"First of all, there was the affair of that young vagabond's father, the rich shopkeeper at Breckonside--rich, that is, not as I am rich, but rich for a little town village anch.o.r.ed down on a dozen miles square of fertile lands between the Bewick marshes and the uplands of Cheviot.

"Now, I had always had it in my head that some day a trifle might be made out of this Joseph Yarrow, senior. But he was a bold, straight-dealing man, who knew that the nearest bank, or a good investment through his lawyer, was the best way of keeping his head whole on his shoulders. He went and came ostentatiously along both our roads, by night or day--it mattered little to him. He had never more than five shillings and a bra.s.s watch in his pockets. All his business he did by cheque, and he was not at all ashamed to enter a shop, or even accost a man on the street of a town where he was known, and ask for the loan of five shillings--which was certain to be returned on the morrow, with a pot of home-made jam or some delicacy from the crowded shelves of his shop.

"Most people liked dealing with this man Yarrow. As for me, I never could bear him. He had a scornful eye, not questing, like his son's (whose neck I could twist), but merely sneering--especially when, at distant market towns, he would hear me addressed as 'Laird,' which is my rightful t.i.tle. At such times he would smile a little smile that bit like vitriol, and turn away. And I knew well enough that he was thinking and saying to himself--'Miser Hobby--Miser Hobby!' Still, had I had the sense to look at the matter in the right light, this should have cheered me--that he only _despised_ me, I mean. For if Joseph Yarrow, the cleverest man in all the neighbourhood, was not calling me 'Murderer Hobby,' then I was safe from all the rest. But so curious a thing is man, and so much harder to bear is scorn than the worst accusation of crime, that it was often on my tongue tip to jolt his self-complaisance with a little inkling of the truth.

"All the same, I laid it all up against him--some day I would catch him coming home with a goodly sum. So, after long thought, I arranged that a letter should be sent to warn him that one Steve Cairney, a slippery 'dealer' who had long owed him a large amount, would be at the Longtown Fair to sell horses, and that it was now or never. The thing was true.

Nothing, indeed, could be truer. Jeremy was forewarned, and all should have pa.s.sed off easily and fitly as the drawing on of an old glove.

But because that fool Jeremy had seen instruments of music (of which he is inordinately fond) by the score and gross in Yarrow's shop down at Breckonside, he must needs put the man into a cell behind the Monks'

Oven, instead of finishing the matter out of hand. Aphra also mixed herself up in the affair, urging Yarrow, who must have had an excellent idea where he was, to sign the cheque they had found on him, as if that made any difference! I know a man in Luxembourg who will give two-thirds value on a cheque drawn on a sound account, and, in addition, provide the signature from any reasonable copy. It is never the first owners who lose with such things. There were plenty of Yarrow's receipted bills about the house, and there need have been no difficulty about that. But unhappily I was from home, and so everything went to pigs and whistles.

"Then it pleased Miss Orrin to take a violent jealousy of my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis, and to sequester her somewhere about the premises, which, of course, brought the storm about our ears in full force. With this folly, worse than any crime, I am glad to record that I had nothing whatever to do. Doubtless the business was carried out by Jeremy under the orders of his sister Aphra. I have at least this to be thankful for, that as long as I retained the full and entire direction of affairs Deep Moat Grange might have been called the vale of peace and plenty.

"Then came Parson Ablethorpe, who in collusion, most likely, with his missionary a.s.sociate--De la Poer, I think he calls himself--spirited off the women, Aphra last of all. It was a case of rats leaving a sinking ship. Had it not been for the loss of Miss Aphra, for whose character I had some respect, I should have been glad to see the last of them. But as soon as the influence of his sister was removed, Jeremy became wilder and madder than ever. I could see him on moonlight nights creeping about among the lily clumps, digging here and sc.r.a.ping there, his hands and feet bare and earth-stained. Then, seated tailorwise among the mould, he would play strange music on his violin, and laugh. On dark nights it was not much better. I could not see him, it is true. But I could hear him digging and panting like a wild beast, or laughing to himself, and then stopping suddenly to croon, 'Down Among the Dead Men!'"

"This," said Mr. Fiscal McMath, "is the last entry in what purports to be a narrative or diary." He turned to another leaf left behind in the house and recovered by the searchers.

"Ah," he said, "here is yet another paragraph. It is dated 'February 10, morning," and runs as follows: "'Came home to an empty house.

Jeremy madder than ever, playing and laughing about the house--nothing to eat. Dined with Ball at the bailiff's cottage. I did not like the way Jeremy looked at me when I refused him money. But it is he or I for the mastery. In case of anything happening, the lines which follow contain my last will and testament: I die at peace with all men, and I leave everything of which I die possessed to my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis!

"(Signed) "HOWARD (sometimes called Hobby) STENNIS."

"The wretch! The villain! The robber!" cried Aphra Orrin, for a moment forgetting her role of penitent--"to take from us who earned in order to give all to a stranger!"

"Elsie will never touch a penny of it!" I shouted, but my voice was lost in the universal howl.

"The woman stands fully committed--take her away!" cried the sheriff.

He had glanced at his watch. It was in fact, long past his dinner hour! As if moved by his hand policemen rapidly displaced the two clergymen, and Aphra disappeared down a flight of stairs to the cells below.

But, curiously enough, the mob had no thought of her. The reading of Hobby Stennis' confession--so ghastly, perverted, cold-blooded, dead to all moral sense, even triumphant, ending with the will which gave everything to Elsie--had so incensed the people that there was a rush when a kind of crack-witted preaching man from Bewick shouted, "Make an end, ye people, make an end! Let none of the viper's brood escape!

She is a woman, this Elsie, and will breed the like--murderers and monsters every one! She is a Stennis, and we have had enough of such.

To Breckonside! To the Bridge End! Find the heiress, chosen as the fittest to succeed the man-slayers and make an end! Hang her quick to a tree!"

I could now see what my father had meant by leaving the place so hurriedly. Mr. Ablethorpe, who knew, had warned him of what was coming. And that, as there was no other outlet for the pa.s.sions of the angry mob, Elsie might be in some temporary danger of violence and ill usage, if of nothing worse. Therefore, he had hurried off, taking Rob Kingsman with him. As for me, even while thinking these thoughts, I was swept out of the doorway, and carried along by the throng, my feet scarcely touching the ground. The mob, chiefly rough Bewick miners and labourers, took the road toward the Bridge End of Brecksonside at a trot, bawling "Death and vengeance!" against all of the blood of Stennis.

And there was now but one of that name and race--Elsie!

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

I AM HEROIC

You may be sure that I kept up with the crowd. It was a disagreeable crowd--Bewick Muir pitmen, and the navvies from the East Dene and Thorsby waterworks--they were making a new pipe-line through the Bewick Beck Valley, and the navvies were interested in poaching--so that was what had brought them so far from home. Only the few Breckonside people who had not left early knew anything bout Elsie.

All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis had ama.s.sed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers, farmers and cattle dealers--that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for a dangerous malefactor.

There must, however, have been a Breckonside traitor among them, for as soon as they reached the town they made straight for the cottage at the Bridge End. The door was burst in, the poor furniture turned topsy-turvy--Elsie's books thrown about. But I knew better than to interfere at this point. There was something much more serious coming.

I knew very well that my father would never let poor Nance Edgar suffer for something that she had not been mixed in at all. When Joseph Yarrow started in to do a thing--I don't mean me--it had to be gone through with, even though it cost some odd halfpence. For my father, keen at a bargain as he was, did not spare his money when once he put his hand deep into his pocket.

So I pegged it down the road and over the bridge, with the hottest of the pack at my heels. Somebody must have told them that Elsie had gone to "the Mount." And if I could find who that person was, I would wring his neck on the High Street of Breckonside--which would be not a bit more than he deserves.

"_Death to the Stennises! Death to the murderers!_"

I could hear the shout right at my heels, turning after turning, till at last I was in the home stretch, and clambering up the steep ascent to the red brick wall within which stood the house that was my home.

What was my surprise to find all the iron window shutters, which ever since I could remember had been turned back against the wall (and each caught there with a screw catch) fitted into the window frames!

My father was on the housetop. I could just see him over the railings, for it was darkish in spite of the moon.

"Is that you, Joe?" he called out, leaning forward till I thought he would fall off.

I answered that it was--I and no other.

"Then be off with you round by the stables. All is shut here. One of the two Robs will let you in!"

He meant Rob Kingsman or Rob McKinstrey. So I tell you I tracked it about the house and thumped on the gate. There was not much time, you understand, for the first of the band were already shouting and gesticulating to my father to give up Elsie Stennis. They meant to make an end of all the "murdering lot," and of any who sheltered them!

So they said, and by the accent and the taint of whiskey in the air, I could make out that there were a lot of Irish among them. Now the Irish that stay at home are very decent people indeed, as I have good reason to know, but those that come about Breckonside to work at the quarries and waterworks are the devil and all--if Mr. Ablethorpe and the vicar will excuse me the expression.

Well, I knocked and I shouted, but never an answer got I.

At last, at the window of the sleeping-room that was Rob Kingsman's, I saw a white blob which I made out to be the occupant's face.

"Hey, Rob!" I cried; "let me in, Rob. They are after me--at my heels!"

"Reason the mair for you bidin' where ye are," said Rob, whose strong point was certainly not courage, "if they have done ye no harm as yet, just keep quiet and they will do ye none whatever. Ye are no Stennis.

The Stennises are a' weel-faured!"

"But I want to help--I want to get in! De'il tak' ye, Rob, let me in!"

I think even the vicar, good Churchman as he is (though not in Mr.

Ablethorpe's sense) would have forgiven me the strength of the last expression--considering the provocation, that is. As also the fact that, living so near Scotland, where there are so many "Presbies"

about, the very best Churchman is sometimes seduced into their rough, but picturesque, habit of speech.

"Here, Joe!" said Rob, after a while, taking pity on me. He opened a little wicket--just one pane of his iron-barred window, for my father had had everything about the place strengthened at the first scare about Ridd.i.c.k of Langbarns and the other lost farmers and drovers; "here, lad, tak' haud o' this! There's a barrel that had sugar intil't doon by the weighing machine. Creep into that. And mind--dinna shoot onybody. Use the pistol only in self-defence. There's nae law again'

that!"

The next moment I had a revolver in one hand and a pouch of cartridges in the other--yellow bag, waist belt and all! I tell you I felt the citizen of no mean city as I buckled them on. I would not have changed places with the Prince of Wales going to open an Aquarium. For, you see, I had never been allowed to go near the little room where my father kept the firearms for sale, the sporting ammunition, and the other touch-and-go truck, which interested me more than anything in the place. Of course, when father was lost for so long, I could have gone and helped myself. But, though you mayn't think it, I had a sort of pride about that.

I wasn't going to do when he was away what I durstn't do when he was stamping about the yard and stores. So I didn't. But to have a real, _real_ revolver given me, with proper cartridges--and me outside and all the others inside--why, it was just the primest thing that ever happened to me in all my life.

When I reached the outer gate (that by which Dapple had entered, Mad Jeremy, no doubt, riding her to the door) Rob McKinstrey shouted that if I looked sharp he would let me in and have the yard door shut again before ever one of the Paddies could get his nose inside.

But I knew better than that--oh, ever so much better.