, the enjoyment of the audience passed all bounds of ordinary expression. The men in lace and linen lay back in their seats to give vent to loud guffaws, and the women flirted their fans coquettishly before their eyes, or used them to tap the heads of their male companions in mild and roguish remonstrance.
“Pity they didn't debauch the stage as well as the pulpit and bar, if this is its condition inviolate,” whispered the little man again.
The intervals between the acts were occupied by part of the audience in drinking from the bottles which they carried strapped about their waists, and in singing snatches of songs. One broad-mouthed roysterer on the ground proposed the King's health, and supported the toast by a ballad in which “Great Charles, like Jehovah,” was described as merciful and generous to the foes that would unking him and the vipers that would sting him. The chorus to this loyal lyric was sung by the “groundlings” with heartiness and unanimity:—
Ralph found the atmosphere stifling in this place, which was grown noisome now to wellnigh every sense. He forced his way out through the swaying bodies and swinging arms of the occupants of the pit. As he did so he was conscious, though he did not turn his head, that close behind him, in the opening which he made in the crowd, his inevitable “Shadow” pursued him.
The air breathed free and fresh outside. Ralph walked from St. Leonard's Gate by a back lane to the Dam Side. The river as well as the old town was illuminated. Every boat bore lamps to the masthead. Lamps, too, of many colors, hung downwards from the bridge, and were reflected in their completed circle in the waters beneath them.
The night was growing apace, and the streets were thronged with people, some laughing, some singing, some wrangling, and some fighting. Every tavern and coffee-house, as Ralph went by, sent out into the night its babel of voices. Loyal Lancasterians were within, doing honor to the royal message of that day by observing the spirit while violating the letter of it.
Ralph had walked up the Dam Side near to that point at which the Covel Cross lies to the left, when a couple of drunken men came reeling out of a tavern in front of him. Their dress denoted their profession and rank. They were lieutenants of the regiment which had been newly quartered at the castle. Both were drunk. One was capering about in a hopeless effort to dance; the other was trolling out a stave of the ballad that was just then being sung at the corner of every street:—
The singer who thus described Cromwell and his shame was interrupted by a sudden attack of thirst, and forthwith applied the unfailing antidote contained in a leathern bottle which he held in one hand.
Ralph stepped off the pavement to allow the singer the latitude his condition required, when that person's companion pirouetted into his breast, and went backwards with a smart rebound.
“What's this, stopping the way of a gentleman?” hiccuped the man, bringing himself up with ludicrous effort to his full height, and suspending his capering for the better support of his soldierly dignity.
Then, stepping closer to Ralph, and peering into his face, he cried, “Why, it's the man of mystery, as the sergeant calls him. Here, I say, sir,” continued the drunken officer, drawing with difficulty the sword that had dangled and clanked at his side; “you've got to tell us who you are. Quick, what's your name?”
The man was flourishing his sword with as much apparent knowledge of how to use it as if it had been a marlin-spike. Ralph pushed it aside with a stout stick that he carried, and was passing on, when the singing soldier came up and said, “Never mind his name; but whether he be Presbyter Jack or Quaker George, he must drink to the health of the King. Here,” he cried, filling a drinking-cup from the bottle in his hand, “drink to King Charles and his glory!”
Ralph took the cup, and, pretending to raise it to his lips, cast its contents by a quick gesture over his shoulder, where the liquor fell full in the face of the Shadow, who had at that moment crept up behind him. The soldiers were too drunk to perceive what he had done, and permitted him to go by without further molestation. As he walked on he heard from behind another stave of the ballad, which told how—
“What did the great man himself say?” asked the Shadow, stepping up to Ralph's side. “He said, 'I would rather have a plain, russet-coated captain who knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than what you call a gentleman.' And he was right, eh?”
“God knows,” said Ralph, and turned aside.
He had stopped to look into the middle of a small crowd that had gathered about the corner of the Bridge Lane. A blind fiddler sat on a stool there and played sprightly airs. His hearers consisted chiefly of men and boys. But among them was one young girl in bright ribbons, who was clearly an outcast of the streets. Despite her gay costume, she had a wistful look in her dark eyes, as of one who was on the point of breaking into tears.
The dance tunes suddenly came to an end, and were followed by the long and solemn sweeps of a simple old hymn such as had been known in many an English home for many an age. Gradually the music rose and fell, and then gently, and before any were aware, a sweet, low, girlish voice took up the burden and sang the words. It was the girl of the streets who sang. Was it the memory of some village home that these chords had awakened? Was it the vision of her younger and purer days that came back to her amid the gayeties of this night—of the hamlet, the church, the choir, and of herself singing there?
The hymn melted the hearts of many that stood around, and tears now stood in the singer's downcast eyes.
At that hour of that night, in the solitary homestead far north, among the hills, what was Rotha's travail of soul?
Ralph dropped his head, and felt something surging in his throat.
At the same instant a thick-lipped man with cruel eyes crushed through the people to where the girl stood, and, taking her roughly by the shoulder, pushed her away.
“Hand thy gab,” he said, between clinched teeth; “what's thy business singing hymns in t'streets? Get along home to bed; that's more in thy style, I reckon.”
The girl was stealing away covered with shame, when Ralph parted the people that divided him from the man, and, coming in front of him, laid one hand on his throat. Gasping for breath, the fellow would have struggled to free himself, but Ralph held him like a vise.
“This is not the first time we have met; take care it shall be the last.”
So saying, Ralph flung the man from him, and he fell like an infant at his feet.
Gathering himself up with a look compounded equally of surprise and hatred, the man said, “Nay, nay; do you think it'll be the last? don't you fear it!”
Then he slunk out of the crowd, and it was observed that when he had gained the opposite side of the street, the little, pale-faced elderly person who had been known as Ralph's Shadow, had joined him.
“Is it our man?”
“The same, for sure.”
“Then it must be done the day. We've delayed too long already.”
I. When Ralph lay down in his bed that night in a coffee-house in China Lane, there was no conviction more strongly impressed upon his mind than that it was his instant duty to leave Lancaster. It was obvious that he was watched, and that his presence in the old town had excited suspicion. The man who had pestered him for many days with his unwelcome society was clearly in league with the other man who had insulted the girl. The latter rascal he knew of old for a declared and bitter enemy. Probably the pair were only waiting for authority, perhaps merely for the verification of some surmise, before securing the aid of the constable to apprehend him. He must leave Lancaster, and at once.
Ralph rose from his bed and dressed himself afresh. He strapped his broad pack across his back, called his hostess, and paid his score. “Must the gentleman start away at midnight?” Yes; a sudden call compelled him. “Should she brew him a pot of hot ale?—the nights were chill in winter.” Not to-night; he must leave without delay.
When Ralph walked through the streets of Lancaster that cold midnight, it was with no certainty as to his destination. It was to be anywhere, anywhere in this race for life. Any haven that promised solitude was to be his city of refuge.
The streets were quiet now, and even the roystering tipplers had gone off to their homes. For Ralph there was no home—only this wild hunt from place to place, with no safety and rest.
His heavy tread and the echo of his footfall were at length all that broke the stillness of the streets.
He walked southwards, and when he reached the turnpike he stood for a moment and turned his eyes towards the north. The fires that had been kindled were smouldering away, but even yet a red gleam lay across the square towers of the castle on the hill.
The old town was now asleep. Thousands of souls lay slumbering there.
Ralph thought of those who slept in a home he knew, far, far north of this town and those towers. What was his crime that he was banished from them—perhaps forever? What was his crime before God or man? His mother, his brother, Rotha—
Ralph struck his breast and turned about. No, it would not bear to be thought about. That dream, at least, was gone. Rotha was happy in his brother's love, and as for himself—as for him—it was his destiny, and he must bear it!
Yet what was life worth now that he should struggle like this to preserve it?
Ralph returned to his old conviction—God's hand was on him. The idea, morbid as it might be, brought him solace this time. Once more he stopped, and turned his eyes afresh towards the north and the fifty miles of darkness that lay between him and those he loved.
It was at that very moment of desolation that Rotha heard the neigh of a horse as she leaned out of her open window.
II. “Aye, poor man, about Martinmas the Crown seized his freehold and all his goods and chattels.”
“It will be sad news for him when he hears that his old mother and the wife and children were turned into the road.”
“Well, well, I will say, treason or none, that John Rushton was as good a subject as the loudest bagpipes of them all.”
Ralph was sitting at breakfast in a wayside inn when two Lancashire yeomen entered and began to converse in these terms: “Aye, aye, and the leaven of Puritanism is not to be crushed out by such measures. But it's flat dishonesty, and nothing less. What did the proclamation of '59 mean if it didn't promise pardon to every man that fought for the Parliament, save such as were named as regicides?”
“Tut, man, it came to nought; the King returned without conditions; and the men who fought against him are reckoned as guilty as those that cut off his father's head.” “But the people will never uphold it. The little leaven remains, and one day it will leaven the lump.”
“Tut, the people are all fools—except such as are knaves. See how they're given up to drunkenness and vain pleasures. Hypocrisy and libertinism are safe for a few years' reign. England is Merry England, as they say, and she'll be merry at any cost.”
“Poor John, it will be a sad blow to him!”
Ralph had been an eager listener to the conversation between the yeomen, who were clearly old Whigs and Parliamentarians.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he interrupted, “do you speak of John Rushton of Aberleigh?”
“We do. As good a gentleman as lived in Lancashire.”
“That's true, but where was he when this disaster befell his household?”
“God knows; he had fled from judgment and was outlawed.”
“And the Crown confiscated his estate, you say, and turned his family into the road? What was the indictment—some trumpery subterfuge for treason?”
“Like enough; but the indictment counts for nothing in these days; it's the verdict that is everything, and that's settled beforehand.”
“True, true.”
“Did you know my neighbor John?”
“I did; we were comrades years ago.”
With these words, Ralph rose from his unfinished breakfast and walked out of the house.
What mischief of the same sort might even now be brewing at Wythburn in his absence? Should he return? That would be useless, and worse than useless. What could he do?
The daring impulse suddenly possessed him to go on to London, secure audience of the King himself, and plead for amnesty. Yes, that was all that remained to him to do, and it should be done. His petition might be spurned; his person might be seized, and he might be handed over to judgment; but what of that? He was certain to be captured sooner or later, and this sorry race for liberty and for life would be over at length.
III. The same day Ralph Ray, still travelling on foot, had approached the town of Preston. It was Sunday morning, but he perceived that smoke like a black cloud overhung the houses and crept far up the steeples and towers. Presently a tumultuous rabble came howling and hooting out of the town. At the head of them, and apparently pursued by them, was a man half clad, who turned about at every few yards, and, raising his arm, predicted woe and desolation to the people he was leaving. He was a Quaker preacher, and his presence in Preston was the occasion of this disturbance.
“Oh, Preston,” he cried, “as the waters run when the floodgates are up, so doth the visitation of God's love pass away from thee, oh, Preston!”
“Get along with thee; thou righteous Crister,” said one of the crowd, lifting a stick above his head. “Get along, or ye'll have Gervas Bennett aback of ye again.”
“I shall never cease to cry aloud against deceit and vanities,” shrieked the preacher above the tumult. “You do profess a Sabbath, and dress yourselves in fine apparel, and your women go with stretched necks.”
“Tush, tush! Beat him, stone him!”
“Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment,” the preacher replied, “and a babbler is no better. The lips of a fool will swallow up himself.”
The church bells were beginning to ring in the town, and the sound came across the fields and was heard even above the mocking laughter of the crowd.
“You have your steeple-houses, too,” cried the preacher, “and the bells of your gospel markets are even now a-ringing where your priests and professors are selling their wares. But God dwells not in temples made with hands. Oh, men of Preston, did I not prophesy that fire, and famine, and plagues, and slaughter would come upon ye unless ye came to the light with which Christ hath enlightened all men? And have ye not the plague of the East at your doors already?”
“And who brought it, who brought it?” screamed more than one voice from the crowd. “Who brought the plague to us from the East? Beat him, beat him!” The mob, with many uplifted hands, swayed about the preacher. “Your cities will be laid waste, the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. And what will ye do, oh men of Preston, in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far?”
The rabble had rushed past by this time, still hooting and howling at the wild, fiery-eyed enthusiast at their head.
Ralph walked on to the town and speedily discovered the cause of the black cloud which overhung it. An epidemic of an alarming nature had broken out in various quarters, and fears were entertained that it was none other than a great pestilence which had been brought to England from the East.
Indescribably eerie was the look of Preston that Sunday morning. Men and boys were bearing torches through the streets to disinfect them, and it was the smoke from these torches that hung like a cloud above the town. Through the thick yellow atmosphere the shapes of people passing to and fro in the thoroughfares stood out large and black.
IV. Ralph had travelled thus far in the fixed determination of pushing on to London, seeking audience of the King himself, and pleading for an amnesty. But the resolution which had never failed him before began now to waver. Surely there was more than his political offences involved in the long series of disasters that had befallen his household? He reflected that every link in that chain of evil seemed to be coupled to the gyves that hung about his own wrists. Wilson's life in Wythburn—his death—Sim's troubles—Rotha's sorrow—even his father's fearful end, and the more fearful accident at the funeral—then his mother's illness, nigh to death—how nigh to death by this time God alone could tell him here—all, all, with this last misery of his own banishment, seemed somehow to centre in himself. Yes, yes, sin and its wages must be in this thing; but what sin, what sin? What was the crime that cast its shadow over his life?
“As the waters run when the flood-gates are up,” said the preacher, “so doth the visitation of God's love pass away from thee.”
Of what use, then, would be the amnesty of the King? Mockery of mockeries! In a case like this only the Great King Himself could proclaim a pardon. Ralph put his hands over his eyes as the vision came back to him of a riderless horse flying with its dread burden across the fells. No sepulture! It was the old Hebrew curse—the punishment of the unpardonable sin.
He thought again of his stricken mother in the old home, and then of the love which had gone from him like a dream of the night. Heaven had willed it that where the heart of man yearned for love, somewhere in the world there was a woman's heart yearning to respond. But the curse came to some here and some there—the curse of an unrequitable passion.
The church bells were still ringing over the darkened town.
Rotha was happy in her love; Heaven be with her and bless her! As for himself, it was a part of the curse that lay on him that her face should haunt his dreams, that her voice should come to him in his sleep, and that “Rotha, Rotha,” should rise in sobs to his lips in the weary watches of the night.
Yes, it must be as he had thought—God's hand was on him. Destiny had to work its own way. Why should he raise his feeble hands to prevent it? The end would be the end, whenever and wherever it might come. Why, then, should he stir?
Ralph had determined to go no farther. He would stay in Preston over the night, and set out again for the north at daybreak. Was it despair that possessed him? Even if so, he was stronger than before. Hope had gone, and fear went with it.
Take heart, Ralph Ray, most unselfish and long-suffering of men. God's hand is indeed upon you, but God Himself is at your right hand!
V. That day Ralph walked through the streets with a calmer mind. Towards nightfall he stepped into a tavern and secured a bed. Then he went into the parlor of the house and sat among the people gathered there, and chatted pleasantly on the topics of the hour.
The governing spirit of the company was a little man who wore a suit of braided black which seemed to indicate that he belonged to one of the clerkly professions. He was addressed by the others as Lawyer Lampitt, and was asked if he would be busy at the court house on the following morning. “Yes,” he answered, with an air of consequence, “there's the Quaker preacher to be tried for creating a disturbance.”
“Was he taken, then?” asked one.
“He's quiet enough now in the old tower,” said the lawyer, stretching himself comfortably before the fire.
“I should have thought his tormentors were fitter occupants of his cell,” said Ralph.
“Perhaps so, young man; I express no opinion.”
“There was scarce a man among them whose face would not have hanged him,” continued Ralph.
“There again I offer no opinion,” said the lawyer, “but I'll tell you an old theory of mine. It is that a murderer and a hero are all but the same man.”
The company laughed. They were accustomed to these triumphs of logic, and relished them. Every man braced himself up in his seat.
“Why, how's that, lawyer?” said a townsman who sat tailor-fashion on a bench; he would hardly have been surprised if the lawyer had proved beyond question that he swam swanlike among the Isles of Greece.
“I'll tell you a story,” said the gentleman addressed. “There was an ancient family in Yorkshire, and the lord of the house was of a very splenetive temper. One day in a fit of jealousy he killed his wife, and put to death all of his children who were at home by throwing them over the battlements of his castle. He had one remaining child, and it was an infant, and was nursed at a farmhouse a mile away. He had set out for the farm with an intent to destroy his only remaining child, when a storm of thunder and lightning came on, and he stopped.”
“Thought it was a warning, I should say,” interrupted a listener.
“It awakened the compunctions of conscience, and he desisted from his purpose.”
“Well?”
“What do you think he did next?”
“Cannot guess—drowned himself?”
“No, and this proves what I say, that a murderer and a hero are all but one. He surrendered himself to justice, and stood mute at the bar, and, in order to secure his estates to his surviving child, he had the resolution to die under the dreadful punishment of peine forte.”
“What is that, lawyer?”
“Death by iron weights laid on the bare body until the life is crushed out of it.”
“Dreadful! And did he secure his estates to his child by suffering such a death?”
“He did. He stood mute at the bar, and let judgment go against him without trial. It is all in black and white. The Crown cannot confiscate a man's estate until he is tried and condemned.”
“What of an outlaw?” asked Ralph somewhat eagerly.
“A man's flight is equal to a plea of guilty.”
“I had a comrade once,” said Ralph with some tremor of voice; “he fled from judgment and was outlawed, and his poor children were turned into the road. Could he have kept his lands for his family by delivering his body to that death you speak of?”
“He could. The law stands so to this day.”
“Think you, in any sudden case, a man could do as much now?”
“He could,” answered the lawyer; “but where's the man who would? Only one who must die in any chance, and then none but a murderer, I should say.”
“I don't know—I don't know that,” said Ralph, rising with ill-concealed agitation, and stalking out of the room, without the curtest leave-taking.
VI. On Tuesday, Ralph was walking through Kendal on his northward journey. The day was young. Ralph meant to take a meal at the old coaching house, the Woodman, in Kirkland, by the river Kent, and then push on till nightfall.
The horn of the incoming coach fell on his ear, and the coach itself—the Carlisle coach, laden with passengers from back to front—swept into the courtyard of the inn at the moment he entered it afoot.
There was a little commotion there. A group of the serving folk, the maids in their caps, the ostlers bareheaded, and some occasional stable people were gathered near the taproom door. The driver of the coach got off his box and crushed into the middle of this company. His passengers paused in their descent from the top to look over the heads of those who were on the ground.
“Drunk, surely,” said one of these to another; “that proclamation was not unnecessary.”
“Some poor straggler, sir; picked him up insensible and fetched him along,” said one of the ostlers.
Ralph walked past the group to the threshold of the inn.
“Loosen his neckcloth!—here, take my brandy,” said a passenger.
“Came from the North, seemingly, sir. Looks weak from want and a long journey.”
“From the North?” asked the coachman; “I'll give him a seat in the coach to-night and take him home.”
Ralph stepped back and looked over some of the people.
A man was lying on the ground, his head in a woman's lap.
It was Simeon Stagg.
When Robbie Anderson left Wythburn, his principal and immediate purpose was to overtake Simeon Stagg. It was of less consequence that he should trace and discover Ralph Ray. Clearly it had been Ralph's object on leaving home to keep out of reach of the authorities who were in pursuit of him. But there was no saying what course a man such as he might take in order to insure the safety of the people who were dear to him, and to whom he was dear. The family at Shoulthwaite Moss had been threatened with eviction. The ransom was Ralph's liberty. Sim had been sent to say so. But a graver issue lay close behind. This shadow of a great crime lay over Ralph's life. If Robbie could overtake Sim before Sim had time to overtake Ralph, he might prevent a terrible catastrophe. Even so fearless a man as Ralph was would surely hesitate if he knew, though but on hearsay, that perhaps a horrible accusation awaited him at Carlisle.
That accusation might be false—it must be false. Robbie believed he could swear that it was a lie if he stood before the Throne of Grace. But of what avail was the innocence of the accused in days when an indictment was equal to a conviction!
Sim was an old man, or at least he was past his best. He was a frail creature, unable to travel fast. There was little doubt in the mind of the lusty young dalesman as he took his “lang stroke o' the ground” that before many hours had gone by Sim would be overtaken and brought back.
It was Sunday morning when little Liza Branthwaite ferreted Robbie out of the Red Lion, and it was no later than noon of the same day when Robbie began his journey. During the first few miles he could discover no trace of Sim. This troubled him a little, until he reflected that it was late at night when Sim started away, and that consequently the tailor would pass the little wayside villages unobserved. After nine or ten miles had been covered, Robbie met with persons who had encountered Sim. The accounts given of him were as painful as they were in harmony with his character. Sim had shrunk from the salutations of those who knew him, and avoided with equal timidity the gaze of those by whom he was not known. The suspicion of being everywhere suspected was with the poor outcast abroad as well as at home.
Quickly as the darkness fell in on that Sunday in mid-winter, Robbie had travelled many miles before the necessity occurred to him of seeking lodgings for the night. He had intended to reach the little town of Winander that day, and he had done so. It was late, however, and after a frugal supper, Robbie went off to bed.
Early next day, Monday, the young dalesman set about inquiries among the townspeople as to whether a man answering to the description which he gave of Sim had been seen to pass through the town. Many persons declared that they had seen such a one the day before, and some insisted that he was still in Winander. An old fellow in a smock, who, being obviously beyond all active labor, employed his time and energies in the passive occupation of watching everybody from the corner of a street, and in chatting with as many as had conversation to spend on his superannuated garrulity, affirmed very positively that he had talked with Sim as recently as an hour ago.
Right or wrong, this was evidence of Sim's whereabouts which Robbie felt that he could not ignore. He must at least test its truthfulness by walking through the streets and inquiring further. It would be idle to travel on until this clew had been cleared up.
And so Robbie spent almost the whole day in what proved to be a fruitless search. It was apparent that if Sim had been in Winander he had left it on Sunday. Robbie reflected with vexation that it was now the evening of Monday, and that he was farther behind the man of whom he was in pursuit than he had been at starting from Wythburn.
In no very amiable mood Robbie set out afresh just as darkness was coming on, and followed the road as far as the village of Staveley. Here there was nothing more hopeful to do at a late hour on Monday night than to seek for a bed and sleep. On Tuesday morning Robbie lost no time in making inquiries, but he wasted several hours in ascertaining particulars that were at all reliable and satisfactory. No one appeared to have seen such a man as Sim, either to-day, yesterday, or on Sunday.
Robbie was perplexed. He was in doubt if it might not be his best course to turn back, when a happy inspiration occurred to him.
What had the people said of Sim's shyness and timidity? Why, it was as clear as noonday that the poor little man would try to avoid the villages by making a circuit of the fields about them.
With this conviction, Robbie set out again, intending to make no pause in his next stage until he had reached Kendal. Upon approaching the villages he looked about for the footpaths that might be expected to describe short arcs around them; and, following one of these, he passed a cottage that stood at a corner of a lane. He had made many fruitless inquiries hitherto, and had received replies that had been worse than valueless; but he could not resist the temptation to ask at this house.
Walking round the cottage to where the door opened on the front farthest from the lane, Robbie entered the open porch. His unfamiliar footstep brought from an inner room an old woman with a brown and wrinkled face, who curtsied, and, speaking in a meek voice, asked, or seemed to ask, his pleasure.
“Your pardon, mistress,” said Robbie, “but mayhap you've seen a little man with gray hair and a long beard going by?”
“Do you say a laal man?” asked the old woman.
“Ey, wrinkled and wizzent a bit?” said Robbie.
“Yes,” said the woman.
Robbie was uncertain as to what the affirmation implied. Taking it to be a sort of request for a more definite description, he continued,—
“A blate and fearsome sort of a fellow, you know.”
“Yes,” repeated the woman, and then there was a pause.
Robbie, getting impatient of the delay, was turning on his heel with scant civility, when the old woman said, “Are you seeking him for aught that is good?”
“Why, ey, mother,” said Robbie, regaining his former position and his accustomed geniality in an instant. “Do you know his name?” she asked.
“Sim—that's to say Sim Stagg. Don't you fear me, mother; I'm a friend to Sim, take my word.”
“You're a good-like sort of a lad, I think,” said the old woman; “Sim was here ower the night last night.”
“Where is he now?” said Robbie.
“He left me this morning at t' edge o' t' daylight. He axed for t' coach to Lancaster, and I telt him it started frae the Woodman, in Kirklands, and so he went off there.”
“Kirklands; where's Kirklands?”
“In Kendal, near the church.”
It turned out that the good old woman had known Sim many years before, when they were neighbors in a street of a big town. She had been with Sim's wife in her last illness, and had cared for his little daughter when the child's mother died.
Robbie did not know when the coach might leave Kendal for Lancaster; Sim was several hours in front of them, and therefore he took a hasty leave. The old woman, who lived a solitary life in the cottage, looked after the young man with eyes which seemed to say that, in spite of the instinct which prompted her to confide in Robbie, she half regretted what she had done.