Easter-Day that year was nearly as late as it could be—the twenty-third of April. That brought St. Mark’s Day (the twenty-fifth) on the Tuesday; and Easter Monday was St. Mark’s Eve.
There is a superstitious belief in our county, and in some others—more thought of in our old grannies’ days than in these—that if you go to the churchyard on St. Mark’s Eve and watch the gate, the shadows, or phantoms, of those fated to die that year, and destined there to be buried, will be seen to enter it.
Easter Monday is a great holiday with us; the greatest in all the year. Christmas-Day and Good Friday are looked upon more in a religious light; but on Easter Monday servants and labourers think themselves at liberty to take their swing. The first day of the wake is nothing to it.
Now Squire Todhetley gave in to these holidays: they did not come often, he said. Our servants in the country are not a bit like yours in town; yours want a day’s holiday once a month, oftener sometimes, and strike if they don’t get it; ours have one or two in a year. On Easter Monday the work was got over by mid-day; there was no cooking, and the household could roam abroad at will. No ill had ever come of it; none would have come of it this time, but for St. Mark’s Eve falling on the day.
Tod and I got home from school on the Thursday. It was a despicable old school, taking no heed of Passion Week. Other fellows from other schools could have a fortnight at Easter; we but a week. Tod entered on a remonstrance with the pater this time; he had been planning it as we drove home, and thought he’d put it in a strongish point of view.
“It is sinful, you know, sir; awfully so. Passion Week is Passion Week. We have no right to pass it at school at our desks.”
“Well, Joe, I don’t quite see that,” returned the pater, twisting his lip. “Discipline and lessons are more in accordance with the season of Passion Week than kicking up your heels at large in all sorts of mischief; and that’s what you’d be at, you know, if you were at home. What’s the matter with Johnny.”
“He has been ill for three days, with a cold or something,” said Tod. “Tell it for yourself, Johnny.”
I had no more to tell than that. For three or four days I had felt ill, feverish; yesterday (Wednesday) had done no lessons. Mrs. Todhetley thought it was an attack of influenza. She sent me to bed, and called in the doctor, Mr. Duffham.
I was better the next day—Good Friday. Old Duff—as Tod and I called him for short—came in while they were at church, and said I might get up. It was slow work, I told him, lying in bed for one’s holidays. He was a wiry little man, with black hair; good in the main, but pompous, and always carried a gold-headed cane.
“Not to go out, you know,” he said. “You must promise that, Johnny.”
I promised readily. I only wanted to be downstairs with the rest. They returned home from church, saying they had promised to go over and take tea with the Sterlings; Mrs. Todhetley looked grave at seeing me, and thought the doctor was wrong. At which I put on a gay air, like a fellow suddenly cured.
But I could not eat any dinner. They had salt fish and cold boiled beef at two o’clock—our usual way of fasting on Good Friday. Not a morsel could I swallow, and Hannah brought me some mutton-broth.
“Do you mind our leaving you, Johnny?” Mrs. Todhetley said to me in her kind way—which Tod never believed in. “If you do—if you think you shall feel lonely, I’ll stay at home.”
I answered that I should feel very jolly, not lonely at all; and so they started, going over in the large carriage, drawn by Bob and Blister. Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, with Lena, in front, Tod and Hugh behind. Standing at the window to watch the start, I saw Roger Monk looking on from the side of the house.
He was a small, white-faced chap of twenty or so, with a queer look in his eyes, and black sprouting whiskers. Looking full at the eyes, when you could get the chance, which was not very often, for they rarely looked at you, there was nothing wrong to be seen with them, and yet they gave a sinister cast to the face. Perhaps it was that they were too near together. Roger Monk was not one of our regular men; for the matter of that, he was above the condition; but was temporarily filling the head-gardener’s place, who was ill with rheumatism. Seeing me, he walked up to the window, and I opened it to speak to him. “Are you here still, Monk?”
“And likely to be, Mr. Ludlow, if it depends upon Jenkins’s coming on again,” was the answer. “Fine cattle, those that the governor has just driven off.”
He meant Bob and Blister, and they were fine; but I did not like the tone, or the word “governor,” as applied to Mr. Todhetley. “I can’t keep the window up,” I said; “I’m not well.”
“All right, sir; shut it. As for me, I must be about my work. There’s enough to do with the gardens, one way or another; and the responsibility lies on my shoulders.”
“You must not work to-day, Monk. Squire Todhetley never allows it on Good Friday.”
He laughed pleasantly; as much as to say, what Squire Todhetley allowed, or did not allow, was no concern of his; and went briskly away across the lawn. And not once, during the short interview, had his eyes met mine.
Wasn’t it dull that afternoon! I took old Duffham’s physic, and drank the tea Hannah brought me, and was hot, and restless, and sick. Never a soul to talk to; never a book to read—my eyes and head ached too much for that; never a voice to be heard. Most of the servants were out; all of them, for what I knew, except Hannah; and I was fit to die of weariness. At dusk I went up to the nursery. Hannah was not there. The fire was raked—if you understand what that means, though it is generally applied only to kitchen fires in our county—which proved that she was off somewhere on a prolonged expedition. Even old Hannah’s absence was a disappointment. I threw myself down on the faded sofa at the far end of the room, and, I suppose, went to sleep.
For when I became alive again to outward things, Hannah was seated in one chair at the fire, cracking up the coal; Molly, the cook with the sharp tongue and red-brown eyes, in another. It was dark and late; my head ached awfully, and I wished them and their clatter somewhere. They were talking of St. Mark’s Eve, and its popular superstition. Molly was telling a tale of the past, the beginning of which I had not heard.
“I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Hannah; “I can’t believe that the shadows come.”
“Did ye ever watch for ’em, woman?” asked Molly, who had been born in the North.
“No,” acknowledged Hannah.
“Then how can ye speak of what ye don’t know? It is as true as that you and me be a-sitting here. Two foolish, sickly girls they was, both of ’em sweet upon the same young man. Leastways, he was sweet upon both of them, the deceiver, which comes to the same thing. My sister Becky was five-and-twenty that same year; she had a constant pain and a cough, which some said was windpipe and some said was liver. The other was Mary Clarkson, who was subject to swimmings in the head and frightful dartings. Any way, they’d got no health to brag on, either of ’em, and they were just eat up with jealousy, the one of the other. Tom Town, he knew this; and he played ’em off again’ each other nicely, little thinking what his own punishment was to be.”
Hannah gently put the poker inside the bars to raise the coal, and some more light came out. Molly went on.
“Now, Hannah, you mustn’t think bad of them two young women. They did not wish one another dead—far from it; but each thought the other couldn’t live. In natural course, if the one went off, poor thing, Tom Town, he would be left undivided for the other.”
“Was Tom Town handsome?” interrupted Hannah.
“Well, middling for that. He was under-sized, not up to their shoulders, with big bushy red whiskers; but he had a taking way with him. He was in a shop for himself, and doing well, so that more young women nor the two I am telling of would have said Yes to his asking. Becky, she thought Mary Clarkson couldn’t live the year out; Mary, she told a friend that she was sure Becky wouldn’t. And what should they do but go to watch the graveyard on St. Mark’s Eve, to see the other’s shadow pass!”
“Together?”
“No; but they met there. Awk’ard, wasn’t it? Calling up their wits, each of ’em, they pretended to have come out promiskous, just on the spree, not expecting to see nobody’s shadow in particular. As they had come, they stopped; standing back again’ the hedge near the graveyard, holding on to each other’s arms for company, and making belief not to be scared. Hannah, woman, I don’t care to tell this. I’ve never told it many times.”
Molly’s face had a hard, solemn look, in the fire’s blaze, and Hannah suddenly drew her chair close to her. I could have laughed out loud.
“Just as the clock struck—ten, I think it was,” went on Molly, in a half-whisper, “there was a faint rustle heard, like a flutter in the air, and somebody came along the road. At first the women’s eyes were dazed, and they didn’t see distinct, but as the gate opened to let him in, he turned his face, and they saw it was Tom Town. Both the girls thought it was himself, Hannah; and they held their breath and kept quite still, hoping he’d not notice them, for they’d have felt ashamed to be caught watching there.”
“And it was not himself?” asked Hannah, catching up her breath.
Molly gave her head a shake. “No more than it was you or me: it was his shadow. He walked on up the path, looking neither to the right nor left, and they lost sight of him. I was with mother when they came home. Mary Clarkson, she came in with Beck, and they said they had seen Tom Town, and supposed he had gone out watching, too. Mother advised them to hold their tongues: it didn’t look well, she said, for them two, only sickly young girls, to have run out to the graveyard alone. A short while after, Tom Town, in talking of that night, mother having artfully led to it, said he had gone up to bed at nine with a splitting headache, and forgot all about its being St. Mark’s Eve. When mother heard that, she turned the colour o’ chalk, and looked round at me.”
“And Tom Town died?”
“He died that blessed year; the very day that folks was eating their Michaelmas gooses. A rapid decline took him off.”
“It’s very strange,” said Hannah, musingly. “People believe here that the shadows appear, and folks used to go watching, as it’s said. I don’t think many go now. Did the two young women die?”
“Not they. Becky’s married, and got half-a-dozen children; and Mary Clarkson, she went off to America. Shouldn’t you like to watch?”
“Well, I should,” acknowledged Hannah; “I would, too, if I thought I should see anything. I’ve said more than once in my life that I should just like to go out on St. Mark’s Eve, and see whether there is anything in it or not. My mother went, I know.”
“If you’ll go, I’ll go.”
Hannah made no answer to this at first. She sat looking at the fire with a cross face. It had always a cross look when she was deep in thought. “The mistress would think me such a fool, Molly, if she came to know of it.”
“If! How could she come to know of it? Next Monday will be the Easter holidays, and we mayn’t never have the opportunity again. I shouldn’t wonder but the lane’s full o’ watchers. St. Mark’s Eve don’t often come on a Easter Monday.”
There’s no time to go on with what they said. A good half-hour the two sat there, laying their plans: when once Hannah had decided to go in for the expedition, she made no more bones over it. The nursery-windows faced the front, and when the carriage was heard driving in, they both decamped downstairs—Hannah to the children, Molly to her kitchen. I found Tod, and told him the news: Hannah and Molly were going to watch in the churchyard for the shadows on St. Mark’s Eve.
“We’ll have some fun over this, Johnny,” said he, when he had done laughing. “You and I will be on to them.”
Monday came; and, upon my word, it seemed as if things turned out on purpose. Mr. Todhetley went off to Worcester with Dwarf Giles, on some business connected with the Quarter Sessions, and was not expected home until midnight, as he stayed to dine at Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley had one of her excruciating face-aches, and she went to bed when the children did—seven o’clock. Hannah had said in the morning that she and Molly were going to spend an hour or two with Goody Picker after the children were in bed; upon which Mrs. Todhetley told her to get them to bed early. It was something rare for Hannah to take any holiday; she generally said she did not want it. Goody Picker’s husband used to be a gamekeeper—not ours. Since his death she lived how she could, on her vegetables, or by letting her odd room; Roger Monk had it now. Sometimes she had her grandchild with her; and the parents, well-to-do shopkeepers at Alcester, paid her well. Goody Picker was thought well of at our house, and came up occasionally to have tea in the nursery with Hannah.
I was well by Monday; nothing but a bit of a cough left; and Tod and I looked forward to the night’s fun. Not a word had we heard since; but we had seen the two women-servants whispering together whenever they got the chance; and so we knew they were going. What Tod meant to do, he wouldn’t tell me; I think he hardly knew himself. The big turnips were all gone, or he might have scooped one out for a death’s head, and stuck it on the gate-post, with a candle in it.
The night came. A clear night, with a miserable moon. Miserable for our sport, because it was so bright.
“A pitch-dark night would have had some sense in it, you know, Johnny,” Tod remarked to me, as we stood at the door, looking out. “The moon should hide her face on St. Mark’s Eve.”
Just as he spoke, the clock struck nine. Time to be going. There was nobody to let or hinder us. Mrs. Todhetley was in bed groaning with toothache; old Thomas and Phœbe, neither of whom had cared to take holiday, were at supper in the kitchen. She was a young girl lately had in to help the housemaid.
“You go on, Johnny; I’ll follow presently. Take your time; they won’t go on the watch for this half-hour yet.”
“But, Tod, what is it that you are going to do?”
“Never you mind. If you hear a great noise, and see a light blaze up, don’t you be scared.”
“I scared, Tod! That’s good.”
“All right, Johnny. Take care not to be seen. It might spoil sport.”
The church was about half-a-mile from our house, whether you crossed the fields to it or took the highway. It stood back from the road, in its big churchyard. A narrow lane, between two dwarf hedges, led up from the road to the gate; it was hardly wide enough for carriages; they wound round the open road further on. A cross-path, shut in by two stiles, led right across the lane near to the churchyard gate. Stories went that a poor fellow who had hung himself about twenty years ago was buried by torchlight under that very crossing, with never a parson to say a prayer over him.
We guessed where the women would stand—at one of these crossing stiles, with the gate and the churchyard in full view. As Tod said, it stood to reason that shadows and the watchers for them would not choose the broader road, where all was open, and not so much as a tree grew for shelter.
I stole along cautiously, taking the roadway and keeping under shade of the hedge, and got there all right. Not a creature was about. The old grey church, built of stone, the many-shaped graves in the churchyard, stood white and cold in the moonlight. I went behind the cross-stile at the side furthest from our house, and leaned over it, looking up and down the lane. That the women would be on the opposite side was certain, because the churchyard gate could not be seen so well from this.
The old clock did not tell the quarters, only struck the hour; time went on, and I began to wonder how long I was to wait. It must be turned half-past nine; getting nearer to a quarter to ten; and still nobody came. Where were the watchers? And where was Tod? The shadows of the trees, of the hedges, of the graves, fell in distinct lines on the grass; and I don’t mind confessing that it felt uncommonly lonely.
“Hou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou!” burst forth over my head with a sudden and unearthly sound. I started back in a fright for one moment, and called myself an idiot the next, for it was only an owl. It had come flying forth from the old belfry, and went rushing on with its great wings, crying still, but changing its note. “Tu-whit; tu-whoo.”
And while I watched the owl, other sounds, as of whispering, made themselves manifest, heralding the approach of the women from the opposite field, making for the stile in front of me, through the little copse. Drawing behind the low hedge, to sit down on the stump of a tree, I pushed my head forward, and took a look at them through the lower bars of the stile. They were standing at the other, in their light shawls and new Easter straw-bonnets; Molly’s trimmed with green, Hannah’s with primrose. The moonlight fell full on their faces—mine was in the shade. But they might see me, and I drew back again.
Presently they began to gabble; in low tones at first, which increased, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, to higher ones. They said how lonely it was, especially with “them grave-marks” in view close by; and they speculated upon whether any shadows would appear to them. My sense of loneliness had vanished. To have two practical women, each of them a good five-and-thirty, for neighbours, took it off. But I wondered what had become of Tod.
Another owl! or perhaps the last one coming back again. It was not so startling a noise as before, and created no alarm. I thought it a good opportunity to steal another look, and propelled my head forward an inch at a time. Their two faces were turned upwards, watching the owl’s flight towards the belfry.
But to my intense astonishment there was a third face. A face behind them peeping out from the close folds of a mantle, and almost resting on their shoulders. At the first moment I thought of Tod; but soon the features became familiar to me in the bright light, and I knew them for Phœbe’s. Phœbe, whom I had left in the kitchen, supping quietly! That she had stolen up unseen and unheard while they talked, was apparent.
A wild screech! Two wild screeches. Phœbe had put her hands on the startled women, and given vent to a dismal groan. She laughed: but the others went into a desperate passion. First at having been frightened, next at having been followed. When matters came to be investigated later, it turned out that Phœbe had overheard a conversation between Molly and Hannah, which betrayed what they were about to do, and had come on purpose to startle them.
A row ensued. Bitter words on both sides; mutual abusings. The elder servants ordered Phœbe home; she refused to go, and gave them some sauce. She intended to stay and see what there was to be seen, she said; for all she could tell, their shadows might pass, and a good thing if they did; let alone that she’d not dare to go back by herself at that hour and meet the ghosts. Hannah and Molly cut the matter short by leaving the stile to her; they went round, and took up their places by the churchyard gate.
It seems very stupid to be writing of this, I dare say; it must read like an old ghost-story out of a fable-book; but every word is true, as the people that lived round us then could tell you.
There we waited; Hannah and Molly gathered close against the hedge by the churchyard gate; Phœbe, wrapped in her shawl, leaning on the top of the stile; I on the old tree stump, feeling inclined to go to sleep. It seemed a long time, and the night grew cold. Evidently there were no watchers for St. Mark’s shadows abroad that night, except ourselves. Without warning, the old clock boomed out the strokes of the hour. Ten.
Did you ever have the opportunity of noticing how long it takes for a sound like this to die quite away on the calm night-air? I seemed to hear it still, floating off in the distance, when I became aware that some figure was advancing up the lane towards us with a rather swift step. It’s Tod this time, I thought, and naturally looked out; and I don’t mind telling that I caught hold of the bars of the stile for companionship, in my shock of terror.
I had never seen the dead walking; but I do believe I thought I saw it then. It looked like a corpse in its winding-sheet; whether man or woman, none could tell. An ashey-white, still, ghastly face, enveloped around with bands of white linen, was turned full to the moonlight, that played upon the rigid features. The whole person, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, was enshrouded in a white garment. All thoughts of Tod went out of me; and I’m not sure but my hair rose up on end as the thing came on. You may laugh at me, all of you, but just you go and try it.
My fear went for nothing, however; it didn’t damage me. Of all the awful cries ever heard, shrill at first, changing to something like the barking of a dog afterwards, those were the worst that arose opposite. They came from Phœbe. The girl had stood petrified, with straining eyes and laboured breath, like one who has not the power to fly, while the thing advanced. Only when it stopped close and looked at her did the pent-up cries come forth. Then she turned to fly, and the white figure leaped the stile, and went after her into the copse. What immediately followed I cannot remember—never could remember it; but it seemed that not more than a minute had elapsed when I and Molly and Hannah were standing over Phœbe, lying in convulsions on the ground, and the creature nowhere to be seen. The cries had been heard in the road, and some people passing came running up. They lifted the girl in their arms, and bore her homewards.
My senses were coming to me, showing plainly enough that it was no “shadow,” but some ill-starred individual dressed up to personate one. Poor Phœbe! I could hear her cries still, though the group was already out of the copse and crossing the open field beyond. Somebody touched me on the shoulder.
“Tod! Did you do it?”
“Do what?” asked Tod, who was out of breath with running. “What was all that row?”
I told him. Somebody had made himself into a ghost, with a tied-up whitened face, just as the dead have, and came up the Green Lane in a sheet; and Phœbe was being carried home in convulsions.
“You are a fool, Johnny,” was his wrathful answer. “I am not one to risk a thing of that sort, not even for those two old women we came out to frighten. Look here.”
He went to the edge of the copse near the road, and showed me some things—the old pistol from the stable, and gunpowder lights that went off with a crash yards high. It’s not of much use going into it now. Tod had meant, standing at a safe distance, to set a light to the explosive articles, and fire off his pistol at the same time.
“It would have been so good to see the women scutter off in their fright, Johnny; and it couldn’t have hurt them. They might have looked upon it as the blue-light from below.”
“What made you so late?”
“Late!” returned Tod, savagely; “I am late, and the fun’s spoilt. That confounded old Duff and his cane came in to see you, Johnny, just as I was starting; there was nobody else, and I couldn’t leave him. I said you were in bed and asleep, but it didn’t send him away. Down he sat, telling a tale of how hard-worked he’d been all day, and asking for brandy-and-water. The dickens take him!”
“And, Tod, it was really not you?”
“If you repeat that again, Johnny, I’ll strike you. I swear it was not me. There! I never told you a lie yet.”
He never had; and from that moment of strong denial I know that Tod had no more to do with the matter than I had.
“I wonder who it could have been?”
“I’ll find that out, as sure as my name’s Todhetley,” he said, catching up his pistols and lights.
We ran all the way home, looking out in vain for the ghost on our way, and got in almost as soon as the rest. What a hullabaloo it was! They put a mattress on the kitchen floor, and laid Phœbe on it. Mr. Duffham was upon the scene in no time; the Squire had returned earlier than was thought for, and Mrs. Todhetley came down with her face smothered in a woollen handkerchief.
As to any concealment now, it was useless to think of it. None was attempted, and Molly and Hannah had to confess that they went out to watch for the shadows. The Squire blustered at them a little, but Mrs. Todhetley said the keenest thing, in her mild way:
“At your age, Hannah!”
“I have known a person rendered an idiot for life with a less fright than this,” said old Duff, turning round to speak. “It was the following her that did the mischief.”
Nothing could be done that night as to investigation; but with the morning the Squire entered upon it in hot anger. “Couldn’t the fool have been contented with what he’d already done, without going over the stile after her? If I spend a fifty-pound note, I’ll unearth him. It looks to me uncommonly like a trick you two boys would play,” he added, turning sharply upon me and Tod.
And the suspicion made us all the more eager to find out the real fox. But not a clue could we discover. Nobody had known of the proposed expedition except Goody Picker; and she, as everybody testified, was true to the backbone. As the day went on, and nothing came of it, Tod had one of his stamping fits.
“If one could find out whether it was man or woman! If one could divine how they got at the knowledge!” stamped Tod. “The pater does not look sure about us yet.”
“I wonder if it could have been Roger Monk?” I said, speaking out a thought that had been dimly creeping up in my mind by starts all day.
“Roger Monk!” repeated Tod, “why pitch upon him?”
“Only that it’s just possible he might have got it out of Goody Picker.”
Away went Tod, in his straightforward fashion, to look for Roger Monk. He was in the hot-house, doing something to his plants.
“Monk, did you play that trick last night?”
“What trick, sir?” asked Monk, twitching a good-for-nothing leaf off a budding geranium.
“What trick! As if there were more tricks than one played! I mean dressing yourself up like a dead man, and frightening Phœbe.”
“I have too much to do with my work, Mr. Todhetley, to find time to play tricks. I took no holiday at all yesterday, day or night, but was about my business till I went to bed. They were saying out here this morning that the Squire thought you had done it.”
“Don’t you be insolent, Monk. That won’t answer with me.”
“Well, sir, it is not pleasant to be accused point-blank of a crime, as you’ve just accused me. I know nothing at all about the matter. ’Twasn’t me. I had no grudge against Phœbe, that I should harm her.”
Tod was satisfied; I was not. He never once looked in either of our faces as he was speaking. We leaped the wire-fence and went across to Goody Picker’s, bursting into her kitchen without ceremony.
“I say, Mrs. Picker, we can’t find out anything about that business last night,” began Tod.
“And you never will, gentlemen, as is my opinion,” returned Mrs. Picker, getting up in a bustle and dusting two wooden chairs. “Whoever did that, have took himself off for a bit; never doubt it. ’Twas some one o’ them village lads.”
“We have been wondering whether it was Roger Monk.”
“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried she, dropping a basin on the brick floor. And if ever I saw a woman change colour, she did.
“What’s the matter now?”
“Why, you sent me into a tremble, gentlemen, saying that,” she answered, stooping to pick up the broken crockery. “A young man lodging in my place, do such a villain’s trick! I’d not like to think it; I shouldn’t rest in my bed. The two servants having started right out from here for the churchyard have cowed-down my heart bad enough, without more ill news.”
“What time did Monk come in last night?” questioned Tod. “Do you remember?”
“He come in after Mrs. Hannah and the other had gone,” she replied, taking a moment’s pause. “Close upon it; I’d hardly shut my door on them when I had to open it to him.”
“Did he go out again?”
“Not he, sir. He eat his supper, telling me in a grumbling tone about the extra work he’d had to do in the greenhouses and places, because the other man had took holiday best part o’ the day. And then he went up to bed. Right tired he seemed.”
We left her fitting the pieces of the basin together, and went home. “It wasn’t Monk,” said Tod. “But now—where to look for the right man, Johnny?”
Look as we might, we did not find him. Phœbe was better in a day or two, but the convulsive fits stuck to her, coming on at all sorts of unexpected times. Old Duff thought it might end in insanity.
And that’s what came of Watching for the Shadows on St. Mark’s Eve!
His name was Sanker, and he was related to Mrs. Todhetley. Not expecting to go home for the holidays—for his people lived in some far-off district of Wales, and did not afford him the journey—Tod invited him to spend them with us at Dyke Manor: which was uncommonly generous, for he disliked Sanker beyond everything. Having plenty of money himself, Tod could not bear that a connection of his should be known as nearly the poorest and meanest in the school, and resented it awfully. But he could not be ill-natured, for all his prejudices, and he asked Sanker to go home with us.
“It’s slow there,” he said; “not much going on in summer besides haymaking; but it may be an improvement on this. So, if you’d like to come, I’ll write and tell them.”
“Thank you,” said Sanker; “I should like it very much.”
Things had been queer at school as the term drew to its close. Petty pilferings were taking place; articles and money alike disappeared. Tod lost half-a-sovereign; one of the masters some silver; Bill Whitney put sevenpence halfpenny and a set of enamelled studs into his desk one day, never to see either again; and Snepp, who had been home to his sister’s marriage, lost a piece of wedding-cake out of his box the night he came back. There was a thief in the school, and no clue to him. One might mentally accuse this fellow, another that; but not a shadow of proof was there against any. Altogether we were not sorry to get away.
But the curious thing was, that soon after we got home pilferings began there. Ned Banker was well received; and Tod, regarding himself in the capacity of host, grew more cordial with him than he had been at school. It was a sort of noblesse oblige feeling. Sanker was sixteen; stout and round; not tall; with pale eyes and a dull face. He was to be a clergyman; funds at his home permitting. His father lived at some mines in Wales. Tod wondered in what capacity.
“Mr. Sanker was a gentleman born and bred,” explained Mrs. Todhetley. “He never had much money; but what little it was he lost, speculating in this very mine. After that, when he had nothing in the world left to live upon, and a wife and several young children to keep, he was thankful to take a situation as over-looker at a small yearly salary.”
We had been home about a week when the first thing was missed. At one side of the house, in a sort of nook, was a square room, its glass-doors opening on the gravel-path that skirted the hedge of the vegetable garden. Squire Todhetley kept his farming accounts there and wrote his letters. A barometer and two county maps, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, on its walls, a square of matting on its floor, an upright bureau, a table, some chairs; and there you have the picture of the room.
One afternoon—mind! we did not know this for a week after, but it is as well to tell of it as it occurred—he was sitting at the table in this room, his account-books, kept in the bureau, open before him; his inkstand and cash-box at hand. Lying near the cash-box was a five-pound note, open; the Squire had put it out for Dwarf Giles to get changed at Alcester. He was writing an order for some things that Giles would have to bring back, when Rimmell, who acted as working bailiff on the estate, came to the glass-doors, open to the warm June air, saying he had received an offer for the wheat that had spurted. The Squire stepped outside on the gravel-path while he talked with Rimmell, and then strolled round with him to the fold-yard. He was away—that is, out of sight of the room—about three minutes, and when he got back the note was gone.
He could not believe his own eyes. It was a calm day; no wind stirring. He lifted the things on the table; he lifted the matting on the floor; he shook his loose coat; all in vain. Standing at the door, he shouted aloud; he walked along the path to the front of the house, and shouted there; but was not answered. So far as could be seen, no person whatever was about who could have come round to the room during his short absence.
Striding back to the room, he went through it, and up the passage to the hall, his boots creaking. Molly was in the kitchen, singing over her work; Phœbe and Hannah were heard talking upstairs; and Mrs. Todhetley stood in the store-room, doing something to the last year’s pots of jam. She said, on being questioned, that no one had passed to the passage leading to the Squire’s room.
It happened at that moment, that I, coming home from the Dyke, ran into the hall, full butt against the Squire.
“Johnny,” said he, “where are you all? What are you up to?”
I had been at the Dyke all the afternoon with Tod and Hugh; they were there still. Not Sanker: he was outside, on the lawn, reading. This I told the pater, and he said no more. Later, when we came to know what had happened, he mentioned to us that, at this time, no idea of robbery had entered his head; he thought one of us might have hidden the money in sport.
So much an impossibility did it appear of the note’s having been lifted by human hands, that the Squire went back to his room in a maze. He could only think that it must have attached itself to his clothes, and dropped off them in the fold-yard. What had become of it, goodness knew; whether it had fluttered into the pond, or the hens had scratched it to pieces, or the turkeys gobbled it up; he searched fruitlessly.
That was on a Thursday. On the following Thursday, when Tod was lying on the lawn bench on his back, playing with his tame magpie, and teasing Hugh and Lena, the pater’s voice was heard calling to him in a sharp, quick tone, as if something was the matter. Tod got up and went round by the gravel-path to whence the sound came, and I followed. The Squire was standing at the window of the room, half in, half out.
“I don’t want you, Johnny. Stay, though,” he added, after a moment, “you may as well be told—why not?”
He sat down in his place at the table. Tod stood just inside the door, paying more attention to the magpie, which he had brought on his arm, than to his father: I leaned against the bureau. There was a minute’s silence, waiting for the Squire to speak.
“Put that wretched bird down,” he said; and we knew something had put him out, for he rarely spoke with sharpness to Tod.
Tod sent the magpie off, and came in. The first day we got home from school, Tod had rescued the magpie from Goody Picker’s grandson; he caught him pulling the feathers out of its tail; gave him sixpence for it, and brought it home. A poor, miserable, half-starved thing, that somebody had taught to say continually, “Now then, Peter.” Tod meant to feed it into condition; but the pater had not taken kindly to the bird; he said it would be better dead than alive.
“What was that I heard you boys talking of the other day, about some petty pilferings in your school?” he asked, abruptly. And we gave him the history.
“Well, as it seems to me, the same thing is going on here,” he continued, looking at us both. “Johnny, sit down; I can’t talk while you sway about like that.”
“The same thing going on here, sir?”
“I say that it seems so,” said the pater, thrusting both his hands deep into his trousers’ pockets, and rattling the silver in them. “Last Thursday, this day week, a bank-note lay on my table here. I just went round to the yard with Rimmell, and when I got back the note was gone.”
“Where did it go to?” asked Tod, practically.
“That is just the question—where? I concluded that it must have stuck to my coat in some unaccountable way, and got lost out-of-doors. I don’t conclude so now.”
Tod seemed to take the news in his usual careless fashion, and kept privately telegraphing signs to the magpie, sitting now on the old tree-stump opposite.
“Yes, sir. Well?”
“I think now, Joe, that somebody came in at these open doors, and took the note,” said the pater, impressively. “And I want to find out who it was.”
“Now then, Peter!” cried the bird, hopping down on the gravel; at which Tod laughed. The Squire got up in a rage, and shut the doors with a bang.
“If you can’t be serious for a few moments, you had better say so. I can tell you this is likely to turn out no laughing business.”
Tod turned his back to the glass-doors, and left the magpie to its devices.
“Whoever it was, contrived to slip round here from the front, during my temporary absence; possibly without ill intention: the sight of the note lying open might have proved too strong a temptation for him.”
“Him!” put in Tod, critically. “It might have been a woman.”
“You might be a jackass: and often are one,” said the pater. And it struck us both, from the affable retort, that his suspicions were pointing to some particular person of the male gender.
“This morning, after breakfast, I was here, writing a letter,” he went on. “While sealing it, Thomas called me away in a hurry, and I was absent the best part of an hour. When I got back, my ring had disappeared.”
“Your ring, sir!” cried Tod.
“Yes, my ring, sir,” mocked the pater; for he thought we were taking up the matter lightly, and it nettled him. “I left it on the seal, expecting to find it there when I returned. Not so. The ring had gone, and the letter lay on the ground. We have got a thief about the house, boys—a thief—within or without. Just the same sort of thief, as it seems to me, that you had at school.”
Tod suddenly leaned forward, his elbow on his knee, his whole interest aroused. Some unpleasant doubt had struck him, as was evident by the flush upon his face.
“Of course, anybody that might be about, back or front, could find their way down here if they pleased,” he slowly said. “Tramps get in sometimes.”
“Rarely, without being noticed. Who did you boys see about the place that afternoon—tramp or gentleman? Come! You were at the house, Johnny: you bolted into it, head foremost, saying you had come from the Dyke.”
“I never saw a soul but Sanker: he was on the bench on the lawn, reading. I said so at the time, sir.”
“Ah! yes; Sanker was there reading,” quietly assented the Squire. “What were you hastening home for, Johnny?”
As if that mattered, or could have had anything to do with it! He had a knack of asking unpleasant questions; and I looked at Tod.
“Hugh got his blouse torn, and Johnny came in to get another,” acknowledged Tod, readily. The fact was, Hugh’s clothes that afternoon had come to uncommon grief. Hannah had made one of her usual rows over it, and afterwards shown the things to Mrs. Todhetley.
“Well, and now for to-day,” resumed the pater. “Where have you all been?”
Where had we not? In the three-cornered paddock; with Monk in the pine-house; away in the rick-yard; once to the hay-field; at the rabbit-hutches; round at the stables; oh, everywhere.
“You two, and Sanker?”
“Not Sanker,” I said. Sanker stayed on the lawn with his book. We had all been on the lawn for the last half-hour: he, us, Hugh, Lena, and the magpie. But not a suspicious character of any sort had we seen about the place.
“Sanker’s fond of reading on the lawn,” remarked Mr. Todhetley, in a careless tone. But he got no answer: we had been struck into silence.
He took one hand out of his pocket, and drummed on the table, not looking at either of us. Tod had laid hold of a piece of blotting-paper and was pulling it to pieces. I wondered what they were thinking of: I know what I was.
“At any rate, the first thing is to find the ring; that only went this morning,” said the Squire, as he left us. Tod sat on where he was, dropping the bits of paper.
“I say, Tod, do you think it could be——?”
“Hold your tongue, Johnny!” he shouted. “No, I don’t think it. The bank-note—light, flimsy thing—must have been lost in the yard, and the ring will turn up. It’s somewhere on the floor here.”
In five minutes the news had spread. Mr. Todhetley had told his wife, and summoned the servants to the search. Both losses were made known; consternation fell on the household; the women-servants searched the room; old Thomas bent his back double over the frame outside the glass-doors. But there was no ring.
“This is just like the mysterious losses we had at school,” exclaimed Sanker, as a lot of us were standing in the hall.
“Yes, it is,” said the Squire.
“Perhaps, sir, your ring is in a corner of some odd pocket?” went on Sanker.
“Perhaps it may be,” answered the Squire, rather emphatically; “but not in mine.”
Happening to look at Mrs. Todhetley, I saw her face had turned to a white fright. Whether the remark of Sanker or the peculiarity of the Squire’s manner brought to her mind the strange coincidence of the losses, here and at school, certain it was the doubt had dawned upon her. Later, when I and Tod were hunting in the room on our own account, she came to us with her terror-stricken face.
“Joseph, I see what you are thinking,” she said; “but it can’t be; it can’t be. If the Sankers are poor, they are honest. I wish you knew his father and mother.”
“I have not accused any one, Mrs. Todhetley.”
“No; neither has your father; but you suspect.”
“Perhaps we had better not talk of it,” said Tod.
“Joseph, I think we must talk of it, and see what can be done. If—if he should have done such a thing, of course he cannot stay here.”
“But we don’t know that he has, therefore he ought not to be accused of it.”
“Oh! Joseph, don’t you see the pain? None of you can feel this as I do. He is my relative.”
I felt so sorry for her. With the trouble in her pale, mild eyes, and the quivering of her thin, meek lips. It was quite evident that she feared the worst: and Tod threw away concealment with his step-mother.
“We must not accuse him; we must not let it be known that we suspect him,” he said; “the matter here can be hushed up—got over—but were suspicion once directed to him on the score of the school losses, the disgrace would never be lived down, now or later. It would cling to him through life.”
Mrs. Todhetley clasped her slender and rather bony fingers, from which the wedding-ring looked always ready to drop off. “Joseph,” she said, “you assume confidently that he has done it; I see that. Perhaps you know he has? Perhaps you have some proof that you are concealing?”
“No, on my honour. But for my father’s laying stress on the curious coincidence of the disappearances at school I should not have thought of Sanker. ‘Losses there; losses here,’ he said——”
“Now then, Peter!” mocked the bird, from his perch on the old tree.
“Be quiet!” shouted Tod. “And then the Squire went on adroitly to the fact, without putting it into words, that nobody else seems to have been within hail of this room either time.”
“He has had so few advantages; he is kept so short of money,” murmured poor Mrs. Todhetley, seeking to find an excuse for him. “I would almost rather have found my boy Hugh—when he shall be old enough—guilty of such a thing, than Edward Sanker.”
“I’d a great deal rather it had been me,” I exclaimed. “I shouldn’t have felt half so uncomfortable. And we are not sure. Can’t we keep him here, after all? It will be an awful thing to turn him out—a thief.”
“He is not going to be turned out, a thief. Don’t put in your oar, Johnny. The pater intends to hush it up. Why! had he suspected any other living mortal about the place, except Sanker, he’d have accused them outright, and sent for old Jones in hot haste.”
Mrs. Todhetley, holding her hand to her troubled face, looked at Tod as he spoke. “I am not sure, Joseph—I don’t quite know whether to hush it up entirely will be for the best. If he—— Oh!”
The exclamation came out with a shriek. We turned at it, having been standing together at the table, our backs to the window. There stood Sanker. How long he had been there was uncertain; quite long enough to hear and comprehend. His face was livid with passion, his voice hoarse with it.
“Is it possible that I am accused of taking the bank-note and the ring?—of having been the thief at school? I thank you, Joseph Todhetley.”
Mrs. Todhetley, always for peace, ran before him, and took his hands. Her gentle words were drowned—Tod’s were overpowered. When quiet fellows like Sanker do get into a rage, it’s something bad to witness.
“Look here, old fellow,” said Tod, in a breath of silence; “we don’t accuse you, and don’t wish to accuse you. The things going here, as they did at school, is an unfortunate coincidence; you can’t shut your eyes to it; but as to——”
“Why are you not accused?—why’s Ludlow not accused?—you were both at school, as well as I; and you are both here,” raved Sanker, panting like a wild animal. “You have money, both of you; you don’t want helping on in life; I have only my good name. And that you would take from me!”
“Edward, Edward! we did not wish to accuse you; we said we would not accuse you,” cried poor Mrs. Todhetley in her simplicity. But his voice broke in.
“No; you only suspected me. You assumed my guilt, and would not be honest enough to accuse me, lest I refuted it. Not another hour will I stay in this house. Come with me.”
“Don’t be foolish, Sanker! If we are wrong——”
“Be silent!” he cried, turning savagely on Tod. “I’m not strong; no match for you, or I would pound you to atoms! Let me go my own way now. You go yours.”
Half dragging, half leading Mrs. Todhetley with him, the angry light in his eyes frightening her, he went to his bedroom. Taking off his jacket; turning his pockets inside out; emptying the contents of his trunk on the floor, he scattered the articles, one by one, with the view of showing that he had nothing concealed belonging to other people. Mrs. Todhetley, great in quiet emergencies, had her senses hopelessly scared away in this; she could only cry, and implore of him to be reasonable. He flung back his things, and in five minutes was gone. Dragging his box down the stairs by its stout cord, he managed to hoist it on his shoulders, and they saw him go fiercely off across the lawn.
I met him in the plantation, beyond the Dyke. Mrs. Todhetley, awfully distressed, sent me flying away to find the pater; she mistakenly thought he might be at Rimmell’s, who lived in a cottage beyond it. Running home through the trees, I came upon Sanker. He was sitting on his box, crying; great big sobs bursting from him. Of course he could not carry that far. Down I sat by him, and put my hand on his.
“Don’t, Sanker! don’t, old fellow! Come back and have it cleared up. I dare say they are all wrong together.”
His angry mood had changed. Those fierce whirlwinds of passion are generally followed by depression. He did not seem to care an atom for his sobs, or for my seeing them.
“It’s the cruelest wrong I ever had dealt to me, Johnny. Why should they pitch upon me? What have they seen in me that they should set me down as a thief?—and such a thief! Why, the very thought of it, if they send her word, will kill my mother.”
“You didn’t do it, Sanker. I——”
He got up, and raised his hand solemnly to the blue sky, just as a man might have done.
“I swear I did not. I swear I never laid finger on a thing in your house, or at school, that was not mine. God hears me say it.”
“And now you’ll come back with me, Ned. The box will take no harm here till we send for it.”
“Go back with you! that I never will. Fare you well, Johnny: I’ll wish it to you.”
“But where are you going?”
“That’s my business. Look here; I was more generous than some of you have been. All along, I felt as sure who it was, cribbing those things at school, as though I had seen it done; but I never told. I just whispered to the fellow, when we were parting: ‘Don’t you go in for the same game next half, or I shall have you dropped upon;’ and I don’t think he will.”
“Who—which was it?” I cried, eagerly.
“No: give him a chance. It was neither you nor me, and that’s enough to know.”
Hoisting the box up on to the projecting edge of a tree, he got it on his shoulders again. Certain of his innocence then, I was in an agony to get him back.
“It’s of no use, Johnny. Good-bye.”
“Sanker! Ned! The Squire will be fit to smother us all, when he finds you are off; Mrs. Todhetley is in dreadful grief. Such an unpleasant thing has never before happened with us.”
“Good-bye,” was all he repeated, marching resolutely off, with the black box held safe by the cord.
Fit to smother us? I thought the pater would have done it, when he came home late in the afternoon; laying the blame of Sanker’s going, first on Mrs. Todhetley, then on Tod, then on me.
“What is to be done?” he asked, looking at us all helplessly. “I wouldn’t have had it come out for the world. Think of his parents—of his own prospects.”
“He never did it, sir,” I said, speaking up; “he swore it to me.”
The pater gave a sniff. “Swearing does not go for much in such cases, I’m afraid, Johnny.”
It was so hopeless, the making them understand Sanker’s solemn truth as he did swear it, that I held my tongue. I told Tod; also, what he had said about the fellow he suspected at school; but Tod only curled his lip, and quietly reminded me that I should never be anything but a muff.
Three or four days passed on. We could not learn where Sanker went to, or what had become of him; nothing about him except the fact that he had left his box at Goody Picker’s cottage, asking her to take charge of it until it was sent for. Mrs. Todhetley would not write to Wales, or to the school, for fear of making mischief. I know this: it was altogether a disagreeable remembrance, whichever way we looked at it, but I was the only one who believed in his innocence.
On the Monday another loss occurred; not one of value in itself, but uncommonly significant. Since the explosion, Mrs. Todhetley had moved about the house restlessly, more like a fish out of water than a reasonable woman, following the Squire to his room, and staying there to talk with him, as she never had before. It was always in her head to do something to mend matters; but, what, she could not tell; hence her talkings with the pater. As each day passed, bringing no news of Sanker, she grew more anxious and fidgety. While he was in his room on the Monday morning, she came in with her work. It was the unpicking some blue ribbons from a white body of Lena’s. There had been a child’s party at the Stirlings’ (they were always giving them), and Lena had a new frock for it. The dressmaker had put a glistening glass thing, as big as a pea, in the bows that tied up the sleeves. They looked like diamonds. The pater made a fuss after we got home, saying it was inconsistent at the best; she was too young for real diamonds, and he would not have her wear mock rubbish. Well, Mrs. Todhetley had the frock in her hand, taking these bows off, when she came to the Squire on the Monday morning, chattering and lamenting. I saw and heard her. On going away she accidentally left one of them on the table. The Squire went about as usual, dodging in and out of the room at intervals like a dog in a fair. I sat on the low seat, on the other side of the hedge, in the vegetable garden, making a fishing-line and flinging stones at the magpie whenever he came up to his perch on the old tree’s stump. All was still; nothing to be heard but his occasional croak, “Now then, Peter!” Presently I caught a soft low whistle behind me. Looking through the hedge, I saw Roger Monk coming out of the room with stealthy steps, and going off towards his greenhouses. I thought nothing of it; it was his ordinary way of walking; but he must have come up to the room very quietly.
“Johnny,” came the Squire’s voice by-and-by, and I ran round: he had seen me sitting there.
“Johnny, have you a mind for a walk to——”
He had got thus far when Mrs. Todhetley came in by the inner door, and began looking on the table. Nothing in the world was on it except the inkstand, the Worcester Herald, and the papers before the Squire.
“I must have left one of the blue knots here,” she said.
“You did; I saw it,” said the Squire; and he took up his papers one by one, and shook the newspaper.
Well, the blue shoulder-knot was gone. Just as we had searched for the ring, we searched for that: under the matting, and above the matting, and everywhere; I and those two. A grim look came over the Squire’s face.
“The thief is amongst us still. He has taken that glittering paste thing for a diamond. This clears Sanker.”
Mrs. Todhetley burst into glad sobs. I had never seen her so excited; you might have thought her an hysterical girl. She would do all sorts of things at once; the least of which was, starting in a post-chaise-and-four for Wales.
“Do nothing,” said the Squire, with authority. “I had news of Sanker this morning, and he’s back at school. He wrote me a letter.”
“Oh, why did you not show it me?” asked Mrs. Todhetley, through her tears.
“Because it’s a trifle abusive; actionable, a lawyer might say,” he answered, stopping a laugh. “Ah! ha! a big diamond! I’m as glad of this as if anybody had left me a thousand pounds,” continued the good old pater. “I’ve not had that boy out of my head since, night or day. We’ll have him back to finish his holidays—eh, Johnny?”
Whether I went along on my head or my tail, doing the Squire’s errand, I didn’t exactly know. To my mind the thief stood disclosed—Roger Monk. But I did not much like to betray him to the Squire. As a compromise between duty and disinclination, I told Tod. He went straight off to the Squire, and Roger Monk was ordered to the room.
He did not take the accusation as Sanker took it—noisily. About as cool and hardy as any fellow could be, stood he; white, angry retaliation shining from his sullen face. And, for once, he looked full at the Squire as he spoke.
“This is the second time I have been accused wrongfully by you or yours, sir. You must prove your words. A bank-note, a ring, a false diamond (taken to be a true one), in a blue ribbon; and I have stolen them. If you don’t either prove your charge to be true, or withdraw the imputation, the law shall make you, Mr. Todhetley. I am down in the world, obliged to take a common situation for a while; but that’s no reason why I should be browbeat and put upon.”
Somehow, the words, or the manner, told upon the Squire. He was not feeling sure of his grounds. Until then he had never cast a thought of ill on Roger Monk.
“What were you doing here, Monk? What made you come up stealthily, and creep stealthily away again?” demanded Tod, who had assumed the guilt out and out.
“As to what I was doing here, I came to ask a question about my work,” coolly returned Monk. “I walked slowly, not stealthily; the day’s hot.”
“You had better turn out your pockets, Monk,” said the Squire.
He did so at once, just as Sanker had done unbidden, biting his lips to get some colour into them. Lots of odds and ends of things were there; string, nails, a tobacco-pipe, halfpence, and such like; but no blue bow. I don’t think the Squire knew whether to let him off as innocent, or to give him into custody as guilty. At any rate, he seemed to be in hesitation, when who should appear on the scene but Goody Picker. The turned-out pockets, Monk’s aspect, and the few words she caught, told the tale.
“If you please, Squire—if you please, young masters,” she began, dropping a curtsy to us in succession; “the mistress told me to come round here. Stepping up this morning about a job o’ work I’m doing—for Mrs. Hannah, I heard of the losses that have took place, apperiently thefts. So I up and spoke; and Hannah took me to the mistress; and the mistress, who had got her gownd off a-changing of it, listened to what I had to say, and telled me to come round at once to Mr. Todhetley. (Don’t you be frighted, Monk.) Sir, young gentlemen, I think it might have been the magpie.”
“Think who might have been the magpie?” asked the Squire, puzzled.
“What stole the things. Sir, that there pie, bought only t’other day from my gran’son by young Mr. Todhetley, was turned out o’ my son Peter’s home at Alcester for thieving. He took this, and he took that; he have been at it for weeks, ever since they’d had him. They thought it was the servant, and sent her away. (A dirty young drab she was, so ’twere no loss.) Not her, though; it were that beast of a magpie. A whole nest of goods he had got hid away in the brewhouse: but for having a brewing on, he might never ha’ been found out. The woman was drawing off her second mash when she see him hop in with a new shirt wristban’ and drop it into the old iron pot.”
Tod, who believed the story to be utterly unreasonable—got up, perhaps, by Mother Picker to screen the real thief—resented the imputation on his magpie. The bird came hopping up to us, “Now, then, Peter.”
“That’s rather too good, Mrs. Picker, that is. I have heard of lodging-house cats effecting wonders in the way of domestic disappearances, but not of magpies. Look at him, poor old fellow! He can’t speak to defend himself.”
“Yes, look at him, sir,” repeated Mother Picker; “and a fine objec’ of a half-fed animal he is, to look at! My opinion is, he have got something wrong o’ the inside of him, or else it’s his sins that troubles his skin, for the more he’s give to eat the thinner he gets. No feathers, no flesh; nothing but a big beak, and them bright eyes, and the deuce’s own tongue for impedence. Which is begging pard’n for speaking up free,” concluded Mother Picker, as Mrs. Todhetley came in, fastening her waistband.
A little searching, not a tithe of what had been before again and again, and the creature’s nest was discovered. In a cavity of the old tree-stump, so conveniently opposite, lay the articles: the bank-note, the ring, the blue bow, and some other things, most of which had not been missed. One was a bank receipt, that the house had been hunted for high and low.
“Now, then, Peter!” cried the magpie, hopping about on the gravel as he watched the raid on his treasures.
“He must be killed to-day, Joe,” said Mr. Todhetley; “he has made mischief enough. I never took kindly to him. Monk, I am sorry for the mistake I was led into; but we suspected others before you—ay, and accused them.”
“Don’t mention it, sir,” replied Monk, his eye catching mine. And if ever I saw revenge written in a face, it was in his as he turned away.