A Little Wizard Part 3

"Come, man, be quick!" Simon cried sharply. "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm not coming, Simon," was the reply.

"Not coming?"

"Some one must stay and take care of the place," the butler answered, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay. Your wife will need some one."

"Fool! what can one man do here?" the Puritan retorted fiercely.

"Come, I say. This is no time for loitering when the work calls us."

Gridley shook his head and moistened his lips with his tongue. "I'm not a fighting man," he muttered feebly.

For a moment the elder brother glared at him, as though he were minded to cross the fence and strike him down. Fortunately, however, Simon found a vent for his pa.s.sion as effectual and more characteristic. "If you do not fight, you do not eat," he said coldly. "At any rate in my house. Mistress," he continued to his wife, "see that my orders are obeyed. Give that craven neither bit nor sup until I come again. If he will not fight he shall not feed!"

And with that he went.

When little Jack came back to the house an hour later, and crept shyly into the kitchen, as his manner was, he found it empty. The light was beginning to wane, and the coming evening already filled the corners of the gaunt, silent room, in which not even a clock ticked, with shadows. The boy stood awhile, looking about him and listening in the stillness for any movement in the inner room, or on the floor above.

Hearing none, he went outside in a kind of panic; but there too he found no one. Still, the light gave him courage to re-enter and mount the stairs. He called "Gridley!" again and again, but no one answered.

He tried Luke's room; it was empty. On this the lad was about to fly again in a worse panic than before--for the loneliness of the house might have appalled an older heart than his--when the sound of footsteps relieved his fears. He stole to the window, and saw the butler and Mistress Gridley come round the corner of the house, the former carrying a spade on his shoulder.

Jack wondered timidly what they had been about with the spade, and where Simon and Luke were; but naturally he got no explanation, and was glad to escape from the grim looks with which they greeted him. It was time for the evening meal, and the woman set it on, and gave him his share as usual. The butler, however, he saw with surprise took no part in it, but sat at a distance with a scowl on his face, and neither ate nor drank. On the other hand, Mistress Gridley ate more than usual. Indeed, he had never seen her in better appet.i.te or spirits, She rallied her companion, too, on his abstinence so pleasantly and with so much good-temper, that the child was quite carried away by her humor, and went to bed in better spirits than had been his since the beginning of his life at Malham.

In the morning it was the same, with the exception that Gridley looked strangely pale about the cheeks. Again he took no share of the meal, but in the middle of breakfast he came up to the table in an odd, violent fashion, falling back only when Mistress Gridley s.n.a.t.c.hed up a knife, and made a playful thrust at him. She laughed at the same time, but the laugh was not musical, and the child, detecting a false note in it, grew puzzled. Even for him the scene had lost its humor. The man's face, as he retired cowed and baffled to the window-seat, where the side light brought out all that was most repulsive in his craven features, told a tale there was no mistaking. The child stayed awhile, fascinated by the spectacle, and saw the woman take her seat on the meal chest and spin, smiling and patient, while Gridley gnawed his nails and devoured her with his eyes. But the longer he watched the more frightened he grew; and at last he broke the spell with an effort, and fled to the purer air outside.

He was wise, for the morn was at its best. It was the most perfect morning of the year. Ingleborough had no cap on, Penighent stood up hard and sharp against the blue sky. The summer sunshine, unrelieved by a single cloud or so much as a wreath of mist, fell hotly on the open moor, where the larks sank and the bees hummed, and the boy's heart rose in sympathy with the life about him. Feeling an unwonted lightness and cheerfulness, he started to climb the fell at the back of the house, following the right bank of the hollow in which the yew-trees grew. This hollow, as it rose to a level with the upper moor, spent itself in a dozen fissures, which, radiating in every direction, drained the moss. Some were three or four feet deep, some ten or twelve, with steep and everhanging edges.

Presently the boy found his progress barred by one of these, and peeping into its shadowy depths, which a little to his left melted into the gloom of the yew-trees, grew timid and stopped, sitting down and looking back the way he had come, to gain courage. For a while his eyes dwelt idly on the sunny slope. Then on a sudden he saw a sight which he remembered all his life.

A quarter of a mile below the house, a road crossed the moor. On this a solitary horseman had just appeared, urging a piebald horse to a tired trot, while continually looking back the way he had come. The boy had scarcely remarked him and the strange color of his steed, when a second rider came into sight over the brow, with a man running by his side and clinging to his stirrup-leather. To him succeeded two more hors.e.m.e.n, trotting abreast and spurring furiously; and then while the lad wondered what it all meant, and who these people were, a single footman topped the brow, and after running a score of paces--but not in the direction the others had taken--flung himself down on his face among the bracken.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flung himself on his face among the bracken.--Page 59.]

He had scarcely executed this man[oe]uvre, when a party of six men, three mounted--the boy could see them rising and falling briskly in their stirrups--and three running beside them, appeared above the ridge, and quickening their pace followed with a loud cry on the others' heels. The cry seemed to spur on the fugitives--such he now saw the first party to be--to fresh exertions, but despite this, the two hors.e.m.e.n who brought up the rear were quickly overtaken by the six. The lad saw a tiny flash and heard a faint report. One of the two threw up his arms and fell backwards. The other made as if he would have turned his horse to meet his pursuers; but it shied and carried him across the moor. Two of the six rode after him, one on either side, and the lad saw the flash of their blades in the sunshine as they rained cuts on his head and shoulders--which the poor wretch vainly strove to shield by raising his arms--till he too sank down, and the two turned back to their comrades, who were still following after the three who survived.

The boy, sick and shuddering, and utterly unmanned by the sight he had seen, hid his eyes; and for a time saw no more. His very heart melted within him for terror and for pity. Sweating all over, he rolled himself into a little hollow beside him where the ground sank, and lay there trembling. By-and-by he heard a scream, and then another, and each time he drew in his breath and closed his eyes. Then silence fell again upon the moor. The bees hummed round him. A peewit screamed and wheeled above his head.

He plucked up heart after a while to peep fearfully over the edge of the little basin in which he lay, and saw that the six men were retracing their steps, but not, as they had gone, in a body. They were now beating the moor backwards in a long line, each man a score of paces from his neighbor. The lad, after watching them a moment, had wit enough to understand what they were doing, and from his elevated position could see also their quarry, who had lost no time in removing himself from the spot where he had first thrown himself down in the fern. He was half way up the fell now, on a level with the farm, and a hundred paces above the uppermost of his enemies. Apparently he was satisfied with his position, or despaired of bettering it, for he lay still, though the searchers drew each moment nearer.

Jack could see their flushed cheeks and streaming brows as they toiled along in the sunshine, probing the fern with pikes and going sometimes many yards out of the way to inspect a likely bush. He felt his heart stand still when they halted opposite the man's lair and seemed to suspect something; and again he felt it race on as if it would choke him, when they pa.s.sed by unnoticing, and began to quarter the ground towards the farm.

Their backs were scarcely turned before the man, whose conduct from the first had proved him a hardy and resolute fellow, moved again, and crawling stealthily on his stomach, as the ground afforded him shelter, began to make his way up the hill. The lad, lying still and fascinated, watched him; forseeing that the fugitive's course must bring him, if pursued, to the hollow in which he lay, yet unable to move or escape. It seemed an age before the man reached the mound, and wriggling himself up its least exposed side, pushed his head cautiously over the rim, and met the boy's eyes.

Both started violently; but whereas Jack saw before him only a swollen, blood-stained face, white and haggard with fatigue, and half disguised by a kerchief which covered the man's brow and came down to his eyes, the man saw more--much more.

"Jack!" he muttered, the instinct of caution remaining with him even in his great astonishment. "Jack! Why, don't you know me, lad? It is I, Frank."

"Frank?"

"Ay, Frank! You know me now."

The boy did know him then, more by his voice than his face; and broke into a pa.s.sion of weeping, holding out his hands and murmuring incoherent words. The fugitive whom chance had brought to his feet was his brother! the brother whom he had not seen for more than a year, of whose misfortunes and misdeeds he had dimly heard, the brother whom he had mourned as dead!

Twelve months of hardship and danger and rough companionship had changed Frank Patten much, inwardly as well as outwardly; but they had not sapped the family tie nor closed his heart against such a meeting as this. He crept into the hollow beside the child with every n.o.bler feeling in his nature aroused, and with one eye on the moor below and one on him strove to comfort him.

Courage is contagious. The elder brother possessed it in a peculiar degree, uniting the daring of youth to the hardihood and resource which as a rule come only of long experience; and Jack was not slow to feel his influence. The boy quickly stilled his sobs and dried his tears. In such crises resolutions are formed rapidly, the impulse to help is instinctive. In a few moments he was back in the old place, watching the moor; while Frank, whose bandaged head was so much more likely to catch the eye and attract attention, lay resting in the lap of the hollow.

"Do you see them now?" Frank asked presently, when he had somewhat recovered his breath and strength.

"They are standing in front of the farm," Jack answered. "Now they are beating the ground towards the further brow."

Frank nodded. "They think I must have doubled back," he said coolly.

"It was a narrow squeak, but I am all right as it is, if I can get three things."

"What are they, Frank?" Jack asked timidly, gazing with awe and admiration at the ragged, blood-stained, sinewy figure beside him.

"Water, food, and a hiding-place," his brother answered tersely; "but first, water. The sun has burned me to a cinder, and I am parched with thirst. I little thought when I rode gaily into Settle yester-even that this would come of it. But the game is not fought out yet."

"Have they not beaten you?" Jack ventured to ask.

"Not a bit of it!" his brother answered with a reckless laugh. "'Twas only an affair of outposts, lad. In a week, Duke Hamilton will be at Preston with thirty thousand gallant fellows at his back. It will not be a handful of disbanded troopers will scatter it. But I thirst, Jack, I thirst."

Jack slid back into the hollow and sprang to his feet. "There is a spring at the back of the house," he said eagerly. "I can go to it through the yew-trees, Frank, and be back in five minutes, or ten at most. But I have nothing to carry the water in, and the pitcher is kept in the house."

In a trice Frank pulled off one of his long boots. "Take that," he said. "It is as nearly water-tight as awl and needle and good leather can make it. Many a man has used a worse blackjack. But can you go and return unseen, lad?"

"Trust me," said Jack, bravely, taking up the boot. "You shall see."

He had just bethought him of the fissure in the moss which had set a limit to his explorations. It ran athwart the slope a few paces behind the hollow in which he lay, and seemed to promise safe and secret access through the yew coppice to the rear of the house where the well was. Nodding confidently to his brother, he crawled back to the rift; then dropping into it where it grew shallow, a little to the right, he turned down it and followed it until it presently opened into the dell in which the yew-trees grew. Their cool shadow no longer terrified him, for he was thinking of another, and had a purpose; two things which form the best of armor against empty fears. Carrying the boot with caution, so that it might not be seen easily or at once were he surprised, he plunged into the gloom under the trees, and creeping along, presently reached the spring, which lay a few paces only from the back of the house.

It was clear of the trees, and here he had to venture something. He waited and listened, and presently heard Mistress Gridley's voice. She was on the farther side of the house talking to some of the Puritan troopers, who had dismounted at the wall of the fold, and were discussing their victory. Taking his courage in his hand the boy advanced to the spring, and dipping the boot, staggered back with it into the shelter of the trees, where he lay a moment under cover to a.s.sure himself that he had not been observed. Quickly satisfied on this point, and the more quickly as he discovered that the boot leaked a little, he lost no more time, but hastening back the way he had come, in three or four minutes reached the surface of the moor, and had the satisfaction of seeing his brother plunge his burning face into the boot and quench his thirst with water of his providing.

Never had the boy known so proud a moment. It was an epoch in his life. He was athirst himself, his lips were parched and his mouth was burning, but he would have suffered a hundred times as much before he would have taken a drop. He looked on, glowing with happiness: fear and weakness, heat and thirst all forgotten. For he had done a man's deed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MEAL CHEST.

It was high noon, and the sun shone hotly on the hillside where the two lay. The rim of the hollow which sheltered them from hostile eyes kept off also such light breezes as were blowing, and served to collect and focus the burning rays. Jack panted and fanned himself, longing for shade and water, and cool sounds. But no thought of deserting his brother occurred to his mind. When Frank looked up at last, after drinking three long draughts from his queer blackjack, he found the lad had gone bravely back to his post of espial, and was searching the moor with diligent eyes.

Wonder and astonishment stirred afresh in the hunted man's breast.

"Why, Jack, lad," he said, gazing at him as if he now for the first time comprehended the full strangeness of his presence; "how come you to be here? I thought you were safe at Pattenhall, thirty miles off."

"Gridley brought me," Jack answered, lowering his voice cautiously.