'She made me promise to send for her if he was worse--she loved him so--everyone loved him--they could not help--oh, Willie! our bright darling.'

'I think, Dolly, we could not live here. I'd like to go on some mission, and maybe come back in a great many years--maybe, Dolly, when we are old.

I'd like to see the place again--and--and the walks--but not, I think, for a long time. He was such a darling.'

Perhaps the vicar was thinking of the church-yard, and how he would like, when his time came, to lie beside the golden-haired little comrade of his walks. So Dolly despatched the messenger with a lantern, and thus it was there came a knocking at the door of Redman's Farm at that unseasonable hour. For some time old Tamar heard the clatter in her sleep; disturbing and mingling with her dreams. But in a while she wakened quite, and heard the double knocks one after another in quick succession; and huddling on her clothes, and muttering to herself all the way, she got into the hall, and standing a couple of yards away from the door, answered in shrill and querulous tones, and questioning the messenger in the same breath.

How could she tell what it might or might not portend? Her alarms quickly subsided, however, for she knew the voice well.

So the story was soon told. Poor little Fairy; it was doubtful if he was to see another morning; and the maid being wanted at home, old Tamar undertook the message to Brandon Hall, where her young mistress was, and sallied forth in her cloak and bonnet, under the haunted trees of Redman's Dell.

Tamar had pa.s.sed the age of ghostly terrors. There are a certain sober literality and materialism in old age which abate the illusions of the supernatural as effectually as those of love; and Tamar, though not without awe, for darkness and solitude, even were there no a.s.sociations of a fearful kind in the locality, are suggestive and dismal to the last.

Her route lay, as by this time my reader is well aware, by that narrow defile reached from Redman's Farm by a pathway which scales a flight of rude steps, the same which Stanley Lake and his sister had mounted on the night of Mark Wylder's disappearance.

Tamar knew the path very well. It was on the upper level of it that she had held that conference with Stanley Lake, which obviously referred to that young gentleman's treatment of the vanished Mark. As she came to this platform, round which the trees receded a little so as to admit the moonlight, the old woman was tired.

She would have gladly chosen another spot to rest in, but fatigue was imperious; and she sat down under the gray stone which stood perpendicularly there, on what had once been the step of a stile, leaning against the rude column behind her.

As she sat here she heard the clank of a step approaching measuredly from the Brandon side. It was twelve o'clock now; the chimes from the Gylingden church-tower had proclaimed that in the distance some minutes before. The honest Gylingden folk seldom heard the tower chimes tell eleven, and gentle and simple had, of course, been long in their beds.

The old woman had a secret hatred of this place, and the unexpected sounds made her hold her breath. She peeped round the stone, in whose shadow she was sitting. The steps were not those of a man walking briskly with a purpose: they were the desultory strides of a stroller lounging out an hour's watch. The steps approached. The figure was visible--that of a short broadish man, with a ma.s.s of cloaks, rugs, and m.u.f.flers across his arm.

Carrying them with a sort of swagger, he came slowly up to the part of the pathway opposite to the pillar, where he dropped those draperies in a heap upon the gra.s.s; and availing himself of the clear moonlight, he stopped nearly confronting her.

It was the face of Mark Wylder--she knew it well--but grown fat and broader, and there was--but this she could not see distinctly--a purplish scar across his eyebrow and cheek. She quivered with terror lest he should have seen her, and might be meditating some mischief. But she was seated close to the ground, several yards away, and in the sharp shadow of the old block of stone.

He consulted his watch, and she sat fixed and powerless as a portion of the block on which she leaned, staring up at this, to her, terrific apparition. Mark Wylder's return boded, she believed, something tremendous.

She saw the glimmer of the gold watch, and, distinctly, the great black whiskers, and the face pallid in the moonlight. She was afraid for a minute, during which he loitered there, that he was going to seat himself upon the cloaks which he had just thrown upon the ground, and felt that she could not possibly escape detection for many seconds more. But she was relieved; for, after a short pause, leaving these still upon the ground, he turned, and walked slowly, like a policeman on his beat, toward Brandon.

With a gasp she began to recover herself; but she felt too faint and ill to get up and commence a retreat towards Redman's Farm. Besides, she was sure he would return--she could not tell how soon--and although the clump of alders hid her from view, she could not tell but that the next moment would disclose his figure retracing his leisurely steps, and ready to pursue and overtake, if by a precipitate movement she had betrayed her presence.

In due time the same figure, pa.s.sing at the same rate, did emerge again, and approached just as before, only this time he was carelessly examining some small but clumsy steel instrument which glittered occasionally in the light. From Tamar's description of it, I conclude it was a revolver.

He pa.s.sed the pile of cloaks but a few steps, and again turned toward Brandon. So soon as he was once more concealed by the screen of underwood, old Tamar, now sufficiently recovered, crept hurriedly away in the opposite direction, half dead with terror, until she had descended the steps, and was buried once more in friendly darkness.

Old Tamar did not stop at Redman's Farm; she pa.s.sed it and the mills, and never stopped till she reached the Vicarage. In the hall, she felt for a moment quite overpowered, and sitting in one of the old chairs that did duty there, she uttered a deep groan, and looked with such a gaze in the face of the maid who had admitted her, that she thought the old woman was dying.

Sick rooms, even when, palpably, doctors, nurses, friends, have all ceased to hope, are not to those who stand in the _very_ nearest and most tender relations to the patient, altogether chambers of despair. There are those who hover about the bed and note every gleam and glow of subsiding life, and will read in sunset something of the colours of the dawn, and cling wildly to these hallucinations of love; and no one has the heart to tear them from them.

Just now, Dolly fancied that 'little man was better--the darling! the treasure! oh, precious little man! He was coming back!'

So, she ran down with this light of hope in her face, and saw old Tamar in the hall, and gave her a gla.s.s of the wine which Rachel had provided, and the old woman's spirit came again.

'She was glad--yes, very glad. She was thankful to hear the dear child was better.' But there was a weight upon her soul, and a dreadful horror on her countenance still.

'Will you please, Ma'am, write a little note--my old hand shakes so, she could hardly read my writing--to my mistress--Miss Radie, Ma'am. I see pen and ink on the table there. I was not able to go up to the Hall, Ma'am, with the message. There's something on the road I could not pa.s.s.'

'Something! What was it?' said Dolly, staring with round eyes in the old woman's woeful face, her curiosity aroused for a moment.

'Something, Ma'am--a person--I can't exactly tell--above the steps, in the Blackberry path. It would cost my young mistress her life. For Heaven's sake, Ma'am, write, and promise, if you send for her, she shall get the note.'

So, Dolly made the promise, and bringing old Tamar with her into the study, penned these odd lines from her dictation, merely adjusting the grammar.

'MISS RADIE, DEAR,--If coming down to-night from Brandon, this is to tell you, it is as much as your life is worth to pa.s.s the Blackberry walk above the steps. My old eyes have seen him there, walking back and forward, lying at catch for some one, this night--the great enemy of man; you can suppose in what shape.

'Your dutiful and loving servant,

TAMAR.'

So, old Tamar, after a little, took her departure; and it needed a great effort to enable her to take the turn up the dark and lonely mill-road, leading to Redman's Farm; so much did she dread the possibility of again encountering the person she had just described.

CHAPTER LXX.

THE MEETING IN THE LONG POND ALLEY.

I suppose there were few waking heads at this hour in all the wide parish of Gylingden, though many a usually idle one was now busy enough about the great political struggle which was to muster its native forces, both in borough and county, and agitate these rural regions with the roar and commotion of civil strife.

But generals must sleep like other men; and even Tom Wealdon was snoring in the fairy land of dreams.

The night was very still--a sharp night, with a thin moon, like a scimitar, hanging bright in the sky, and a myriad of intense stars blinking in the heavens, above the steep roofs and spiral chimneys of Brandon Hall, and the ancient trees that surrounded it.

It was late in the night, as we know. The family, according to their custom, had sought their slumbers early; and the great old house was perfectly still.

One pair, at least, of eyes, however, were wide open; one head busy; and one person still in his daily costume. This was Mr. Larcom--the grave _major domo_, the bland and attached butler. He was not busy about his plate, nor balancing the cellar book, nor even perusing his Bible.

He was seated in that small room or closet which he had, years ago, appropriated as his private apartment. It is opposite the housekeeper's room--a sequestered, philosophic retreat. He dressed in it, read his newspaper there, and there saw his select acquaintance. His wardrobe stood there. The iron safe in which he kept his keys, filled one of its nooks. He had his two or three shelves of books in the recess; not that he disturbed them much, but they were a grave and gentlemanlike property, and he liked them for their binding, and the impression they produced on his visitors. There was a meditative fragrance of cigars about him, and two or three Havannah stumps under the grate.

The fact is, he was engaged over a letter, the writing of which, considering how accomplished a gentleman he was, he had found rather laborious and tedious. The penmanship was, I am afraid, clumsy, and the spelling here and there, irregular. It was finished however, and he was now reading it over with care.

It was thus expressed:--

'RESPECTET SIR,--In accordens with your disier, i av took my pen to say a fue words. There has c.u.m a leter for a sertun persen this morning, with a Lundun posmark, and i do not now hand nor sele, but bad writting, which i have not seen wot contanes, but I may, for as you told me offen, you are anceus for welfare of our famly, as i now to be no more than trewth, so I am anceus to ascest you Sir, wich my conseynce is satesfid, but leter as trubeled a sertun persen oufull, hoo i new was engry, and look oufull put about, wich do not offen apen, and you may sewer there is sumthing in wind, he is alday so oufull peefish, you will not thing worse of me speeken plane as yo disier, there beeing a deel to regret for frends of the old famly i feer in a sertun resent marrege, if I shud lern be chance contense of letter i will sewer rite you.--i Remane your humbel servant,

'JOHN LARCOM.'

Just as grave Mr. Larcom had ended the perusal of this bulletin, he heard a light step on the stair, at the end of the pa.s.sage, which made his manly heart jump unpleasantly within his fat ribs. He thrust the unfolded letter roughly into the very depths of his breeches pocket, and blew out both candles; and then listened, as still as a mouse.

What frightened him was the certainty that the step, which he well knew, was Stanley Lake's. And Stanley being a wideawake and violent person, and his measures sharp and reckless, Mr. Larcom cherished a nervous respect for him.

He listened; the captain's step came lightly to the foot of the stairs, and paused. Mr. Larcom prepared to be fast asleep in the chair, in the event of the captain's making a sudden advance, and entering his sanctum.