They pressed upon him, and a man raised his hand. Mish’s villainous face was within an inch or two of his own; and with that Monjoy became himself again. His red head rising above them all, he took a stride into their midst and with a sweep of his arm put the foremost back. He set his fists to his hips and leaned slightly forward, and his eyes moved from one man to another, dwelling here and there, as if he sought to remember their faces. His voice now came steadily.
“Very well, my lads,” he cried. “Get on with your drawing. Draw for your murder—for your torture at the Slack for all I know—I know the wolves you are. Eastwood and I are taking Ellah away, chance you change your fickle minds and wreak something on him, too; but we’ll see you draw first. I want to see who the lucky wolves are so that I can watch them.—Into the cap with the strings, Mish my lad; you’ve a wolf’s chough yourself for blood. About it. Remember, you’re without me and Eastwood and Moon and Raikes, and the best of us. We stick at shooting and cutting and filling men’s breeches with red-hot coals. Up with the strings, Mish; only mark you, the next information that’s given will be by a man who’s coming round to his senses, not taking leave of ’em. Draw, wolves!”
There was a howl, but Mish’s voice sounded above it.
“Damn him, draw! We’ve telled him, haven’t we? What are they doing to Jim Northrop and Will Haigh now?—Gi’e me th’ cap!”
A sinister scene followed. The short strings of the bundle were to be the fatal draws, and Mish held them in the cap with the even ends showing above his thumb. “Stay!” he cried, “I claim first draw!”
He took the end of a string in his fingers and pulled it out. There was a sudden intaking of breath and a silence; Mish had drawn a short string the first time. “That’s nooan so bad,” said Mish, thrusting the string into his pocket. One wolf.
Another man drew, and another, and a fourth. Hands faltered and shook, and while some watched fascinated, others turned their faces away as they drew, looking at the string only when sounds and indications about them assured them that they had missed. At the tenth draw there was a short checked cry; Dick o’ Dean had drawn a string no longer than the width of the palm in which it lay. Two chances were accounted for; and men now pressed forward and drew more freely, and Mish paused to arrange the disordered ends. Monjoy watched without moving a muscle, and presently the pale youth called Charley backed whimpering away from his turn. There were but half a dozen strings left, and one wolf had not yet met his luck.
“Clog him up!” cried Mish, savagely; and the youth was thrust forward.
He shook his fingers free of the string he had drawn with a cry of terror, and Mish tossed the remaining strings aside and set the cap on his head. The lot was complete—Charley, Dick o’ Dean, and Murgatroyd himself.
“Humph!” said Monjoy; “very prettily done. Now, James, fetch a blanket and we’ll get Ellah away.”
Charley, on his knees, was uttering agonized cries; he had drawn wrong—had drawn wrong. Somebody lifted him to his feet and supported him. James Eastwood had unbarred the door and disappeared; he returned with a blanket, in which they wrapped Ellah. Another man had brought a draught of brandy for Charley, and Monjoy took up Ellah in his arms and moved towards the door.
“To the ‘Pipes,’ now, James,” he said; “I may take him home with me later. Stand on one side, wolves——”
They allowed him to pass, and at the door he turned.
“Don’t forget, Mish,” he said.
“’Tis ye had best remember,” Mish replied.
* * * * *
The white cotton blinds of Sally Northrop’s bedroom were drawn against the sun, but the windows were open outside them. From time to time they moved gently in the light breeze, and the shadows of the house-martens flitted across them. The chamber was softly aglow with light, and it smelt of some preparation of lemon that Dooina Benn had supplied Cicely with for the sprinkling of it. Cicely’s face was composed and grave, and the third finger of the hand with which every few minutes she felt Sally’s low pulse was ringless.
So slowly did the coverlet rise to Sally’s breathing that its movement was hardly noticeable. At long intervals there came a light purring sound from her lips. The little wicker cradle on the floor was trimmed with gaudy ribbons and muslin, and its patchwork quilt was of Sally’s own making.
Round the front of the house there came the sound of steps. They passed up the alley, and there came a knock at the kitchen door. Cicely descended and called softly, “Who’s there?”
“Arthur and your father. You must open the door, Cicely.”
She drew back the bar. Arthur carried Ellah in his arms in the blanket. “It’s your cousin,” he said; “make a place for him in the niche.”
She drew back the curtain on the string, and Monjoy placed Ellah in the niche, bidding Eastwood watch. “I’ll come upstairs with you, Cicely,” he said, and she led the way to Sally’s chamber.
“How is she?” he asked, bending over the deeply sleeping woman.
“Very low.”
“Has she known anything?”
“She hasn’t stirred more than you see her now since morning; she’s to be kept so. What’s wrong with Eastwood?—No, no, don’t tell me any more o’ that business. I want no word o’ that ——” She added the last words hastily, and her hands made a movement as if to hold some physical thing away from her.
“I’ll take him away if it’s too much for you; but there’s nothing to fear from him now,” Monjoy murmured, not looking at her; “and—Cicely—for the other business, I’ve something you must—must—hear——”
“No, no!” she muttered, repeating her gesture and catching at her upper lip with her teeth. “I can’t—I can’t—oh, it’s cruel to force it on me now! Haven’t I care enough?” Her breathing was interrupted, her mouth drawn, and her bosom heaved.
“Over much, lass; but you must hear me——”
Then, seeming still to struggle and to hold something away from her, she began to talk low and rapidly.
“Leave me quiet, to see it through. To-morrow—to-night, for all I know—the blinds may ha’ to be drawn and the seeming-glasses covered—you men know nothing o’ this—this is our part—the waiting—always waiting—. Yonder’s one who’s waited, and look at her!”
“Oh, hush, hush, Cicely!” But she continued more quickly.
“Oh, ye don’t know! Heavens o’ happiness, ye tell us, isn’t too much for us, and see the hell o’ misery that comes instead! All the things you’re going to do for us, you in your pride ... but the little that will fit us, all we ask o’ ye, no, no!... Ay, ye’re away forgetting, busy and forgetting all the time; if this turn misses o’ happiness, the next’ll do it; and what is it that we ask in our hearts? A bite and sup, a hearth and a babe and a kiss. I wed ye unthinking, Arthur—ay, ye know I did—but I ha’ thought since—the time women do think, God help ’em! You never dazzled me wi’ your talk o’ riches, never; but the little a woman asks is too much for a man to give, it seems. I wonder what you’d ha’ thought if you’d heard Sally before she took the draught!... Courting again, she was, with Jim, o’ spring evenings down the deans (forgive me, lass!), and him with her hair about his neck and suchlike, and sometimes her reckoning to be the man and toying wi’ him and kissing him here and there, as lads kiss lasses, and all their tricks and babble.... Ay!” she cried, excitedly, “you’ve brought it all back to me now, all that I’ve held away for days that I might nurse and watch and tend the bairn and be a bit o’ use!... And when they were wed, what more did she ask than just that? Would a golden crown ha’ suited her better? Nay, nay! It’s less we get after we’re wed. Happen men’ll know more of it i’ th’ next world, for they know little enough i’ this.—But go your way, Arthur; I’ve told ye mine.”
He had not once lifted his head; he did not do so now.
“I’m making my way yours, if you’ll go it with me,” he said in a low voice.
“Ay, I don’t doubt this has shaken you all up a bit, but men soon get over it,” she replied.
“Well, you’ve a right to say what you will, and I’ll not tell you what’s shaken me; but, Cicely, little or much, I’m here to offer you all you ask.”
“Then all I ask, Arthur, is that you leave me. What use am I in this house if I begin to think? You’ve brought me another of ’em, too; then keep away from me, lest I break down. I’ll do the best I can.”
Sad and broken-spirited, he gazed down at the cradle.
“Yes, I’ll go,” he said. “But I’d hoped you’d see in me a man you haven’t known yet, humbled, ay, and even his body in danger. I’m no king of Back o’ th’ Mooin now; when I’ve done what I’m going to do both sides will hunt me. I’d hoped, too, we might help one another, you and I.”
She began to tremble. “What is it, Arthur?” she asked quickly.
“Don’t ask me, except that this is my finish with it. I’ll tell you what it is I offer you now. All’s closing in, and they won’t stop at this; and I offer you danger for a portion, and not so much as a roof to your head it may be, and it may be, Cicely, just the same lot as hers stretched on the bed yonder. But a new man goes with it, Cis——”
“Arthur!” she cried, sharply, as if transfixed with a sudden pain; and for the first time since he had entered he looked up at her face. Her eyes were bright with a starting of tears, and her lips were parted and drawn downwards. He did not raise his hands, but in a moment her head was on his breast.
There was a murmuring in the market-place; the crowd was returning.
She was sobbing and speaking against the cloth of his coat, and his head was bowed to catch her words.
“Oh, all the time I’ve longed for it—all my life—but I didn’t think to get it like this!” she was murmuring brokenly. “Oh, among harsh and grudging folk I ha’ thought o’ gentle and bonnie things, and soft and that! And I’d thought never to know ’em now, after I’d said ‘Yes’ to you, Arthur. And you’ve right done wi’ it, love?”
“Ay, sweetheart, come what may.”
“Oh, ay—ay—then whatever it costs, even that o’ yon bed, I’ll hug it and think mysel’ happy!... And you’ll come really courting me now, dear—not like the last?”
“Kiss me, Cissie....”
Their lips met. Thrice they kissed; and then she murmured, “And now that I have you I must send you away! Oh, I have so much to do! But you’ll come in the morning, love?”
“Yes, yes,” he promised her, with a brave smile.
But as it happened, he was not to come in the morning, for that afternoon all Horwick was thrown into a new commotion. All the afternoon the square had remained thronged, and at five o’clock more men began to run in, as they had done earlier in the day. At half-past five, a chaise, driven at the head of a company of soldiers, passed down the Fullergate, and in the chaise sat Jeremy Cope, his spectacles off, nodding and blinking, with one short leg curled up beneath him.
EVERY man who had anything to conceal—a file, a suspicious-looking pair of shears, a paper or snuffbox of clippings—made haste to conceal it; and for that which was already hidden they sought safer and yet safer places. There was a deal of the dangerous stuff about. During the building of the furnaces, filings and such small matters had been disdained, and for weeks had accumulated uncollected. They began now to rummage chimneys, dusty rafters, the upper back-shelves of cupboards, and to hide it again in their gun-cartridges, in hollows they burned in the galley-baulks of their looms (tallowing all over again), in holes in yards and gardens, in the linings of their jackets and caps. The work began within an hour of Cope’s return; it lasted throughout the night. Even neighbours were scarce to be trusted, for no man knew but in his own extremity another might turn against him. And as they ran here and there, hiding and rehiding, they planned itineraries of escape in the last resort.
Before the next day was two hours old they had reason to congratulate themselves on their celerity; for before Monjoy’s house in the Fullergate there stood an empty chaise and a score of redcoats with muskets. Monjoy’s door stood open.
He had not slept there, however, and presently there issued from the door Cope—the same waddling, blinking, imbecile Cope—and an officer. Except for his burins, his sandbag and engraver’s globe of water, they had found nothing indicative of Monjoy’s trade, and a soldier stepped forward and set a seal on the lock of the door. Cope hoisted himself into the chaise, the officer gave orders, and the party swung off down the Fullergate. It was half-past five in the morning. They halted opposite Matthew Moon’s warehouse, and Cope lowered himself from the chaise again.
They would have forced the door, but it was of unexpected strength, and Moon lived within a stone’s throw. A hasty consultation was held; the officer rode on to demand the key in the King’s name; and in a quarter of an hour he had returned with Matthew Moon himself, clad in his shirt and breeches.
“Good-morning, Mr. Moon, good-morning,” giggled Cope. “I fear I have disturbed your rest.—Come, lose no time.”
Then Matthew Moon began an extraordinarily loud altercation. He would see Mr. Cope’s warrant. If Mr. Cope had no warrant he should answer this. Let him see the warrant. Cope produced it. It was signed by Parker, and Moon stormed. A search-warrant on Horwick premises signed by a Ford magistrate! Was that legal? Was that in due form?
“Ask your friend Emmason,” Cope returned, and the merchant continued his clamour. A very clever man might have supposed he was making a disturbance for the purpose of warning somebody inside the warehouse, and Cope was a clever man. He chuckled, and the merchant grew violent.
“I’ve warned ye, ye clammy, filthy hell-toad!” he vociferated; and Cope turned away. Already the officer was flinging back the bar of the door. They entered, a couple of soldiers following them.
The ground floor of the warehouse was little more than an office, with pieces of grey cloth ranged methodically on racks all round it, and a long counter running down the middle. The ledgers were in a locked cupboard, and for the present Cope contented himself with setting a seal on the lock. There was no cellar, no fireplace, or chimney; the floor was of stone flags, and the ceiling of beams and boards without underdrawing. Moon obstructed the men at every turn, swearing outrageously, and Cope’s thick-lidded eyes never for a fraction of an instant left his face. “You make a deal of noise, Mr. Moon,” he remarked ironically. “The next floor, gentlemen, I think.”
The first floor was cumbered with bales and wicker skeps, and had double crane doors, through the chink of the back pair of which a vertical glimpse of trees and daylight showed. “It will be necessary to disturb your stock,” Cope observed, still watching the merchant unwinkingly, and the two soldiers began to move the heavy bales from the walls, examining every foot for a possible communication with the adjoining warehouse. They found none. The whole building was no more than a shell, and Moon could not have moved a muscle of his face without Cope observing it. Then all at once Cope took the taper and wax and seal from the soldier and began himself to seal the padlocks of the crane doors. He bent over a padlock, and Moon continued to rail behind him.
Then happened a very quick piece of work. Like a flash Cope turned from his sealing, to surprise any change in Moon’s expression. How the merchant had known that he would turn at that moment he could hardly have told, save that not until then had the supervisor ceased to watch him. And though Moon’s brow was moist and beaded with sweat, his lips were twitched into something like a smile. Cope’s hand shook on the seal, but the merchant thought he knew now where they were. He kicked one of the bales.
“There’s almost room for a man in one of these,” he said mockingly.
“Upstairs,” ordered Cope curtly, and they passed up the dark, dusty staircase to the garret.
In the garret where Monjoy had worked, the heavy two-legged table lay a-tilt just within the door, and his hearth, the grimy bricks of which lay scattered over the floor, had been newly dismantled. Save for one empty box, all else—tests, crucibles, bellows, Monjoy himself—had gone. Overhead the structure of the rafters showed, and only single boards divided the garret from the chamber beneath. Cope stood for a minute blinking at the lately-disturbed bricks of the little refining-furnace; then he looked rather sheepishly at Matthew Moon.
“My compliments, Mr. Moon,” he said, with evident chagrin. “That was very creditably well done. Long ago I had some opinion of your ability. Now, I do not see—no, I do not see—how this could have been improved. Hn! hn! In the street I didn’t doubt of finding here what I wanted. I began to doubt a little down below ... yes, I make you my compliments on having gained perhaps half an hour. Nay,” he seemed suddenly not altogether to disrelish his own discomfiture, “‘twas excellent, and you find favour for it. Ah, well! Seal these doors also, men, and downstairs again quickly.”
The two sets of crane doors were quickly sealed, and they passed down the narrow staircase again. Before they had reached the basement Monjoy was in the garret.
Even for that perilous hiding-place he had had to scramble. The double doors that gave on the crofts and gardens at the back swung inwards, filling the dingy garret with a flood of morning light. The bar parted, not in the middle, which was sealed, but at one end, and beyond the doors was only the thickness of the wall, the sheer drop, and the sky and the mounting larks. On the sill, where he had stood, lay the apparatus, and the garret became dark again as Monjoy softly closed the doors behind him. He stretched himself along the floor, rather pale, for to any eyes that might have chanced to view the back of the building he had been about as publicly concealed as the Queen Anne in the niche of the Piece Hall. He lay there thinking till close on midday.
Long before midday, however, Matthew Moon’s own house had been searched from cellar to garret; but the famous books of the Association were not found there. (Indeed, when they did at last come to light it was very far from Horwick town.) Cope was losing no time. By one o’clock John Raikes’s house had been gone through—John Raikes, who had handled most of the silver; but somebody had found time to do goîtred John a neighbourly service during the night, and nothing was discovered. Horwick was in a ferment, that rose during the afternoon to a panic, for a quiet, obscure member of the Association was visited. Who would have supposed Cope had ever heard of that man? It did not occur to them that Cope visited, also, the houses of two men who had notoriously held aloof; no, Cope knew more than they knew themselves. Then the searching slackened a little. A soldier mounted guard at the door of Matthew Moon’s warehouse, and another marched a beat opposite the door of his house. Cope’s own house was guarded back and front, and soldiers smoked their pipes in the shop of Cole the clogger. The rest built a fire in the market-place between the pieceboards, stacked their arms like an encampment, and made themselves comfortable for the August night.
James Eastwood, making haste to his own house at Wadsworth, was the first to carry the news there. Thence it spread to Back o’ th’ Mooin. There it seemed to serve as a signal for a succession of drinking bouts, in which Booth and Brotherton men vied with their fellows of Holdsworth and Fluett in demonstrations of brutality, so that the quiet and decent folk kept their houses even from their friends. Murgatroyd paraded his formidable dog without muzzle. Dick o’ Dean was back and forth every day as far as the Shelf, where the two men hung in chains, and the youth Charley had not been a minute sober since the draught of brandy that had been given him after the drawing of the fatal string. Pim o’ Cuddy, in Wadsworth, stuck to the parson’s heels as if his very cloth were a protection, and he blubbered in his sleep (they said) that he had been led away—led away——.
Whether by Cope’s favour or not, Matthew Moon was suffered to go about unmolested; but he was watched at every turn, knew it, and even when alone no more betrayed himself than he had done when Cope had wheeled so swiftly round from the sealing of the crane door. Crossing the market-place, he noticed two or three strangers in plain clothes among the soldiers, and these seemed to hang constantly about the door of the “Cross Pipes.” At first he felt a wrathful mounting of his blood. Had Cope not finished with that house yet? Then suddenly his brows contracted; he thought he saw the reason; and he began to plot again.
A butcher’s lad, an impudent, whistling young rascal, called at his house for orders for meat. Matthew gave the lad a letter, with precise instructions, for Dooina Benn, to be given to her at her own home. Dooina was now taking turns with Cicely to watch Sally, who had been given another draught.
“You’re sure you understand, Teddy?” said the merchant anxiously, and the lad gave him an intelligent look and a grimace.
“Ye don’t want it ta’en straight to the ‘Pipes,’ ye mean?” he said, and the merchant nodded and gave him sixpence.
The lad delivered the message to Dooina (with whom Cole the clogger had taken up his quarters), and so it came to Cicely Monjoy, who read it and thrust it immediately into the kitchen fire. It informed her that for the present Arthur was safe, and that if all should seem quiet about two o’clock in the morning she was to take a basket of provisions to Webster’s stackyard, a mile out of Horwick, near the dean in which she had returned Arthur his ring. She was to do this on successive nights, and should she not see Arthur, she was to do it none the less. The crafty merchant contrived, also, to communicate with Webster, who owned the stackyard. Except for himself, Matthew Moon, cloth merchant, there was none to set a spoke in Cope’s wheel, and he took to ways a little more devious than his ordinary with readiness. “He’ll watch his wife, will he?” he muttered. “Well, wives won’t tell what they don’t know.”
In the meantime Arthur Monjoy sat on the empty box in the garret up the Fullergate. Except for a crust that he had slipped into his pocket in preparing for his busy night, he had not eaten since the previous midday, and it was now evening—Friday evening. Matthew, however, would see to that, if Matthew still had his liberty; and, in anticipation, Monjoy had occupied himself during the day by shredding to pieces an old end of crane-rope and knotting the fibres together. Towards eight o’clock (as he knew from the chiming of the Piece Hall clock) he opened his crane doors an inch or two, and paid out his length of string till it touched earth; then he fastened the other end of it to the empty box and tightened his belt.
He was oddly cheerful. One immediate care only was on his mind—the warning of Cope. Whether or not it was a duty to Cope, it was now one to Cicely, and he cogitated long without result. Some way would, however, present itself.
Between eight and nine he felt a gentle tug at his string. He started up, and then, suddenly irresolute, stood with one hand on the bar of the double door and the other pulling at his whiskers. He listened intently; somebody below gave a little dental whistle—“Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin’ yet.” That tune might be from either friend or foe, for Cope was malignant enough to use the air that had been his own mocking. Monjoy put his hand into his pocket for a coin and stooped to the ray of light that came through the crack of the doors.
It was shield—‘answer.’ He knelt, set his hand to the bar, and opened the doors. It was clear sunset. He opened the doors wide and put his head and shoulders out. Looking down, at first he could not see anybody; then, all but hidden in the docks and grass and nettles at the foot of the wall, heedless of stings, taking cover for sheer delight in the fun, he saw Teddy.
“Sss, Teddy!” he called softly; the boy was fastening a bundle to the string. “Can you hear?—Not that tune!——”
Teddy comprehended, and gave the sharp cry of the pewit, that comes naturally to the throat of a lad, and is scarce to be imitated by a man.
“Yes, that’ll do. Quick!”
“Throw them things down; they show,” the boy called up; and Monjoy dropped the phials and pestles and mortars one by one from the sill.
“Right?” he said, and Teddy nodded. Monjoy drew the bundle up quickly and closed the doors again.
He read Matthew Moon’s letter at the chink, half a line at a time. It was brief. Eastwood was in Wadsworth. Nothing had come of the searching yet. They had been through such-and-such houses, and so forth. It said nothing of the errand on which he was sending Cicely. Arthur was to remain where he was and not to use the rope he sent yet (it was an inch-rope, and very long). They seemed to be giving him, Matthew, his liberty, that he might have a chance to commit himself; that was all right, and Teddy was a good lad. Monjoy ate his supper in darkness, stretched himself on the floor, and soon slept soundly. Early the following morning, Saturday, he heard noises downstairs in the warehouse and glided noiselessly to his doors again. They had come for the books of Matthew Moon’s business, but they departed quickly.
Monjoy had had vague ideas of warning Cope in person—harebrained notions of disguise, of getting to the house adjoining Cope’s, passing from dormer to dormer under cover of the pear-tree, of visiting Cope in his bed. Presently he abandoned them. Moon must carry the message. He split a board from his empty box, and from the bricks of the broken hearth he scraped with his knife a quantity of soot. He mixed this with spittle, and then, making a pen of a splinter of wood wrapped round with his handkerchief, he rubbed into the dingy board a letter. It was neatly enough done considering the materials; he was an engraver; and he smiled as he worked, for this at least was as honest as Cicely could desire. He blew Cicely a kiss from his prison, and then he split his board from end to end that it might be carried doubled with the message inside. About eight o’clock he heard Teddy’s call.
“Mr. Moon, Teddy,” he said, throwing down the pieces when he had drawn up his bundle.—“I say, Teddy, pewits don’t nest in nettles, you know.”
“Keep low, Arthur—we’ll get you away,” quoth Teddy, with huge importance. “Cope’s been to Wadsworth to-day.”
“Ay? You’re a great man, Teddy. Off with you!” Monjoy answered; and a quarter of an hour later Teddy was marching through the soldiery in the market-place with his flat boards shouldered like a gun. The soldiers laughed, and one of them flung a bone from the pot at him.
At warning Cope, however, Matthew Moon demurred; he would have nothing to do with it, and informed Monjoy so on the Sunday. Himself (he said), he would be well pleased to see Cope stuck like a pig so he were not required to do it himself: hell would be the richer by a devil as cruel as any it held. Sign it, too! Was Monjoy mad?... Teddy had brought ink and paper this time, and Monjoy wrote back: Very well, then he would see to it himself, and that very night. Cope was getting near the wolves’ country at Wadsworth. Once out of the garret, there would be no getting back; therefore Matthew need not trouble himself to send further provisions.—Teddy bore off this answer, but the pewit’s call came again soon after the Piece Hall clock had struck eleven. Matthew Moon cursed him for a fool, but yielded. “But I’ll not give him your name,” he wrote, “unless you want to lug me in too. He’s able to arrest me any minute, and I want to have you out of the way first. No names, except those of the three men.”
“All right, Teddy,” said Monjoy.
And Cicely carried food by night to the stackyard, wasting her cunning had she but known it. It was only a question of time before she was followed, and (to come to that at once) it happened on that very Sunday evening. Reaching the stackyard, she found herself forestalled, and she lay low with her basket under a wall, listening in an agony of fear to the voices of three strangers, who talked in an outhouse. She heard her husband’s name spoken. They were questioning Webster, the owner of the stackyard; and it was much that she did not throw herself at their feet and implore mercy for him there and then. Matthew had judged wisely to keep her in ignorance. The voices ceased; she heard steps; she thrust her basket into the roadside weeds and fled. Dooina Benn had to watch Sally that night, and by morning a further calamity had happened. This was the disappearance from the niche in the kitchen of Eastwood Ellah. He had scarcely stirred since he had been put there, and, maybe, they had grown a little careless in watching him; anyway, he was gone. Neighbours were sent to search for him. Cicely was calmer, but very pale, and she started at sudden sounds.
At nine o’clock on the Monday morning the soldiers in the clogger’s shop saw Matthew Moon walk up the croft. They stretched their necks for a sight of the man who had publicly abused Jeremy Cope—Cope of Bow Street, the most ruthless manhunter in the land (you had to leave Horwick to learn of what consequence the Horwick folk were). Moon demanded of the sentry at the door whether Mr. Cope was up, and at a sign from the sentry one of the soldiers went inside to announce the visitor.
Cope, in a grey dressing-gown, was drinking chocolate at a desk and opening letters. He rubbed his hands as if with pleasure at seeing the merchant.
“You honour me, Mr. Moon—honour me, honour me—hn!—(leave us, you). Be seated, Mr. Moon, be seated.”
“I’ll stand,” said the merchant; “my business won’t take so long.”
“Nay, sit, and let me ring for a cup of chocolate. I failed—hn!—I fear I failed a little the other morning in my expression of esteem for you. To tell you the truth, Mr. Moon, I was for the moment a little chagrined. Let me make amends now—hn! hn! hn!”
“I think you know my handwriting,” said the merchant abruptly. “I’ve something here might advantage ye to read, and when ye’ve read it I’d be obliged if ye’d gi’e me an attestation ye’ve seen it. It might come in useful for me if aught were to happen to you.”
He handed him a copy of Monjoy’s letter. Cope read it with perfect composure.
“So you want a sort of receipt for this? Irregular, irregular, Mr. Moon. Suppose, with your indemnity in your pocket, you were to change your mind, and even to take a hand in my despatch yourself?...”
“I lose little for want o’ asking; and for changing my mind, I’ve been i’ one mind all along the sort ye are,” the merchant replied imperturbably.
Cope patted the air with his smooth deprecating little gesture.
“Tut, Mr. Moon; I did but jest. It’s a superfluous service you render me, but since you transact everything according to rule, I’ll give you your discharge of it—hn! hn!” Calmly he endorsed the letter and handed it back. “Take it, Mr. Moon. Ah, I wish you were not passionate. That’s a weakness. Generosity and passion, we cannot afford to entertain them. I say ‘we,’ because a valuable man is lost in you, Mr. Moon. Fatal, I fear; ah, me!—I tell you, my methods are the only methods. We may have to override the law a little now and then—lawyers will find us legal reasons enough after the event. True, an humble instrument like myself may once in a while be sacrificed; judges will tell us we have exceeded our duty——”
“I think I’ve warned ye o’ them that’ll sacrifice ye,” interrupted the merchant bluntly, “and now I’ll bid ye good morning.”
“So soon?” Cope mused. “Now I believe, Mr. Moon, that if I had a warrant for your arrest in my pocket at this moment I should detain you, if only for the pleasure of further conversation.” His bruised-looking lids blinked rapidly.
“I’m capped if ye haven’t,” said Moon composedly; “and lawyers to whitewash ye afterwards an’ all!”
Cope sighed. “A great pity, a great pity,” he mused, and Matthew Moon passed heavily down the stairs.
There awaited him at his house, circuitously conveyed from Cicely Monjoy, a distraught letter, in which she announced that her goings-out at night had been discovered. This news disturbed him little, as may be imagined, and he took a taper and burned the letter. But it was certain that no time would now be lost in searching the stackyard. He would surely be credited with the dupery, and he now reckoned his time for activity short. Teddy was not about; Matthew strode unhesitatingly across the market-place, and walked into the kitchen of the “Cross Pipes.”
Cicely was alone in the kitchen, and the merchant put up his hand warningly.
“Quietly!” he said. “He’s safe enough yet—ssh! But there’s no knowing how little time I have. They’ll ha’ found out about the stackyard in an hour or two—let me see——”
“Oh, they’ve found out!” Cicely moaned.
“Quiet, I tell ye! He’s not there, and hasn’t been. Let me see——”
“Not there?” whispered Cicely, dazed; and Moon interrupted her with an impatient gesture.
“Ha’ ye anywhere in Wadsworth ye can put him? (For God’s sake stop that choking!) Listen! I’ll send Dooina here; get ye off to Wadsworth as fast as ye can. Find out where he’s to be put, and then back to me. Where’s your bonnet?—Hark! They’re forming up for the stackyard now. Quick! on with your bonnet!”
In five minutes Cicely was on her way to Wadsworth, by near cuts and bypaths, for the soldiers were already marching along the road below her to Webster’s stackyard.
AS by degrees folk had come out of the daze into which Cope’s arrival had thrown them, growls and murmurs had begun to be heard. A town’s meeting had been held (none knew exactly by whom convened), in an upper chamber of the Piece Hall, and their temper had begun to show then, for half-a-dozen soldiers who claimed admittance “by order” had been bundled out with little ceremony. Back o’ th’ Mooiners assembled in bands. At one house a search had been resisted, and scuffling had taken place. The soldiers no longer had the square to themselves, for groups buzzed angrily among the Piece Hall pillars and the blinds of the houses had been raised again. There had been stone-throwing up the Fullergate. A deputation had waited on Cope at his house, and Cope had again been incontrollably shaken with silent mirth.
There were four new stacks in Webster’s yard, and a three-quarters cut old one. They were not thatched, but covered by wooden roofs that ran up and down corner-posts on pulleys. Hundreds of people followed the soldiers thither, and some of the Back o’ th’ Mooiners were talking their jargon again. Webster watched sullenly from his door the soldiers surround his premises; but the mob could not be kept out, and the yard was packed. They knew now what or whom the officer in charge looked to find there; word was passed that an orderly had ridden the previous evening up the Fullergate for more troops, that were to advance to Wadsworth and Back o’ th’ Mooin itself; and the crowd surged this way and that, no man using force, but of formidable force in the mass. The surrounding of the premises was futile; the officer in charge gave sharp orders; and with bayonets fixed a double rank of men facing outwards formed a lane from the gate to the stacks. The rest drew up in close order out in the road.
Down the bayonet-guarded lane four men advanced with a ladder. It was placed against the foremost stack, and a man went up it with a pistol in his hand and crawled under the wooden roof. “He’ll ha’ little time to use a pistol if Arthur gets a hand on him i’ yonder,” the watchers muttered; and the next moment they had grown suddenly quiet. By and by the man came out from under the roof again, and the ladder was set up against the next stack. Soon they had searched the tops of the four stacks and thrust rakes and bayonets beneath them.
“Throw the ricks down,” the officer ordered.
A storm of remonstrances, oaths, cries, broke forth. Throw down four stacks o’ nicely-settled hay! Couldn’t they do their rummaging wi’out ruining folk? Who was to set ’em up again? And did they think to take Big Monjoy when all was done?—They were tingling for quarrel; the stacks would serve as well for a pretext as anything else; the disturbing of a sitting hen would have served; and the mob swayed like a flood. A Back o’ th’ Mooiner had a cudgel; it crossed a bayonet suddenly; there was a rush, and a breach appeared in the red-coated line; and fifty men poured through it, taking the other rank in the backs. The yard was a confusion of struggling men, with a redcoat or a bayonet isolated here and there.
The officer had sprung half-way up the ladder, his back to a stack; he called a cracking order. Down the rank of men in the road three rhythmic movements passed like a wave, and there was a sharp clicking of musket-locks. The tumult changed to a frantic backward pressure—they fell back behind the stacks, against walls, anywhere from the row of levelled muskets. The officer up the ladder called more orders, and those who had formed the lane drew up at right-angles to the others, enclosing two sides of the yard.
“Throw the ricks down,” said the officer; and the ropes of the poles were cut, the heavy roofs hove down into the yard, and the demolition begun.
A couple of hundred soldiers had followed Cope’s chaise to Horwick; down the Fullergate that morning there marched from Ford Town thrice that number. At their head rode the Captain Ritchie of whom Horwick had heard. They formed in the market-place, and the captain cantered to Cope’s house, and flung himself from his horse.
The two men were closeted for half an hour, and then the captain came out again. He returned to the market-place; and as he gave the order to stack arms he saw a fair-haired woman making great haste beyond the Piece Hall.
Cicely had done the six miles to Wadsworth and back in less than two hours. She found Matthew Moon striding up and down his dining-room with his watch in his hand. He had flung the door open and cried, “Well?” hearing the brushing of her skirts in the passage.
“I’ve been—let me sit down——” she panted.
“Where have ye found?”
“Oh, I saw all manner o’ folk; I went——”
Matthew Moon stamped angrily. “Where have ye found?”
“Oh!... the parson’s....”
He was surprised; but, “When?” he demanded.
“Yes—yes—anytime——”
Already the merchant had sprung towards the door and disappeared. Presently he returned, mopping his brow, and sat down opposite Cicely. He gave a long “Ah!” of relief.
“Ye see, Cicely,” he explained more quietly, “they’ve been at Webster’s two hours and more now—they must be doing it thoroughly. Now ye can tell me about it.”
“Oh, first—where is he?”
“Never mind. Nowhere near the stackyard. Tell me about the parson.”
Wadsworth, it appeared from Cicely’s tale, was in as great a turmoil as Horwick. Her father had bidden her good-bye, given her an address in Liverpool, and was ready for flight. Many would have been glad to have Arthur, but what was the use? Arthur was safer in Horwick than in Wadsworth. Then, as she had stood distraught in the square, she had seen the parson coming out of the church, and had flown to him and well-nigh dragged him back into the building. There, on her knees, she had supplicated him (“Easy, lass,” said Matthew Moon, soothingly)—all was different now—oh! if the parson could but know!—Back o’ th’ Mooin, too, was against him ... she did not remember all she had said. At last the parson had consented to take him in for a night, during which he would pray for guidance; but it must be understood that after that all must be as God should direct.
“Humph!” said the merchant. “And yourself; when can ye join him?”
“Me?” exclaimed Cicely, “Oh, Matthew, I promised Sally I’d not leave her, and I can’t take that word back now——”
“He’ll not clear out without ye.”
“Oh, he must, he must!”
“I don’t think Arthur right knows what that means,” Matthew observed drily.
“Then he must trust i’ God and wait somewhere while I can meet him. It were the last word I passed Sally afore she went off. I’d see to Jimmy, too, I promised——”
“Sally wouldn’t hold ye to it if she knew how it is; let Dooina see to her.”
“No, no, I can’t; he must do the best he can while I can join him. It must come to pass as it will.”
“Heigho!... Very well. Is aught heard o’ Ellah yet?”
“No,” she answered distractedly.
The merchant had not smoked during that day; he now rose for tobacco. Slowly he filled and lighted his pipe, and puffed thoughtfully for a time.
“Well, we’ll manage somehow, no doubt,” he said composedly at last. “They’ll be here for me soon.”
“You too!” Cicely moaned; and he made a slight gesture of impatience.
“The devil take the women!... Yes, for me; but they’ve got a prickly piece when they’ve got me. I’ve made myself safe, as I’ve made all safe this many a year; they’d ha’ been badly to seek this last day or two wi’out Matthew. Now listen. Arthur ’ll have to chance it for himself now. ‘The parson’s, Wadsworth, to-night,’ was all I said in the note. I’m not going to tell ye where he is, and if ye love him keep away from the parson’s—keep out o’ Wadsworth. The parson’s! Nay, that caps me; who’d ha’ thought—hark!... Ay, I told ye; they’re here. Off wi’ ye, quick. Ye can go out o’ the front door now; good-bye for a bit.... Nay, don’t blubber all ower my hands!... off wi’ ye, and keep as far away from Wadsworth as ye can till all’s ready——”
He closed the door behind her and sat down to his pipe again. He had not finished the pipe before he was put under close arrest, with a sentry on either side of his dining-room door.
Monjoy had heard the marching of fresh troops down the Fullergate, and, at intervals during the afternoon, distant confused roars. Of Webster’s stackyard he knew nothing. Moon’s message came; he was mortally weary of that dingy garret, and he waited impatiently till nightfall. Ten o’clock came, and he still waited, hearing movements out in the town; and then the Piece Hall bell struck eleven. All was quiet, and he opened the crane doors. He flung his rope over the crane-arm, and as he did so saw why Matthew had sent one so long; he could descend by it doubled and take it away instead of leaving it dangling. He stood on the narrow sill, closed the doors behind him, and slipped to earth. The night was moonless and dark. Quickly he crossed yards and gardens and crofts, and now and then poultry stirred or a dog barked. He had so mapped out his way that he had only two deserted streets to cross. Down the first of them a soldier marched, making noise enough for ten, and Monjoy waited till his tramp sounded in the distance and crossed swiftly and noiselessly. He continued over walls and across more gardens. One light only burned, and he passed it within a hundred yards; it was the window of the chamber where Cicely watched Sally. He stopped for a minute and regarded it; then he passed on again to the fields above the Shelf road. At one o’clock in the morning he knocked at the parson’s door and was admitted. He was led to a room on the ground floor without light; a couch was indicated to him, and he was left without a word.
Of the morning’s interview with the parson a word or two must be said. It occurred at eight o’clock, in the same room—a little back study on the ground floor. Of the two breakfasts that the parson had laid with his own hands, one—his own—was untouched. The study was but four strides long, and the parson walked and turned, and walked again. His big guest leaned forward in a chair, watching him, and flipping the fingers of his right hand against the knuckles of his left. There were signs that the parson had not slept.
Suddenly he stopped in his walk, and smiled faintly.
“No, I am not one whit nearer to it, Monjoy,” he said.
Monjoy hoisted his shoulders; it was not for him to speak.
“And for what your wife said,” the parson continued, “you will understand that I hardly feel at liberty to repeat the whole of it.”
“No, no; Cis would be wrought up; leave her out, poor lass.”
“That, of course,” said the parson with a nod; “but I was thinking more particularly of what she said of you, not of herself. Hm!... You’ll observe that during our talk I’ve made no attempt to—let us say, improve the occasion.”
This time Monjoy nodded.
“I mustn’t say it’s more than I should have expected, for I know so few of your calling,” he replied. “And I don’t know what Cicely said neither. But I myself can say this, that with hands and heart a little less clean I could have been safe away in Liverpool by this. Yes, since last Thursday, too. Don’t think I’m careless or swaggering; I know just what danger I’m in, and from both sides; let me tell you.”
Briefly and honestly he told the parson of the lot-drawing in the loom-loft and of his own share therein.
“And that’s the whole of it,” he concluded, “except that if I hadn’t stayed behind to tidy Moon’s garret up a bit he’d have been worse off than I.”
The parson, with a very grave face, drew a chair up opposite Monjoy, and they continued to talk low and earnestly.
* * * * *
At a little after eleven that morning there appeared in Wadsworth an object the like of which had never before entered the hamlet. It was a single-horse, yellow chaise, with an extra horse for tracing, and it was followed up the steep street by an officer leading his horse and a company of redcoats. In the chaise Cope sat nursing one foot.
There was no smile on his face now. He had (so it was afterwards said) stumped raging about his room throughout the night, cursing, gnawing his nails, and spitting like a cat when any approached him. It seemed he had calculated confidently on the stackyard. He now sat in the yellow chaise like some ugly nodding idol, biting the edge of his forefinger unceasingly, and nesting his foot. The procession reached the square. The redcoats did not pile arms; they formed up four deep in front of the “Gooise,” and detachments were told off by Captain Ritchie to begin the searching immediately. Another party was sent off to reconnoitre the mountainous Scout; and the yellow chaise, with the supervisor in it, remained drawn up before the inn door. When Jeremy Cope took command in person matters were to be expedited.
At a little after one o’clock Pim o’ Cuddy, who for the last two hours had hidden and rehidden and hidden again his brass kettle down the spout of which sixpences would go (the verger seemed now to think the very possession of money a crime), was taken in the guilty act of putting back the kettle into its original hiding-place. He was haled before Cope, and there he fell and grovelled on the ground before the redoubtable dwarf.
“What’s this?” Cope snapped, tearing at his finger with his teeth.
The soldier displayed the kettle.
“Well, and what o’ that?” yelped Cope. “Curse your clumsy limbs, find the red man! His jade of a wife was here yesterday—it’s odds she’s not playing the same trick twice—skip, ye hamfaced fool! Set your heel on that worm first—skip!”
The Scout shimmered in the heat, and spots of red straggled here and there among the bracken and birches and teazels. Besides these, many dark figures moved and clustered, Wadsworth men, Horwick men, men from Booth and Brotherton and Back o’ th’ Mooin. Down in the village the search-parties slowly ascended the street and began in the square and the houses that stood back; and Cope still gnawed at his finger in the yellow chaise, now and then striking the wood with his fist in his mortification.
At two o’clock Captain Ritchie approached him.
“When what is in progress is concluded, there only remains the Parsonage,” he announced.
“Then search it, can’t ye?” cried Cope, with an oath. “What d’ye think you’re here for—to talk?”
The officer drew himself up.
“I would remind you, Mr. Cope, that you’re not addressing a trooper,” he said stiffly; and Cope spluttered and spat.
“O—my—dear—God!... Is this a time for your airs and dignities? Will you make dainty with your seminary manners when—aaaah!”
The left-hand lamp-glass of the yellow chaise was shattered by a bullet. The candle leaped out, cut in two. Echoes were following the report, and a puff of smoke drifted slowly along the edge of the Scout. Captain Ritchie sprang aside.
“Fire as you are!” he ordered; “mind the others——”; and, save for a figure that was seen running far along the skyline, every man on the face of the Scout had dropped for cover. The muskets came up as if for birds; quick dropping shots rang out; and sharp cracks from the soldiers up the Scout seemed to answer them like echoes.
“Draw this chaise to one side,” said Cope, biting at his finger again.
Captain Ritchie strode up the lane to the parson’s house and knocked loudly at the door. The parson himself answered the knock.
“You know whom it is we seek?” the officer said curtly.
The parson inclined his head.
“We must be assured of your house also. It is my desire to respect your cloth——”
The parson returned his steady look.
“I take that to mean that, on my word, you are willing to forego a search?”
“Yes.”
The parson lied like a layman, without a quiver. “I pass it you,” he said; and immediately the officer retired.
By half-past two the searching of Wadsworth was completed.
It was much that a chaise had got as far as Wadsworth; legs alone could clear the Scout. A man was despatched with a couple of horses to strike the Causeway lower down the valley and then to wait on the heights, and Cope descended from the chaise with the broken lamp-glass. At that, out stepped the parson from his house, and earnestly besought him to remain behind.
“Look!” he cried, pointing up the Scout, that seemed to crawl with ascending figures, “and not a man among them but bears you the worst will in the world! If not for your own safety, yet to save these from a deadly sin——”
Cope struck at the air with his hand.
The captain added his entreaties. His presence was unnecessary; with so much depending on him he had no right to accept the risk; he should be informed of every movement where he was. Cope, in a paroxysm of anger, shouted for him to be silent.
“You, too, mock my infirmity!” he cried tremulously. “Nay!—that’s all past, d’ye hear? That’s past months ago; this is my hour of mocking. What d’ye think I’ve endured, smiling and bowing and soft, waiting for this day? I’m going up yonder to laugh now, d’ye hear me?—to laugh in my turn! I’m going to click triggers instead o’ clogs, hear you?—to make ’em march to their own tune of Johnny Cope, mark well! If I’d but a trumpeter to play it! Raikes I hold in my finger, Moon’s locked inside his own doors, and a dozen I’ve marked over yonder shall be in this square in a quarter of a day from now; remains the big man.... Their furnaces? I’ll make their furnaces such a place o’ dread with swinging bodies....” He became inarticulate, and soon, suddenly dropping his voice a little, he cried, “Up! Why are we talking here? Up!”
On the fourteenth day of August, of the year 1779, at half-past three in the afternoon, they hoisted and pushed and carried Jeremy Cope up Wadsworth Scout to where the horses waited on the Causeway.
THE Causeway, creeping round the foot of the High Moor three miles into Back o’ th’ Mooin, takes a long and gradual rise over the lift of the plateau that is called Holdsworth Head. The leagues of purple heather, that the weeks of continued heat had parched to a pale lilac hue, give place at this point to scarred and broken ground. Gorse and yellow bents spread north up the High Moor, and to the south, close to the road, lie the old coal workings. The bellpits, conical cavities ten or twelve feet deep, choked with ling and bracken, are scattered among innumerable hillocks of grey shale. That afternoon, over the hillocks farthest from the Causeway, where the heather began again, signs of recent disturbance were visible. The ground was newly turned, and a triangular peak of shaft-timbers showed. The older shale-heaps reflected the hot sunlight in a pale and greasy grey.
The scarlet chain wound slowly over the distant edge, approached the foot of the long rise, and halted. Its turbulent black following pushed out a wing on either hand. Two small figures, the one on a brown horse and the other on one so white that it showed as definitely as if it had been cut out of paper, seemed to be engaged in an altercation. The former dismounted; the dispute appeared to be about changing horses. The other made a furious gesture, and the first mounted his own horse again. A strong party detached itself and advanced up the road, its bayonets fixed and glittering in the sun like tiny sparks.
A black-topped stone post marked the beginning of the workings, and at this post the advance party halted again. The officer in charge held a drawn sword; the sword flashed and pointed, and the party broke up into disorder. The scarlet coats scattered and began to appear and disappear and reappear among the shale-heaps of the bellpits; the place was perfect for an ambuscade. The black wings of the following away down the road extended farther out, but did not advance.
It took twenty minutes to beat the workings as far as the distant shaft-timbers. At the end of that time the party reassembled in the road. The scrubby gorse at the foot of the High Moor was three hundred yards away; it was not searched. One or two stragglers had now detached themselves from the black wings, and their heads and shoulders bobbed and disappeared in the heather.
Cope sat insecurely on the white horse. He had brought the stirrup-irons over the saddle, where he held them one on either side with his hands. His legs barely reached the saddle-flaps. He neither spoke to nor looked at the officer on the brown horse, and his head was thrust forward between his narrow shoulders and his lids fluttered with a little regular movement. The officer in charge of the advance party returned and saluted his superior.
“All clear, sir,” he said.
“Station your men to keep it so,” Captain Ritchie replied.
He, too, seemed to be in an ill humour. He gave the word to advance. Cope managed his stirrups in a manner that suggested he had made use of the contrivance before, and he had thrust a pistol between the buttons of his waistcoat. The soldiers set forward deeper into Back o’ th’ Mooin.
Down in the bottom of a bellpit the bracken stirred. A hand emerged from it, and a grey cap; and Mish Murgatroyd’s right arm was thrust over the baulk that crossed the old shaft. He clambered to the baulk, and looked to see that the bracken closed of itself behind him. Then he flung down the end of the rope that he had retained. He crawled on his hands and knees half way up the sloping mouth, and from under the thick bracken he drew two guns. He set the flints at half-cock, and drew back the pins of the priming pans. Then, a gun in either hand, he issued stooping from the bellpit, and began to move with little crouching runs among the slack-heaps. Round one heap he peered cautiously; he could see the road not forty yards away. Then swiftly he crossed the narrow gully and disposed himself along the shale of a mound a little farther on. Cautiously he hoisted his cap on a gun-muzzle above the hillock, as if for a signal to somebody up the High Moor. The calf-licks on either side of his bull’s-front of hair started constantly into little glistening points of sweat. He set the guns at full cock. The head of the advancing company reached the black-topped guide-stone.
At the guide-stone the captain again questioned his subordinate. As he spoke, from a gorse bush away up the High Moor there came a puff of smoke, and with the report a score of grouse rose with cries and a commotion of wings. “Half-company fire and advance,” the captain commanded, and the volley rattled and the men ran forward at the double. Nothing stirred over among the gorse.
Perhaps half a minute had elapsed, when there came another flash and crack, this time from the heather ahead of the coal workings. A figure was seen to fling away a gun and to plunge and stumble away towards a fold of the moor. Another volley rang out, and the soldiers who sprang forward reloaded and fired again as they ran.
Cope’s horse was stamping, and Cope kept his seat with difficulty. “On!” he cried; “do I make a worse target sitting still here? On! There’s plenty of that sort to come yet, and by the good God in Heaven....”
He uttered a frightful blasphemy. “On!” he screamed, and his horse leaped forward beneath him.
From close at hand there came a third shot, the bullet of which tore the neck-cloth under his chin. He drew sharply back, and his head turned swiftly. His right hand dropped the stirrup and snatched at his pistol, and “Ah, Mish!” he cried, as a head showed thirty yards away. He fired at the head, but the reports of the pistol and Mish’s second gun sounded one, and with a sob and cough Cope tumbled like a half-filled sack from the white horse, and lay on the Causeway, the pistol still smoking in his hand.
“You can’t miss that man! After him, all!” shouted the captain; and then he descended from his horse. He bent over the supervisor.
Cope had got it through both lungs, and his lips were a streaming of red that frothed and bubbled. The men of Horwick and Wadsworth and Back o’ th’ Mooin pressed about him and looked down on him without lifting a hand to help. “I’sd ha’ looked to see it black, but it’s red right eniff,” one of them remarked. Again the captain bent over the man who was suffocating in his own blood; then he began to give orders.
A man stripped his scarlet coat off, and it was buttoned about two muskets to make a litter. The litter was of no great dimensions, but big enough for its purpose, and they placed Cope carefully on it. The captain told off bearers and an escort. “He refused before, but he’s little choice but to go back now,” he said.
They lifted him. “Take him to the inn; out of step, so as not to shake him. I’ll follow later.... ‘Mish,’ did he say?”
A dozen men set off with Cope to Wadsworth, and the Wadsworth men followed, whispering among themselves.
On a shale heap they found the two guns; all their searching did not produce the man who had fired them. A strong guard was left on the spot, and that afternoon the main body advanced as far as Noon Nick without further molestation. Thence they retired half a mile, placing sentries at intervals along the ledge over the rocky bottom and men at various points along the Causeway; and a camp was pitched almost within a stone’s throw of the place that the coining plant had occupied previously to its removal to Brotherton Slack.
* * * * *
The Wadsworth men who had preceded Cope reached the top of the Scout; there they assembled and held a discussion.
“Whose house is he to be ta’en to?” some asked.
“Not mine,” others replied.—“No, nor mine.”—“Nor mine.”
“What about th’ parson’s?”
“Ay, that’ll be it. We’ll send ’em to th’ parson’s.”
The litter came up. They would not have this abhorred flesh cross their own thresholds, but the parson did not matter so much. They looked remorselessly on him in his agony, and then told the bearers where he must be taken.
“Well, a parson’ll be what he needs the most,” one of the soldiers replied.
The empty sleeves of the red coat on which Cope lay (it was buttoned about the muskets exactly as Cole the clogger had been wont to button his own jacket over his arms) were tied about his legs to steady him as much as possible for the precipitous descent; then they dropped down an abrupt sheep-track.
From the window of his dining-room, which, of his four ground-floor rooms, was diagonally opposite the little back study, the parson saw the approach of the party. It did not need the glimpse he had between two of the red coats to inform him of what had happened. He fell on his knees to intercede for the unhappy shedders of blood, and he was in that posture when a rat-tat sounded at his own door. He sprang to his feet and passed out to answer the knock.
A trooper informed him briefly that there was nowhere else to take the moribund man. “He’s got it,” he said.
The parson gave a glance at the stretcher. “Bring him into my dining-room,” he said.
He preceded them, got a rug and a blanket, and, litter and all, they laid Cope on a couch.
His breathing was horrible. The parson knew a little of medicine; he unbuttoned Cope’s coat and waistcoat.
“You’ll find a pair of scissors in the top drawer of that cabinet,” he said to one of the soldiers; and with the scissors he cut Cope’s shirt across the breast. Even the soldiers turned away, and the parson closed the shirt again.
“I presume none here are relations or near friends?” he said quietly. “Then be so good as to leave him with me.”
He stepped to the door and held it open. They filed out. He crossed the room again; there was a clash of rings on the cornice-pole as he flung the heavy curtains together; and the room became suddenly dark.
Cope was conscious, but past speech, and the bubbling of his breathing filled the apartment. He made no sign when the parson asked him whether he should pray for him, and the parson would have set the dying man’s hands together; but one of them still held the discharged pistol, and the fingers tightened on it mechanically when he tried to remove it. The parson knelt to perform the office for those who, in their extremity, are unable to receive the Sacrament, and his broken murmuring and the other’s choking mingled in the darkened room. They continued thus for some minutes.
Suddenly, as he prayed, the parson felt the dying man move on the couch, and the anguished battle for breath rose more violently. Opening his eyes, he saw Cope’s gaze fixed on something at the farther end of the room. He turned. He had not heard the door open, but just within it stood Arthur Monjoy, his head bowed to the parson’s praying.
Monjoy did not look up at the cessation of the praying, but the man on the couch made an agonising movement. He tortured himself to set himself on his left elbow, raised the pistol in his right hand, and thrice pulled vainly at the trigger, the hammer of which had already descended. For a hideous moment the pistol remained levelled, and the man’s strangling and hæmorrhage mounted high; then there was a ghastly convulsion, and arm and pistol fell. Even Cope’s last look seemed an impious bargain, as if he offered to pawn his soul so his ghost might but be permitted to return and finish that which his body left unaccomplished; and then he fell back. A sudden quiet invaded the darkened room. The parson crossed to the door and gently pushed Monjoy out; then he opened his front door and informed the waiting soldiers.
Nor had he, even then, finished with death for that day. Before the sun had set a message came for him from Horwick. He left in haste to visit Sally Northrop.
DAY was breaking when the parson returned from Horwick. As he passed beneath the wrought-iron arch of his gate he looked wearily at his own drawn curtains, and thought of the two charges under his roof. But the living must come before the dead, and he had opened his door and was passing to his study when he all but fell over the legs of a sentry who slept on a chair in the passage. He had forgotten that the man was there. The sentry started up, still half asleep, and grunted apologies.
“Has your captain returned?” the parson asked.
He was sleeping at the inn, the man replied. Nothing had happened during the night, he added, except that he had thought he heard movements in the house.
“You were mistaken. I live alone, and have been to Horwick,” the parson replied, and passed to his study.
He entered it with his finger on his lips. Monjoy, who was sitting awake in a chair, nodded, and the parson drew a chair close to him and spoke in a low whisper.
“You are to join your wife two days from now,” he said; and Monjoy needed no further informing that Sally had passed away—for victim had followed hunter within a very few hours.
“The man outside thinks he heard you,” the parson continued by and by.
Monjoy frowned. “Then that drags you into the business,” he muttered.
“Yes, I’m in it,” the parson sighed, passing his hand over his harassed brow.—“When your wife joins you, she will bring her friend’s child.”
Monjoy frowned again. “Oh, why couldn’t she meet me somewhere over the Edge!” he murmured.
“The district is almost enclosed by soldiers by this.”
“Ah!... Then together will be safer than singly, with one a woman and certain to be watched. The child!——”
“Another thing; I was to tell you they’d found Ellah.”
“I didn’t know they’d lost him.”
“Ah, of course not....”
And though the parson whispered no more than a word or two, the finish of Eastwood Ellah had best be related here. They say that doctors have a name for that disease of the mind of his, that shunning of light and air and space and creeping into holes. Narrower than the niche in the kitchen of the “Cross Pipes,” or than the chimney of the “Fullers’ Arms,” was the space in which, the day before, at eight in the evening, they had found him. He had not left Sally Northrop’s inn. An old well, covered with loose boards, lay in one corner of the cellar in which the ale-casks were kept; maybe Ellah had seen this well in times past; at what hour of the day or night he had sought it none knew. It had occurred to somebody to search there, and, lowering a lantern by a string, they had seen his feet.
Monjoy sighed, and then roused himself a little.
“Now one word,” he said. “I may have compromised you to-night. It’s up-kedge-and-cut now, for they’re wanting three or four of us; so if you wish to be rid of me, I’ll thank you for what you’ve done and take my chance.”
“God knows I do, and I don’t!” the parson groaned. “Hush!... I’ll leave you now; I need rest. I’ll lock you in—I’ll lock £200 in—that’s your figure on a handbill I’ve seen——”
He passed heavily out. The sentry was nodding again in the chair.
That morning Cope was taken to his own house at the top of the croft in Horwick.
The captain, Captain Ritchie, was in sole command now. Certain scrupulous limitations inherent in the man, of which his acceptance of the parson’s word had been one, made him a less useful instrument than the late Jeremy Cope had been; but these apart, he did his work thoroughly. The district was immense, but as far as possible he encircled it. The Edge into Lancashire, ten miles away, was a sentry-beat, sentry meeting sentry every furlong. The Causeway was picketed three men to the mile, passing and returning; guards were changed four times a day; and on every Shelf and Scout and Ridge throughout Back o’ th’ Mooin men were posted as if for war. It took two days to enclose the country for beating; and the midday of the second day was the time appointed for the funeral of Sally Northrop, which was to take place in Wadsworth.