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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
some one yet in the rear, and a strong hand jerked the bridle out of
his convulsive grasp.
“I’ve got him!” cried the yeomanry captain exultantly to his
follower as they pulled up, “Sergeant, jump off and have him out of
the saddle. It’s Walters of Great Masterhouse—I thought he was a
better horseman than that!”
The sergeant dismounted and seized the prisoner round the waist,
but he clung like a limpet to the horse’s neck. Finally, a strong pull
brought him heavily down in the road. Both man and officer burst
into a peal of laughter.
“Sir, sir,” said the stifled voice from the ground, “I swear to
Heaven, sir, I be’ant he. Indeed, indeed, I were just pushed sore
against my will into this night’s work.”
“Who is the fellow?” asked the captain, when he had finished
laughing. “The boy said he was Walters.”
The sergeant took out a knife and ripped the bonnet-strings
apart; mask and bonnet fell together.
“It’s Charles Turnbull, sir,” he said, grinning widely. “Turnbull the
auctioneer at Waterchurch village.”
“Are you sure it’s not Walters?” said the captain, who had never
seen Rhys.
“No, no, sir, indeed I be’ant,” cried the auctioneer, scrambling to
his feet, and stumbling helplessly in the skirt. “Rhys Walters o’
Masterhouse was dressed the same as me, but he’s off. Riding for
his neck he is. I never struck a blow, sir, that I didn’t, for I were
behind the toll-house, lookin’ on, and I says to myself——”
“That’ll do,” said the captain shortly. “Now then, sergeant, up with
him again; you can leave his clothes as they are, for the police will
want to see all that. Pick up that thing on the ground.”
The sergeant picked up the sun-bonnet with another grin, and
then hoisted Turnbull into the saddle.
 “You can pull the reins over the horse’s head and lead him,” said
the officer, “he is not likely to try and escape. He hasn’t got courage
enough even for that. And now for the lock-up at Llangarth.”
As the three started to retrace their steps towards the town, the
bell from the church steeple rang out half-past ten; the sound
floated out in their direction, for the chill east wind carried it sharply
along the highway. The captain turned up the collar of his cloak, and
wished that he were at home in his comfortable quarters with the
blankets snugly over him. To trot was out of the question, for the
auctioneer, having no reins to hold on by, and possessing no other
means of securing himself on horseback, would inevitably come to
grief, while he, the officer, was now responsible for his safety until
he should deliver him into other hands at Llangarth. The sergeant
hooked Turnbull’s reins over his arm, and blew upon his unoccupied
fingers.
“It’s getting mighty cold, sir,” he hazarded.
“We can’t get on any faster with this bundle of old clothes to look
after,” said the captain crossly; “if you keep your mouth shut, the
cold won’t go down your throat.”
His temper was not improved by the prospect of the next couple
of miles at a foot’s pace, and the toll was only just coming in sight.
The road between them and it was dull and straight, and seemed
interminable to two of the riders, Turnbull alone having no great
desire to get to the end of the journey.
A deathly silence surrounded the ruins of the gate as they reached
it at last, and only a couple of figures were moving near the house in
that odd, diffused light which precedes moonrise, and which was
beginning to touch up the eastern sky. To one of these, which
proved on inspection to be Howlie Seaborne, the captain gave his
reins as he dismounted. A light could be seen burning through the
diamond-paned window. He put his foot on the plinth and looked in,
but a half-drawn dimity curtain, and a pot in which a geranium was
struggling for life, prevented his seeing what was passing inside.
Stepping down again, he turned to the door, and, as it was ajar,
pushed it softly open and went in. After one look at the room he
removed his busby, and stood holding it in his hand.
A low bedstead made of unpolished wood had been drawn into
the middle of the floor. The patchwork quilt which covered it trailed
upon the carpetless flags, and had evidently been brought in a hurry
from some more pretentious bed to spread upon this one. Upon it
was the dead figure of the toll-keeper. He lay there waiting for the
arrival of a magistrate from Llangarth, straight and still, as he would
lie waiting for that other Judge who would one day come to judge
his cause. He had wrought well, and his hands, laid simply by his
sides, were still clenched. A dark bruise on his left temple from
which the blood had oozed made a purple patch on his white, set
face. His hair, grey, though abundant, was stained with blood; a pair
of strong boots were on his feet, and the pipe he had just been
smoking when he rushed out to meet the rioters was still in his
pocket. Near him was the stick he had caught up from its corner by
the door as he went, for a constable had found it by his body on the
road and had brought it in. It had left its mark upon several skins
that night.
Vaughan was a widower, his wife having been dead some years,
but one of those nondescript female relations who rise up to stop
gaps in the lives of the poor was in the house, and, as the yeomanry
officer came in, she was blowing up the flickering fire with a pair of
brass-bound bellows. A constable who had been left to watch the
body sat in the background.
The captain stood silent, his shadow cast by the spasmodic
firelight almost filling the small room. Everything was so still; the
sound of the bellows jarred on the stillness; the trivial, persistent
noise was like an insult to the presence which was there. He turned
sternly to the woman at the hearth; her elbow rose and fell as she
looked at him over her shoulder, the flames playing on the outline of
her face. The constable in the distance coughed and spat.
A rush of sharp air came in at the door, and the bellows faltered
for a moment, then went on again with redoubled vigour. The
woman nodded towards the threshold.
“That be she—his daughter,” she explained as she turned again to
the fire.
The soldier drew reverently back as a girl entered and sprang past
him. She sat down on the flags by the bedside and took the dead
man’s hand in her own two hands. Not a tear was in her eyes; she
only gasped like a trapped animal, and the man listening could see
how her lips opened and shut. The sound of the bellows drowned
everything. He strode to the hearth and shook the woman violently
by the arm. “For God’s sake, put away that infernal thing,” he said.
She rose from her knees and hung up the bellows in the chimney-
corner, the fire-irons clattering as she searched about among them
for the hook. When he looked round again he saw that the girl had
fainted and was lying face downwards on the floor.
He turned to the bellows-blower, who, now that her occupation
had ended, was standing idle by the fire; she took but little heed of
what had happened.
“You had better do something for her,” he suggested after a
pause. “Isn’t there another room that we could take her to? Poor
thing, I can carry her there.”
“She’s a shameless wench,” said the woman without moving.
He went to the bedside and raised Mary in his arms. “Go on,” he
ordered, nodding decisively towards the door at the back of the
room, and the woman went sullenly forward, while he followed with
his burden.
He laid the girl in a large wooden chair which was almost the only
piece of furniture to be seen. Kneeling by her, he rubbed her palms
until her eyelids opened vacantly, and she tried to sit up. As
recollection dawned in her eyes she gave a sob, hiding her face.
“He’s dead, he’s dead,” she murmured more to herself than to her
companions.
 “Aye, he be dead,” responded the elder woman in her
uncompromising voice, “and afore you’ve had time to bring him to
disgrace too.”
“Sir, sir,” faltered Mary, turning to the captain, “how was it? How
——?”
“Rhys Walters did it,” interrupted the woman shortly, “he killed
him. Ah—he’ll swing for it yet.”
Mary got up like a blind person. Her hands were stretched out
before her, and she walked straight to the wall till her face touched
it. She put up her arms against it, and stood there like an image;
only her two hands beat slowly upon the whitewashed stone.
“’Twould be well if she had a ring on one o’ they hands o’ hers,”
observed the woman.
The scene was so painful that the man who was a participator in it
could endure it no longer. Pity for the dead man who lay in the
dignity of a death bravely come by, was swallowed up in pity for the
poor young creature before him. One had faced death, the other had
yet to face life. The two little hands beating against the wall, the
hard, stupid face of the woman, the cheerless room, all were too
horrible to a man of his disposition to be gone through with any
longer. He could do nothing for Mary if he stayed, though he could
not help feeling cowardly at leaving her to face the first moments of
her grief with such a companion. A flutter of icy wind came through
a broken pane near him, and his horse out in the road stamped once
or twice; his mind ran towards the inn at Llangarth, and he thought
of the bright, warm light in the bar.
“Here,” he said, holding out half-a-sovereign to the woman, “and
mind you look after her.”
As he passed through the kitchen where the toll-keeper lay, his
eye fell upon the bellows, and he shuddered. “Poor girl,” he said,
“poor wretched girl.”
Howlie Seaborne was one of those rare persons whose silences
are as eloquent as their speech. While the owner of the horse he
held was in the toll-house, he stood placidly by its head, his eyes
fixed upon the prisoner’s face; he grinned steadily. The formation of
his mouth was unusual, for, while other people’s smiles are
horizontal, so to speak, his, owing to his rabbit-teeth, was almost
vertical.
At last Turnbull looked angrily at him. “’Twas you cried out I was
Rhys Walters,” he said with a malignant glance.
If Howlie heard the words, there was no sign of the fact on his
changeless countenance; his one idea appeared to be to see as
much of the auctioneer as he could.
“I’ll remember this some day,” continued Turnbull; “do ye mind
the hiding I gave ye at Crishowell auction last year? Well, ye’ll get
another o’ the same sort.”
“Oi do,” replied Howlie, his words leaving his grin intact; “if oi
hadn’t, yew moightn’t be a-settin’ up there loike a poor zany, an’ on
yew’re road to the joil.”
Turnbull grew purple. “I’ll do for ye yet,” he said thickly.
At this moment the officer came out and got on his horse,
throwing a copper to the boy as he let the bridle go.
“You’re a young fool, for all that,” he observed as the coin rang
upon the road; “that’s not Walters of Masterhouse.”
“Naw,” answered Howlie, his gaze still fixed upon the auctioneer.
As the three men rode on towards Llangarth his boots could be
heard toiling heavily up Crishowell Lane.
 CHAPTER VII
TO ABERGAVENNY

THAT the toll-gate raid would end in a murder was the last thing
expected by Rhys. In all the riots which had taken place since the
beginning, nothing worse had happened than broken limbs and
bruised bodies, such having been the luck of Rebecca and her
followers that only a few captures of unimportant hangers-on had
been made. Indeed, it is likely that without Howlie’s unseasonable
prowlings and recognition of his adversary Turnbull, and his
determination to pay off old scores, the matter might have had no
greater consequences than the terrifying of society in general and
the building up of a new gate.
As Rhys took the young mare by the head, and turned out of the
crowd, a man who had been some way from Hosea when he
shouted, was so much demoralized by the cry, that his hand, almost
on one of the rioters’ collars, dropped to his side. In a flash there
came back to Harry Fenton the evening he had strayed in the mist
round the spurs of the Black Mountain, and his eyes were opened.
This tall, shock-headed figure which was scattering the people right
and left as it made for Crishowell Lane was the man he had ridden
beside and talked to so frankly in the innocence of his soul. With
wrath he remembered how much he had admired his companion,
and how apparent he had allowed his interest to become. He had
returned home full of talk about his new acquaintance, his good-
nature in turning out of his road for a stranger, his fine seat on
horseback, and now it made the boy’s face hot to think how Rhys
must have laughed in his sleeve as his victim had fallen into the trap
laid for him. He had been put on the wrong scent by the very
ringleader of the mischief he had come so far to help in preventing.
His wounded vanity ached; he had been tricked, bested, mocked,
deceived. There was only one solace for him, and that was action,
action which would not only be his refuge, but his bounden duty. He
almost jerked the bit out of his horse’s mouth as he wrenched his
head round and shot after his enemy, through the crowd and up the
resounding highway on the young mare’s heels.
Rhys’ start was not great—about fifty yards—and Harry thought
with satisfaction that he was better mounted than usual. His brother
Llewellyn had lent him his horse, one lately bought, and the best
that either of the young men had ever had. As long as the animal
under him could go, so long would he never lose sight of that devil
in front, if both their necks should break in the attempt. He would
give Llewellyn anything, everything—all he possessed or ever would
possess—if he might only lay hands on the man who had cheated
him and whose high shoulders now blocked his view of the starlit
horizon which seemed to lie just at the end of the open highway.
Rhys swung into the lane, and, once between the hedges, he
drove in his heels; the road turned a corner a short way ahead, and
he wanted to get round it while he had the lead of Harry. Further on
there was a thin place in the hazels on his left, and he meant to get
in on the grass, though in reality it took him out of his direct route to
the mountain. But the going would be softer, and there was the
chance of entangling his enemy in the geography of the trappy little
fields.
He did not know which of the uniformed figures that had poured
down to the gate was on his track, but he felt an absolute
consciousness that the man behind was as determined to ride as he
was himself, and he suspected who that man might be. As he came
to the bend he looked back to make sure. He could not tell in the
uncertain light, but he saw it was war to the knife; every line of the
rider’s figure told him that. He turned the mare short and put her at
the bank; that it was not sound he knew, but the hedge let through
a gleam of standing water, and there was not enough resistance in it
to turn her over if she made a mistake. She scrambled through,
loosening clods of earth with her heels, but the good turf was on the
further side, and she got through with a clatter of stones and wattle.
They struck to the right across a field, and, when they were well out
in the middle, Rhys saw that Harry had landed without losing
ground, and he settled himself down to a steady gallop. As he
reflected that his goal was nothing less than Abergavenny, and
thought of the distance lying before him, he knew that his best plan
was to hustle his pursuer while they were in the valley, and trust to
his knowledge of hill tracks and precipices when they had left the
pastures behind. It would not be a question of pace up there. All the
same, fifteen long miles were in front of him, and behind him—
manslaughter.
Directly in his way some hundred yards ahead a wide dark patch
stretched across the meadow. He knew it to be a piece of boggy
ground deep enough to embarrass a horseman, and too well fed by
a spring below to freeze, but he also knew the precise spot at which
it could be crossed without difficulty. The recent wet weather had
made it bigger than usual, and he headed for it, hoping that Fenton
would choose a bad bit, and at least take something out of his horse
in the heavy clay. In he went, knowing that where there were rushes
there was foothold, and keeping his eye on a battered willow-stump
which stood like a lighthouse at the further border of the little
swamp. A snipe rose from under his feet, a flash of dark lightning
whirling in the greyness of the atmosphere. He was through and
making steadily for the line of hedge before him.
But Harry had not hunted for nothing; ever since his earliest
boyhood he had followed hounds on whatever he could get to carry
him, and long years of riding inferior beasts had taught him many
things. He had never possessed a really perfect hunter in his life,
and he was accustomed to saving his animals by every possible
means; mad with excitement as he was, he instinctively noticed the
odd bit of ground, and pulled straight into the mare’s tracks.
Walters, looking back from an open gate through which he was
racing, ground his teeth as he saw how well he had steered his
enemy.
 Soon the ground began to slope away, and Rhys knew that they
were getting near the brook running only a few fields from the road.
Just beyond it was Crishowell village, and the land would ascend
sharply as soon as they had left the last cottage behind.
The Digedi brook was as unlike the flag-bordered trout-stream of
the midlands as one piece of water can be to another, for it rose far
up in the Black Mountain near the pass by which Walters hoped to
reach Abergavenny, and, after a rapid descent to the valley, passed
the village, circling wantonly through the pastures to cross
Crishowell Lane under a bridge. There was hardly a yard in its career
at which its loud voice was not audible, for the bed was solid rock,
and the little falls, scarce a foot high, by which it descended to the
lower levels, called ceaselessly among the stones. The water-ousel
nested there in spring, and wagtails curtseyed fantastically by the
brink. In summer it was all babble, light, motion, and waving leaves.
As the young man came down the grass, he saw the line of bare
bushes which fringed it, and heard the pigmy roar of one of the falls.
Flat slabs of rock hemmed it in, jutting into the water and enclosing
the dark pool into which it emptied itself. On an ordinary occasion he
would have picked his way through the slippery bits and let his horse
arrange the crossing as his instinct suggested, but he had no time
for that now. He took the mare by the head, and came down the
slope as hard as he could towards a place just above the fall. He saw
the white horseshoe foaming under him as they cleared it and the
boulders on the edge, and he smiled grimly as he pictured Fenton’s
horse possibly stumbling about among the rocks. He made straight
for the highway, the mare’s blood was up, and she took the big
intervening hedges like a deer.
They were now on the road, and he pulled up for a moment to
listen for any sign of his pursuer, but there was no other sound than
the barking of a dog in Crishowell. The slippery boulders had
probably delayed Harry. He cantered on steadily past the village with
its few lighted windows; as the barking had raised a reply from
every dog’s throat in the place, no one heard him till he had passed
the last outlying house, and he made for the steep lane leading up
to where he had parted with Fenton on the night of their first
meeting.
It was highly unlikely that he would come across any one at that
time of night, for the Crishowell people went early to rest, like all
agricultural characters, and the news of Rebecca’s attack on the toll
could hardly have reached them yet. Now that he had time to think
a little, he began to realize the full horror of the thing that had
happened. He had killed a man; worse, he had killed Mary’s father;
worse still, it was known that he had done so. Curse Hosea! curse
him! Why had he been such a madman as to shout out his name?
No one need have identified him but for the innkeeper’s crass folly.
What he was going to do he knew not, beyond that he must make
for Abergavenny, where he might possibly lie hidden for a time till he
could devise some means of leaving the country. Poor little Mary too,
his heart smote him as he thought of her; in one hour she had been
robbed of her father, and was losing her lover—losing him as every
beat of the mare’s hoofs carried him further away towards the great
lone mountain that he had to cross that night somehow. He hoped
the wet places up there would not have frozen over before he got
through the pass, for it was hard underfoot already and the puddles
crackled faintly as he rode over them. Every moment it was getting
lighter, and he could see a piece of the moon’s face above the high
banks of the lane. He put his hand down on the mare’s shoulder;
she was sweating a good deal, though they had only come a couple
of miles at most, but she was raw and excitable, and had pulled him
considerably since they had come over the brook, taking more out of
herself than she need have done. She had good blood in her—thank
Heaven for that—and she would want it all. He had paid a long price
for her, and, if ever money were well spent, it was then; the young
fool behind him was not likely to get much out of his ride. He pulled
up once again, just to make sure that Harry was nowhere near,
standing in the shadow with his hand over his ear and the mare
quivering with excitement under him. Yes, sure enough, there were
galloping hoofs distinct on the stillness of the sharp night some way
below. Fenton was in the lane.
 On they went, sparks flying from the flints as the shoes smote
hard upon them. The air grew more chilly as they got higher up and
the road more slippery; Rhys leaned forward, encouraging the mare
as she laboured valiantly up the heart-breaking slope. The banks
flew by, gates, stiles; soon they were passing the ruined cottage that
stood not a hundred yards from the egress to the mountain; he
could see the bare boughs of the apple-trees that tapped against the
battered window-panes.
Suddenly the mare lurched, scraping the earth with her feet, and
the moon seemed to sway in the sky and to be coming down to
meet the hedge. A crash, and she was lying on her off side with
Rhys’ leg pinned underneath her. A mark like a slide on the blue,
shining ground showed how the frost was taking firm grip of the
world.
She struggled up again before he had time to find out whether he
was hurt or not, and stood over him, shivering with fright.
Fortunately she had hardly touched him in her efforts to rise, as his
foot had come out of the stirrup, and he was able to pick himself up
in a few seconds with a strong feeling of dizziness and an aching
pain in his shoulder. His first idea was to remount as quickly as
possible, but, when he put his foot in the iron, he almost fell back
again on the road. Something hot was running down his face, first in
slow drops, then faster; he could not raise his right shoulder at all,
and his arm felt weary and numb. A gust of wind brought the sound
of Harry’s galloping fitfully up the lane, making the mare turn half
round to listen, her nostrils dilated; she seemed quite uninjured.
Rhys seized the stick he had dropped as they fell, and, with it in his
available hand, struck her two violent blows on her quarter. She
plunged forward like a mad creature, and set forth for her stable at
Great Masterhouse.
As she disappeared he dragged himself with great difficulty
through the hedge on his right. Before him the fields fell away
perpendicularly to the valley, and the moon was white on the grass
that lay like a frosty, vapoury sheet round him. He saw a deep ditch
running downward with the land, and had just sense and strength
enough left to stagger towards it, a black, positive silhouette on the
moon-struck unreality of the surrounding world.
As he rolled into it he lost consciousness, and so did not hear
Harry Fenton a minute later as he tore past.
 CHAPTER VIII
MASTER AND MAN

A MAN was sitting on the low wall which enclosed the spectre of a
garden trimming a ragged ash-plant into the plain dimensions of a
walking-stick. He worked with the neatness displayed by many
heavy-handed persons whose squarely-tipped fingers never hint at
the dexterity dormant in them.
It was easily seen that, in order to assign him a place in the social
scale, one would have to go a good way down it; nevertheless, he
reflected the facial type of his time as faithfully as any young blood
enveloped in the latest whimsies of fashionable convention, though,
naturally, in a less degree. The man of to-day who looks at a
collection of drawings made in the early nineteenth century can find
the face, with various modifications, everywhere; under the
chimney-pot hat which (to his eye) sits so oddly on the cricketer,
beneath the peaked cap of the mail-coach guard, above the shirt-
sleeves of the artisan with his basket of tools on his back. As we
examine the portraits of a by-gone master, Sir Peter Lely, Joshua
Reynolds—whom you will—we are apt to ask ourselves whether the
painter’s hand has not conveyed too much of his own mind to the
canvas, making all sitters so conform to it as to reproduce some
mental trait of his own, like children of one father reproducing a
physical one. Those who find this may forget that there is an
expression proper to each period, and that it runs through the
gamut of society, from the court beauty to the kitchen wench, from
the minister of State to the rat-catcher who keeps the great man’s
property purged of such vermin. The comprehensive glance of the
man on the wall as compared with the immobility of his mouth, the
wide face set in flat whiskers which stopped short in a line with the
lobe of his ear, dated him as completely as if he had been a
waxwork effigy set up in a museum with “Early Victorian Period”
printed on a placard at his feet. His name was George Williams, and,
in the eye of the law, he was a hedger and ditcher by occupation; on
its blind side, he was something else as well.
The garden, which formed a background to the stick-maker, was
indeed a sorry place, forming, with the tumble-down cottage it
surrounded, a sort of island in the barren hillside. A shallow stream
on its way to the valley ran by so near the wall, that there was only
room for a few clumps of thistle between it and the water. When the
dweller in the cottage wished to reach civilization, he had to cross a
plank to a disused cart-track making from the uplands down to the
village. Hardly any one but the tenant of this unprofitable estate
ever troubled the ancient way with his presence, but, in spite of this,
Williams looked up expectantly now and then to where it cut the
skyline a furlong or so mountainwards. Behind him the tall weeds
which were choking the potato patch and the gooseberry bushes
straggled in the grey forenoon light, and the hoar-frost clung to a
few briars that stretched lean arms over the bed of the stream.
The cottage was built of stone and boasted a slate roof, though,
what between the gaps showing in it and the stonecrop which
covered the solid parts, there was little slate visible. One could
assume that the walls were thick from the extreme breadth of the
window-sills, and the remote way in which the pane stared out like
an eye sunk deep in its socket. The window on the left of the door
was boarded up by a shutter which had once been green, the other
one being nearly as impenetrable by reason of its distance from the
surface. Were any one curious enough to examine the latter, he
might see that it was surprisingly clean; the place was wild,
inhospitable, weed-sown, but not dirty. A faint column of smoke
escaped from one of the squat chimneys which adorned either end
of the roof.
The ash-plant which Williams was trimming had two strong
suckers sticking out of the root. When it was held upside down, the
position in which it would eventually be carried, Nature’s intention of
making it the distinct image of a rabbit’s head was clear to the
meanest imagination. George’s imagination was not altogether
mean, and he whittled away diligently, smiling as the thing grew
more life-like in his hands, and so much absorbed that he gradually
forgot to watch the track and did not see a small figure coming
down it till it was within a few yards of him.
The person arriving on the scene had such a remarkable gait that
one might have singled him out from fifty men, had he been
advancing in a line of his fellow-creatures instead of alone. As he
came closer, it grew odder because the expression of his face could
be seen to counteract the expression of his legs. The latter
proclaimed indecision, while the former shone with a cheerful
firmness; looking at him, one was prepared to see the legs fold
inward like an easel, or widen out like a compass, plunge sideways
up the bank, or dive forwards down the road. For this, as for all
other phenomena in this world, there was a reason. The man had
driven pigs for nearly fifty years of his life.
The healthy red of his cheeks was an advertisement for this
disquieting trade, and his twinkling eyes and slit of a mouth turned
up at the corners as if they had caught something of their
appearance from the pigs themselves. Prosperity cried from every
part of James Bumpett, from the seams of his corduroy trousers to
the crown of his semi-tall hat. He carried a stick, but he did not use
it to walk with, for long habit had made him wave it smartly from
side to side.
Williams transferred his legs deferentially from the inside to the
outside of the wall as the old man approached, and stood waiting for
him to come up.
The Pig-driver seated himself beside him and plunged immediately
into his subject.
“Is it aught with the business?” he asked. “I come down at once
when I got your message.”
 “No,” replied the younger man, “it’s this way. It’s about Mr. Walters
o’ Masterhouse. He’s there below—an’ his head nigh broke.” He
pointed backwards to the cottage with his thumb.
“Lord! Lord!” ejaculated Bumpett.
“He told me to send word to you. ‘Bumpett,’ he says, ‘Mr. Bumpett
at Abergavenny; don’t you forget,’ an’ he went off with his head agin
my shoulder. How I got him along here I don’t rightly know. He’s a
fair-sized man to be hefting about.”
The old man looked keenly into George’s face.
“What did he want with me?” he inquired.
“Indeed I never thought for to ask him,” said Williams simply.
“’Twas two nights ago, I was going up by Red Field Farm to look
round a bit”—here both men’s eyes dropped—“and about one o’clock
I was nigh them steep bits o’ grazing, an’ come straight on to him.
Lying down in the ditch he was, not twenty yards from Crishowell
Lane. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Well, to be sure!” exclaimed Bumpett. “Was it drink?” he asked
after a pause.
“Drink? no!” cried George. “I took a piece of ice from the road and
put it on his head. He come to then. I never saw such a look as he
give me when he saw me, and he fought like a wild beast, that he
did, when he felt my hand on him, though he was as weak as a
rabbit when I got him up. ’Tis plain enough now why, though indeed
I did wonder then. He’s done for Vaughan the toll-keeper, too;
knocked him stone dead.”
Bumpett stared blankly. For once in his life he was quite taken
aback.
“He was out wi’ Rebecca,” explained Williams. “I guessed that by
the strange hair he had tied all over his head so firm it were hard to
get it loose.”
“What did you do with it?” inquired the Pig-driver sharply.
 “Brought it with me,” said the young man. “Was I to leave it for
some o’ they constables to find?”
“Well, indeed,” observed Bumpett, “you’re a smarter lad than I
took ye for. I don’t mind telling ye that I thought to see him along o’
me in Abergavenny by now.”
“You’ve had to tell me a thing or two before this,” said George
rather sullenly.
“Ye’ve told no one?” inquired Bumpett suspiciously.
“Not I,” said George. “What’s the use of pulling a man out of the
law’s way if you’re to shove him back after? I thought once I’d have
to get the doctor, he was that bad, ranting and raving, but he’s
stopped now.”
“I suppose I’d better go down and see him,” said the Pig-driver,
rubbing the back of his head meditatively with his hand. “What are
we to do with him, Williams?”
“I can’t turn him out,” answered the young man, “I don’t like to
do that.”
“By G’arge, he couldn’t have got into no safer place too,” chuckled
Bumpett. “We’ll keep him a bit, my lad, an’ he might lend a hand
when he gets better. He’ll have to know what sort of a nest he’s
lighted on, sooner or later, if he stops here.”
Williams gave a kind of growl.
“When the country’s quieted down a bit we’ll have to get him off
out o’ this. Straight he’ll have to go too, and not be talkin’ o’ what
he’s seen. Did they take any of the others, did ye hear?”
“They got Turnbull the auctioneer, and about a dozen men from
Llangarth; them on the horses were that rigged up wi’ mountebank
clothes you couldn’t tell who was who—so I heard tell in Crishowell.
And they were off over the Wye, an’ into the woods like so many
quists. The yeomanry tried the wrong places in the water, and some
of them was pretty nigh drowned. There was no talk of chasing—
they’d enough to do pulling one another out.”
 “Well, well, to be sure!” exclaimed the Pig-driver again with
infinite relish, his cheeks widening into a grin as he listened, and his
eyes almost disappearing into his head. Then he sighed the sigh of a
man who broods upon lost opportunities.
George whirled his legs back into the garden in the same way that
he had whirled them out, and steered through the gooseberry
bushes towards the cottage followed by his companion. Entering
they found themselves in a small room, dark and bare.
Although smoke might be seen to issue from the chimney at this
side of the house, it was curious that not a vestige of fire was in the
fire-place. A table stood under the window, a few garments hung on
a string that stretched across a corner, and two bill-hooks, very
sharp and bright, leaned sentimentally towards each other where
they stood against the wall. A piece of soap, a bucket of water, and
a comb were arranged upon a box; at the end of the room were a
cupboard, and a wooden bedstead containing neither bedclothes nor
mattress. Besides these objects, there was nothing in the way of
furniture or adornment.
Bumpett glanced round and his eye reached the bedstead.
“Name o’ goodness, what have ye done with your bedding?” he
inquired, pausing before the naked-looking object.
“It’s down below.”
A partition divided the cottage into two, and George opened a
door in this by which they entered the other half of the building.
Chinks in the closed-up window let in light enough to show a few
tools and a heap of sacks lying in a corner. These were fastened
down on a board which they completely concealed. The Pig-driver
drew it aside, disclosing a hole large enough to admit a human
figure, with the top of a ladder visible in it about a foot below the
flooring. The young man stood aside for Bumpett to descend, and
when the crown of the Pig-driver’s hat had disappeared, he followed,
drawing the board carefully over the aperture.
 The room below ran all the length of the house, and a fire at the
further end accounted for the smoke in the chimney. Fresh air came
in at a hole in the wall, which was hidden outside by a gooseberry
bush planted before it; occasional slabs of stone showed where the
place had been hollowed from the original rock, and the ceiling was
studded with iron hooks. Near the fire was a great heap of
sheepskins, surmounted by George’s mattress and all his scanty
bedding, on which lay Rhys Walters, his head bound round by a
bandage, and a cup of water beside him which he was stretching out
his hand for as they entered.
“Here’s Mr. Bumpett,” announced Williams, going gently up to the
bed.
“Well,” said Rhys in a weak, petulant voice, “this is a bad look-out,
isn’t it?”
“Indeed, and so it is,” answered the old man, as if he had been
struck by a new idea.
“And I don’t know when I can get up out of here.”
“Bide you where you are,” interrupted the Pig-driver. “You couldn’t
be safer, not if you was in Hereford jail itself,” he concluded
cheerfully, sitting down on the bed.
Rhys frowned under his bandage.
“That’s where I may be yet,” he said, “curse the whole business.”
“I’d been lookin’ out for ye at Abergavenny,” said Bumpett, “an’
not seein’ ye, I thought all had been well, and ye’d gone off licketty
smack to Evans’s.”
“If I could get hold of Evans, I’d half kill him,” said Rhys between
his teeth. “He cried out my name, and I had to ride for it, I can tell
you. Give me a drop more water, Williams.”
George went to the opposite wall and drew out a stone, letting in
the pleasant babbling noise of the brook. The foundations of the
cottage were so near the water that he stretched his arm through,
holding the mug, and filled it easily. In flood-time the room was
uninhabitable.
“I thought there was nothing that could touch that mare of mine,”
continued the sick man, as George went up the ladder and left the
two together, “but young Fenton’s mind was made up to catch me,
though I’d have distanced him if this damned frost hadn’t been
against me. I could have dodged him in the mountain and got him
bogged, maybe.”
“Well, well, you’re lucky to be where you are,” remarked Bumpett.
“There’s no one but Williams and me do know of this place. Best
bide a bit, and when they give up searchin’ for ye, ye can get down
to Cardiff somehow.”
Rhys made no reply; his thoughts went to Great Masterhouse, to
its fields, to the barns round which he had played as a child, to its
well-stocked stable, to the money it was worth, and he groaned. He
was a beggar practically, an outlaw, and the life behind him was
wiped out. Many things rose in his mind in a cloud of regret, many
interests but few affections; nevertheless, now that she was
absolutely lost to him, he longed for Mary.
For some time neither of the two men spoke.
“’Tis a bad job indeed,” broke in Bumpett as he got up to leave.
He was a man of his tongue and the silence irked him.
“Where are you going to now?” said Rhys listlessly.
“Down Crishowell way,” answered the Pig-driver. “I’ve got business
there. Mr. Walters, I’ve got a word to say to you afore I go. Do you
know that this place you’re in belongs to me?”
“To you?” said Rhys; “I thought Williams rented it from Red Field
Farm.”
“Ah, ’tis called Williams’,” replied Bumpett, sitting down again, “but
I do pay for it. I may make free with you in what I’m saying, for I’m
helping to keep you from the law, and it’s right you should help to
keep me. Give me the oath you’ll swaller down what I’m telling you
and never let it up again.”
 “What can I do to you, even if I want to?” asked Rhys bitterly.
“Swear, I tell ye.”
“I swear it, so help me God,” repeated Rhys, his curiosity roused.
“Though I began drivin’ o’ pigs, I’m the biggest butcher in trade at
Abergavenny, am I not?” cried the old man, putting his hand on
Rhys’ knee and giving it a shake. “Well, I sell more mutton than I
ever buy. Do ye understand that? Do ye see what you’re lyin’ on?”
He pointed to the sheepskins. “George is my man and he finds it for
me—him an’ others I needn’t speak of. We’ve taken toll of you
before this.”
And, as he chuckled, his eyes disappeared again.
Walters tried to sit up, but grew giddy at once and dropped back
on his pillow. He drew a long breath and lay still. The last words
made him hate the Pig-driver, but as, at present, he owed him
everything, he reflected that hatred would be of little use to him.
“How do you get it all up to Abergavenny?” he inquired at last.
“Ah, you may well ask. And ’tis best you should know, for I’ll be
glad to get a hand from you when you’re up again. Do ye know the
Pedlar’s Stone? There’s not one o’ they zanys along here will go a-
nigh it.”
Rhys knew the place well. On the way to the mountain, about a
mile further up, a little rough, stone cross stuck out of the bank, its
rude arms overhanging the hedge. It marked the spot where a
pedlar had been murdered some hundred years back, and none of
the working people would pass it after dark, for even in the daytime
it was regarded with suspicion.
“The sheep comes here first, George he knows how. Do ye see
them hooks in the ceiling? Did ye take note of the trap ye come
down here by? No, I warrant ye didn’t, ye was that mazed when ye
come. It’s all cut up here, an’ after that it goes up jint by jint to the
place I’m telling you. Williams, he can get two sheep up between ten
o’clock and one i’ the morning. If ye go along the hedge behind the
stone, there’s a big bit o’ rock close by with a hole scraped in
underneath it. It’s deep down among the nettles, so ye wouldn’t see
it if ye didn’t know. That’s where they lie till I come round afore
daylight wi’ the cart on my way to Crishowell. Crishowell folks thinks
I’m at Abergavenny, and Abergavenny folks thinks I’m at Crishowell.”
Though in his heart Rhys hated the Pig-driver for what he had
been doing to him and others like him, he could not help admiring
his astuteness; but he made no comment, for admiration came from
him grudgingly as a rule where men were concerned.
“Now,” said the old man, “I’ll say good-day to ye, Mr. Walters, I
must be gettin’ on.”
He clambered up the ladder, leaving Rhys alone.
 CHAPTER IX
TWO MEETINGS

GEORGE and the Pig-driver left the cottage together a few minutes
afterwards. Both men had business in Crishowell, and as Rhys
Walters was now well enough to be left alone for a few hours,
Williams had no scruple in turning the key on his charge and starting
with his patron for the valley.
The hoar-frost hung on everything. Around them, the heavy air
enwrapped the landscape, making an opaque background to the
branches and twigs which stood as though cut out in white coral
against grey-painted canvas. Bumpett felt the cold a good deal and
pressed forward almost at a trot, looking all the more grotesque for
the company of the big, quiet man beside him. Some way out of the
village they parted, being unwilling to be seen much together.
When he went to see George, Bumpett generally got out of his
cart as soon as he had crossed the mountain pass, sending it round
by a good road which circled out towards Llangarth, and telling his
boy to bring it by that route to Crishowell; he thus avoided trying its
springs in the steep lanes, and was unobserved himself as he went
down by Williams’ house to the village. At the carpenter’s shop,
where it went to await him, he would pass an agreeable half-hour
chatting with the local spirits who congregated there of an
afternoon.
He was the most completely popular man in the neighbourhood.
For this he was much indebted to the habits of his pig-driving days,
when he and his unruly flock had travelled the country on foot to the
different fairs. Then many a labourer’s wife had lightened his
journeys by the pleasant offer of a bite and a sup, and held herself
amply rewarded by the odd bits of gossip and complimentary turns
of speech by which the wayfarer knew how to make himself
welcome. Now that he had become a man of money and standing,
this graciousness of demeanour had not left him; nay, it was rather
set off by the flavour of opulence, and gave meaner folk the
comfortable assurance of being hob and nob with the great ones of
this world. Nevertheless, the name of “The Pig-driver” stuck to him;
as the Pig-driver they had known him first, and the Pig-driver he
would remain, were he to be made Mayor of Abergavenny.
Rounding a corner, the old man came upon an elderly, hard-
featured woman who stood to rest and lean a basket which she
carried against the bank.
“Oh! Mr. Bumpett,” she exclaimed as he approached, “oh! Mr.
Bumpett.”
“Come you here, woman,” he said in a mysterious voice, taking
her by the elbow, “come down to the brookside till I speak a word
wi’ you.”
“Oh! Mr. Bumpett,” she went on, “so ye’ve heard, have ye?”
“Sh——sh!” cried the Pig-driver, hurrying her along, “keep you
quiet, I tell you, till we be away from the lane.”
The Digedi brook ran along the hollow near, and at a sheltered
place by the brink he stopped. Both he and his companion were out
of breath. The woman sat down upon a rock, her hard face working.
“Indeed, I be miserable upon the face of the earth,” she cried, “an
I can’t think o’ nothing but Master Rhys from the time I get out o’
my bed until the time I do get in again, and long after that too. An’
there’s Mrs. Walters a-settin’ same as if he were there and sayin’ to
me, ‘Never speak his name, Nannie, I have no son. Dead he have
been to the Lord these many years, and now, dead he is to me. His
brother’s blood crieth to him from the ground.’ I can’t abide they
prayers o’ hers.”
“Will ye listen to me?” said Bumpett sharply. He gave as much
notice to her lamentations as he did to the babble of the brook.
 “Ah, she’s a hard one, for all her psalms and praises! Never a tear
do I see on her face, and there’s me be like to break my heart when
I so much as go nigh the tollet in the yard and see the young turkey-
cock going by. Law! I do think o’ the smacks poor Master Rhys did
fetch his grandfather, when he were a little bit of a boy, an’ how the
old bird would run before him, same as if the black man o’ Hell was
after him!”
She covered her face with her shawl. The Pig-driver was
exasperated.
“Will ye hold yer tongue?” he said, thumping his stick on the
ground, “or I won’t tell ye one blazin’ word of what I was to say.
Here am I strivin’ to tell ye what ye don’t know about Mister Walters,
an’ I can’t get my mind out along o’ you, ye old fool! Do ye hear me,
Nannie Davis?”
At the sound of Rhys’ name she looked up.
“If I tell ye something about him, will you give over?” asked the
Pig-driver, shaking her by the shoulder.
“Yes, surely, Mr. Bumpett,” said Nannie, “I will. I be but a fool, an’
that I do know.”
“He’s safe,” said Bumpett. “Do ye hear? He’s safe. An’ I know
where he is.”
“And where is he?”
“Ah! that’s telling. don’t you ask, my woman, an’ it’ll be the better
for him.”
Nannie had quite regained her composure, and an unspeakable
load rolled off her mind at her companion’s words. Ever since the
morning when the mare had been found riderless, sniffing at the
door of her box at Masterhouse, and the news of the toll-keeper’s
death and Rhys’ flight had reached the mountain, waking and
sleeping she had pictured his arrest.
“So long as he bides quiet where he is, there’s none can get a
sight o’ him,” said the old man, “and when we do see our way to get
him off an’ over the water—to Ameriky, maybe—I and them I knows
will do our best. But he’s been knocked about cruel, for, mind ye,
they was fightin’ very wicked an’ nasty, down by the toll.”
“Is he bad?” asked Nannie anxiously.
“He was,” replied Bumpett, “but he’s mending.”
“And be I never to know where he be?”
“You mind what I tell ye. But, if ye want to do the man a good
turn, ye may. Do ye know the Pedlar’s Stone?”
Nannie shuddered. “There’s every one knows that. But I durstn’t
go nigh it, not I. Indeed, ’tis no good place! Saunders of Llan-y-
bulch was sayin’ only last week——”
The Pig-driver cast a look of measureless scorn upon her.
“Well, ye needn’t go nigh it,” he interrupted. “Ye can bide twenty
yards on the other side.”
“Lawk! I wouldn’t go where I could see it!”
“Ye must just turn your back, then,” said Bumpett crossly.
“But what be I to do?” inquired Nannie, who stood in considerable
awe of the Pig-driver.
“Ye might get a few of his clothes an’ such like, or anything ye
fancy would come handy to him. Bring them down to the stone
when it’s dark, an’ I, or a man I’ll send, will be there to get them
from ye. Day after to-morrow ’ll do.”
“I won’t be so skeered if there’s some I do know to be by,” said
she reflectively.
“Can ye get they things without Mrs. Walters seein’ ye?” inquired
he. “It would never do for her to be stickin’ her holy nose into it.”
Nannie laughed out. Her laugh was remarkable; it had a ring of
ribaldry unsuited to her plain bonnet and knitted shawl.
“No fear o’ that. Mrs. Walters says to me, no more nor this
mornin’, ‘Take you the keys, Nannie,’ she says, ‘an’ put away all them
clothes o’ his. Let me forget I bore a child that’s to be a disgrace to
my old age.’ ’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good, ye see. But I
must be gettin’ home now, Mr. Bumpett.”
So they parted.
As George entered Crishowell by another way, and got over the
last stile dividing the fields from the village, the church bell began to
sound. The first stroke was finishing its vibration as he laid his hand
on the top rail, but he had gone a full furlong before he heard the
next. They were evidently tolling. A woman came out of her door
and listened to the bell.
“Who’s to be buried?” inquired Williams, as he passed.
“’Tis Vaughan the gate-keeper,” she answered, “him as was killed
Tuesday.”
The young man proceeded until the road turned and brought him
right in front of the lych-gate of the church; it was open, and the
Vicar of Crishowell stood bareheaded among the graves. He went on
by a path skirting the wall, and slipped into the churchyard by
another entrance. A large yew-tree stood close to it, and under this
he took up his stand unperceived; the bell kept on sounding.
Crishowell church was a plain building, which possessed no
characteristic but that of solidity; bits had fallen out of it, and been
rebuilt at various epochs of its history, without creating much
incongruity or adding much glory to its appearance. The nave roof
had settled a little, and the walls were irregular in places, but over
the whole sat that somnolent dignity which clings to ancient stone.
The chancel windows were Norman, and very small; indeed, so near
the ground were they, that boys, sitting in the chancel pews, had
often been provoked to unseemly jests during service by the sight of
unchurch-going school-mates crowding to make grimaces at them
from outside. The porch was high, and surmounted by the belfry,
and some old wooden benches ran round its walls to accommodate
the ringers. As the sexton, who performed many other functions
besides those of his office, had just returned from the fields, Howlie
Seaborne, his son, had taken his place and was tolling till his father
should have changed his coat. He looked like a gnome as he stood
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