"But while we were in the midst of some sad dreamy days at Bristol, Jeremy began to bring home money, for which he either would or could give no account. Nevertheless, I could not be sure which of the two it was. He was so wayward that if I ventured to ask for an explanation that would be a sufficient reason for his refusing it.

"I began, however, to notice that within a day or two after Jeremy's flush periods, there was always a hue and cry in the papers--a sailor robbed and his body found floating in the dock, a 'long course' captain knocked on the head, and the ship's money missing. Now Jeremy could never be kept away from the docks. Jeremy had plenty of money. Jeremy only laughed when I asked him how he earned so much without a trade.

"'I can play the fiddle!' he would answer, jeering at me.

"Yet, because there was no other money, and I could not let my sisters (who at least had done no wrong) suffer, I used what he brought. For neither, I was sure (and the thought comforted me), had Jeremy done wrong, _because the mad can do no crime_. The worst the law can do, is only to shut them up. And in the meantime the money was most convenient."

Here she paused, and a sort of groan ran all round the courthouse, as the meaning and scope of the woman's revelation began to dawn upon the packed audience. Aphra Orrin, being in her senses, had employed the madman, her brother, to murder right and left that the wants of her brood might be met!

There arose a hoa.r.s.e mingled shout: "Tear her to pieces!" before which, however, Aphra never blanched. But the sheriff was on his feet in a moment. The fiscal commanded silence, ordering the court officer to apprehend all who disobeyed. For the wise lawyer could see well ahead, and knew that as yet they were only at the beginning of mysteries.

When silence was restored Euphrasia Orrin continued without losing a moment, neither amazed nor alarmed at the manifestation.

"At Bristol I perceived that all this would certainly end in an unpleasant discovery--yes, unpleasant" (she repeated the word as if in response to the threatening murmurs!). "I was not responsible for my poor brother, but I thought it would be well to remove him to a place where there were no docks and fewer temptations. I bethought myself of Leeds. We went there, but somehow Jeremy never took to Leeds. He wandered off by himself to London, a.s.sociating with horse-coupers and gipsies by the way. Suddenly he disappeared. I heard no more of him till at our famine-bare garret a letter arrived containing a hundred pounds in Bank of England notes--and an address." Miss Orrin put her hand into a trim little reticule which was attached to her waist, and drew out a single sheet of paper, on which was written in a sprawling hand: "_H. Stennis, Pattern Designer and Weaver, Burnside Cottage, Breckonside, Bordershire, N.B._"

At this moment I noticed that Mr. Ablethorpe had for the first time left the side of the speaker--though Mr. De la Poer continued to stand on attention, his shoulder almost touching the dark veil which fell away to one side of Aphra's face, and threw into relief her determined chin. Mr. Ablethorpe was speaking to my father. My astonishment was still greater when I saw my father rise quietly and leave the courthouse. With a crook of his finger he summoned Rob Kingsman, and, without either of them paying the least attention to me, both left the room. Then I was certain that my father did not wish to attract attention by calling me away. Perhaps, also, he wanted first-hand evidence of what happened after he was gone. Anyway, he did not put himself at all out of the way at the thought of leaving me in the lurch at Longtown with the night falling. It was, of course, different from what it had been before the burning of Deep Moat Grange. People began to go the roads freely again.

Once more Mr. Ablethorpe took up his position. The sheriff had stopped taking notes, so absorbed was he in what he heard. As for the fiscal, he had never attempted to take any. He was enjoying the situation.

This confession in open court was a thing unknown in his experience, and he was chiefly afraid lest the sheriff, little accustomed to this sort of thing, and probably anxious to get home for dinner, should cut short the sederunt.

"At this point," said Mr. Ablethorpe, who in a way a.s.sumed the position of counsel for his strange penitent. "I would put into your lordship's hands papers of some importance. They came from Dr. Hector, some of them, and some out of the safe in the cellar of the Grange."

The sheriff was not in the best of humours.

"I consider all this most irregular," he growled--"a court of justice is not a scene in a theatre!"

But Fiscal McMath, who was infinitely the stronger man of the two in character and conduct, turned upon him with a kind of snarl.

"Don't sink the ship for the extra happorth of tar, skipper," he said, in a low voice (which, however, sitting near, I could just catch), "give them rope--give them rope! We have been a long time at the job without hanging them!"

At this the sheriff was silent, only motioning Mr. Ablethorpe to give the papers to Mr. McMath.

Our fiscal, next to my father the best-known man in the county, was a greyish, grave man with twinkling eyes, mutton-chop side whiskers, a little, sly, tip-t.i.tled nose, with a dry bloom on the top of it, as if he liked his spirits neat. He never smiled, yet he was always smiling.

His mouth, when about his duties, would be grave as that of Rhadamanthus, while within an inch of it a wrinkle twitched merrily away. His eyes could reprove a too light-hearted witness, or frown down an improperly jovial defendant, all the while that a mischief-loving sprite, hovering within, held his sides at the unseasonable jesting.

On this occasion, however, it was gravely enough that Mr. McMath adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles and proceeded to read.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE WITNESSING OF MISER HOBBY

"_The Witnessing and last statement of Me, Howard Stennis, sometime weaver to my trade, afterwards laird of the lands of 'Deep Moat Grange,' near Breckonside--to which is added my last Will in my own handwriting_.

"I, HOWARD STENNIS, being of sound mind, and desiring that after my death nothing should be left uncertain, have decided to put on record all that has occurred. This I do, not in the least to exculpate myself, because what I have done, I have done calmly and with intention aforethought.

"This paper is for the sole use of the heir whom I shall choose.

"If it be his will not to accept a fortune acc.u.mulated under these conditions or in the way I made mine, I have joined to this a paper with the names of those to whose heirs reparation can be made. But it is my present intention to seek rather some strong man, at war with other men--a hater of his kind, as I have good reason to be--who will continue my work after I am gone. So that in time, if the life of our instrument, Jeremy Orrin, be spared, one of the greatest fortunes of the age may be built up.

"From my youth I was called Miser Hobby. And that most unjustly.

Because I wrought day and night that I might leave my one daughter Bell in a position of a lady. But she chose to throw my lifetime's work in my face. She left me without a word for a penniless boy in a uniform.

My heart had been black and bitter before, but there had always been a bright spot upon it. That was Bell. Afterward it became black altogether, for I cast Bell out of my heart and sight like an untimely birth. I worked harder, yet for all that I wearied of the work. To be rich suddenly, to have all in my power, and to deny to Bell and her tramping rascal of a redcoat a sup of broth, a bite of bread--that alone I counted sweet. It would come to me some day, I knew.

"I looked about for a weapon--for the hand to strike. This I found in Jeremy Orrin. It was at the Tryst of Longtown, whither I had gone to deliver a web. There I saw a limber youth, very dark, turning somersaults on a sc.r.a.p of carpet. He spread out his hands and walked on them. There was hair on the palms. The thumb was as long as the fingers, and he raised himself upon them as on steel springs. I saw him take a byre 'grape'--or fork of three thick p.r.o.ngs--and bend the three into one by the mere strength of one hand.

"Then that set me thinking of other things that these fingers might be taught to do. So, in a little inn, I made the tumbler's acquaintance, and I could see that at first he eyed me curiously. I could read such looks. I knew the wickedness that was in his heart. He meant to murder me on my way home!

"But first I gave him to drink as much as he would. Suddenly I turned my pockets inside out and let him feel the linings of my coat--there in that lighted room, to prove that he would not be twopence halfpenny the richer by the transaction. Then, leaning forward as if jesting, I made a proposition. By himself, I said, such a man could do but little. He was but a tracked beast without a den. See what it had brought him to, tumbling on a carpet for a living, and hungry withal! I would give him safety, a position, the high road between two market towns, neither of them yet reached by the railway, running before our very door.

"Finally, on the doorstep of the Red Lion, holding unstably by either lintel, a warning to all sober men like myself, I pointed out Ridd.i.c.k of Langbarns, who, as I knew, had that day sold his two-year-old horses to the tune of eight hundred pounds!

"Jeremy Orrin and I left the lighted town behind us. I am well aware even then that I put my life in his hands--how terrible was my danger I did not know. For the young man's wayward madness was as yet hidden from me, as from all the world except his elder sister. At the Windy Slap, a narrow wind-swept gully, and a wild enough scene at the best of times, I came out suddenly, and speaking to Ridd.i.c.k, who was on horseback, asked him civilly if he would need any sheets or tablecloths that year. For that I was making out my winter's orders. He knew me at once, and bade me get out of his sight for an arrant self-seeking miser that would keep a shivering man from a good gla.s.s of toddy at his own fireside!

"Then I lowered my prices till he checked his horse beside a bank (for I had been walking by his side), and while he strove to calculate cost and rebate in his drink-dozened brain, Jeremy quietly leaped up from behind, and clasped about his neck the broad-palmed, long-fingered, hairy hands that had crushed the byre trident. Ridd.i.c.k of Langbarns never spake word. We buried him decently in the kirkyard--in a grave that had that day been filled, laying him on the coffin of a better man than himself--even that of Ephraim Rae, elder in the Hardgate Cameronian Kirk. Face down we laid him--his nose to the name plate--and so filled in and replaced the sods. It was very secure--an idea of my own. No disturbance of the earth, or none that mattered.

For who would ever seek for a lost man in the grave, where, that same day, another had been laid with all due funeral observances? It would be sacrilege. Afterwards, when we used this method, I always tried to be present at both interments. In fact, I got a name for my reverence and exact.i.tude at burials. Also it gave me some useful thoughts upon the transitory nature of all things. Besides, I liked to watch the mourners' daylit faces and then think of Jeremy's twelve hours later, seen perhaps by the light of a late-rising, cloudy, out-worn moon!

"Good fortune such as this (the timely burial of Elder Rae, that is) we could not always depend upon. But as far as possible, of course, we arranged our business transactions so that they fell due on the day of a funeral, either at Over Breckonton or Breckonside. Bewick was of no use to us--the graveyard there having the fatal fault of being placed under the windows of the manse, and the minister being a bachelor, who never cared whether he went to bed at all or not, keeping his light burning till three of the morning. Such men have no right to be ministers. Still, for the time being, the other two parishes served us very well.

"I saw, however, that a change was becoming necessary, indeed imperative. Also, thanks to a certain drover of the name of Lang Hutchins, I had the money. It was most providential (I shall always so regard it) that at this very time the place and policies of Deep Moat Grange came into the market.

"Lang Hutchins was a pure windfall--a catch of Jeremy's. I had nothing to do with that. One night Jeremy walked into the weaving-room with a great leathern pocket-book.

"'Where did you get that?' I asked. I was, I remember, at the loom, and the pattern being an interesting one, the time had pa.s.sed without my regarding its flight. It was, as a matter of fact, past one of the morning.

"'Lang Hutchins, the Bewick drover, gied it to me,' said Jeremy Orrin, 'and as there were nae funerals in Breckonside, and that minister man at Bewick willna put his candle oot, I had e'en to make Lang Hutchins up a bonnie bed in the gairden at the Grange o' the Moat!'

"I rose instantly to my feet. This was indeed terrible. I had a vision (which I have often seen in reality since) of Jeremy scratching the earth with his fingers, and creeping about on the black soil like some unclean beast, leaving marks easy to be read by the first pa.s.ser-by. We should be discovered. Jeremy would be tracked, and I saw in appalling perspective two gibbets, and on one the murderer, and on the other his master--the same Miser Hobby who had thought to make a lady of his daughter; now Howard Stennis, Esquire--both raised to the dignity of the hempen cravat.

"For a moment I did not know what to do--yes, even I, to whom plans occur like oaths to a bad, foul-mouthed, swearing man such as Lang Hutchins, one who had defied his Maker the very day his soul, was required of him.

"'Buried in the garden at Deep Moat Grange!' I repeated to myself.

'The place out of habitation, a prey to every poacher, the gardens and orchards overrun by vagrant boys!' Ah--even in that word it had come to me!

"Deep Moat Grange was for sale! But then I had not enough money to buy it, and I could not face the raising of a mortgage--the possible scrutinies! At that moment Jeremy Orrin tossed carelessly at me a long, many-caped overcoat, such as long-distance coachmen used to wear in the days when twice a day the 'Dash' and the 'Flying Express' pa.s.sed Breckonside, and I was a boy in knee breeches and a blue bonnet. I could feel that the coat was well padded though not heavy. And there in the weaving-room of the little cottage, I drew out of the lining hundreds and hundreds of packets of five-pound notes, all English, and mostly long in use, like those which pa.s.s from hand to hand among drovers. I could see that no one of them had recently been in a bank.

There would, therefore, be no awkward record of the numbers. Moreover, Lang Hutchins had come north suddenly (so Jeremy told me) after quite a year of running the southern markets.

"It was as safe as could be--all but the garden plot at Deep Moat Grange, where in one particular oblong the earth had been raked with the split and blackened nails of Jeremy's fingers.

"After that, there was no letting that spot out of our sight till I had got the lawyer work finished--I mean that of the vendor's representatives of Deep Moat Grange. I was my own lawyer and factor, that is, so far as the district was concerned. I had a kinsman in Edinburgh who went over all the agreements and so on, for me, just to see that everything was in order.

"All the time I was away Jeremy watched, resolved that if any one manifested overmuch interest in the scratched soil at the bottom of the lawn where the rhododendrons begin, he or she should find a quiet resting-place beside them. But, barring one slight accident, into the details of which I deem it useless to enter (being but a poor man and not worth in the gross three solvent halfpence) no one looked near the lawn or the old orchard.

"At last Deep Moat Grange was mine. Deep Moat Grange was paid for in untraceable money--I had examined every note. Jeremy and I moved in, and having heard all that he had to say about his sister Aphra, I sent a hundred pounds to her--and our address. Jeremy said that would bring her. We felt--or at least I, who knew the ways and thoughts, the chatterings and clatterings of Breckonside, felt that there was need for a good, careful, managing woman there. From what Jeremy told me, I was certain that Euphrasia Orrin was that woman.

"She was. I could not have chosen better. Yet, for all that, the madman had deceived me in the way that all such have, with a cunning far above that of sane and grave persons, such as myself.