Bob, Son of Battle Part 39

"I canna tell ye where he is now, but ye'd aiblins care to hear o' when I saw him last." He turned his chair the better to address her.

"Twas like so: I was sittin' in this vairy chair it was, asleep, when he crep' up behind an' lep' on ma back. I knew naethin' o't till I found masel' on the floor an' him kneelin' on me. I saw by the look on him he was set on finishin' me, so I said--"

The girl waved her hand at him, superbly disdainful.

"Yo' ken yo're lyin', ivery word o't," she cried.

The little man hitched his trousers, crossed his legs, and yawned.

"An honest lee for an honest purpose is a matter ony man may be proud of, as you'll ken by the time you're my years, ma la.s.s."

The girl slowly crossed the room. At the door she turned.

"Then ye'll no tell me wheer he is?" she asked with a heart-breaking trill in her voice.

"On ma word, la.s.s, I dinna ken," he cried, half pa.s.sionately.

"On your word, Mr. M'Adam" she said with a quiet scorn in her voice that might have stung Iscariot.

The little man spun round in his chair, an angry red dyeing his cheeks.

In another moment he was suave and smiling again.

"I canna tell ye where he is noo," he said, unctuously; "but aiblins, I could let ye know where he's gaein' to."

"Can yo'? will yo'?" cried the simple girl all unsuspecting. In a moment she was across the room and at his knees.

"Closer, and I'll whisper." The little ear, peeping from its nest of brown, was tremblingly approached to his lips. The little man lent forward and whispered one short, sharp word, then sat back, grinning, to watch the effect of his disclosure.

He had his revenge, an unworthy revenge on such a victim. And, watching the girl's face, the cruel disappointment merging in the heat of her indignation, he had yet enough n.o.bility to regret his triumph.

She sprang from him as though he were unclean.

"An' yo' his father!" she cried, in burning tones.

She crossed the room, and at the door paused. Her face was white again and she was quite composed.

"If David did strike you, you drove him to it," she said, speaking in calm, gentle accents. "Yo' know, none so well, whether yo've bin a good feyther to him, and him no mither, poor laddie! Whether yo've bin to him what she'd ha' had yo' be. Ask yer conscience, Mr. M'Adam. An' if he was a wee aggravatin' at times, had he no reason? He'd a heavy cross to bear, had David, and yo' know best if yo' helped to ease it for him."

The little man pointed to the door; but the girl paid no heed.

"D'yo' think when yo' were cruel to him, jeerin' and fleerin', he never felt it, because he was too proud to show ye? He'd a big saft heart, had David, beneath the varnish. Mony's the time when mither was alive, I've seen him throw himsel' into her arms, sobbin', and cry, 'Eh, if I had but mither! 'Twas different when mither was alive; he was kinder to me then. An' noo I've no one; I'm alone.' An' he'd sob and sob in mither's arms, and she, weepin' hersel', would comfort him, while he, wee laddie, would no be comforted, cryin' broken-like, 'There's none to care for me noo; I'm alone. Mither's left me and eh! I'm prayin' to be wi' her!'"

The clear, girlish voice shook. M'Adam, sitting with face averted, waved to her, mutely ordering her to be gone. But she held on, gentle, sorrowful, relentless.

"An' what'll yo' say to his mither when yo meet her, as yo' must soon noo, and she asks yo', 'An what o' David? What o' th' lad I left wi'

yo', Adam, to guard and keep for me, faithful and true, till this Day?'

And then yo'll ha' to speak the truth, G.o.d's truth; and yo'll ha' to answer, 'Sin' the day yo' left me I niver said a kind word to the lad.

I niver bore wi' him, and niver tried to. And in the end I drove him by persecution to try and murder me.' Then maybe she'll look at yo'--yo'

best ken hoo--and she'll say, 'Adam, Adam! is this what I deserved fra yo'?'"

The gentle, implacable voice ceased. The girl turned and slipped softly out of the room; and M'Adam was left alone to his thoughts and his dead wife's memory.

"Mither and father, baith! Mither and father, baith!" rang remorselessly in his ears.

Chapter XXIII TH' OWD UN

THE Black Killer still cursed the land. Sometimes there would be a cessation in the crimes; then a shepherd, going his rounds, would notice his sheep herding together, packing in unaccustomed squares; a raven, gorged to the crop, would rise before him and flap wearily away, and he would come upon the murderer's latest victim.

The Dalesmen were in despair, so utterly futile had their efforts been.

There was no proof; no hope, no apparent probability that the end was near. As for the Tailless Tyke, the only piece of evidence against him had flown with David, who, as it chanced, had divulged what he had seen to no man.

The 100 pound reward offered had brought no issue. The police had done nothing. The Special Commissioner had been equally successful. After the affair in the Scoop the Killer never ran a risk, yet never missed a chance.

Then, as a last resource, Jim Mason made his attempt. He took a holiday from his duties and disappeared into the wilderness. Three days and three nights no man saw him.

On the morning of the fourth he reappeared, haggard, unkempt, a furtive look haunting his eyes, sullen for once, irritable, who had never been irritable before--to confess his failure. Cross-examined further, he answered with unaccustomed fierceness: "I seed nowt, I tell ye. Who's the liar as said I did?"

But that night his missus heard him in his sleep conning over something to himself in slow, fearful whisper, "Two on 'em; one ahint t'other. The first big--bull-like; t'ither--" At which point Mrs. Mason smote him a smashing blow in the ribs, and he woke in a sweat, crying terribly, "Who said I seed--"

The days were slipping away; the summer was hot upon the land, and with it the Black Killer was forgotten; David was forgotten; everything sank into oblivion before the all-absorbing interest of the coming Dale trials.

The long-antic.i.p.ated battle for the Shepherds' Trophy was looming close; soon everything that hung upon the issue of that struggle would be decided finally. For ever the justice of Th' Owd Un' claim to his proud t.i.tle would be settled. If he won, he won outright--a thing unprecedented in the annals of the Cup; if he won, the place of Owd Bob o' Kenmuir as first in his profession was a.s.sured for all time. Above all, it was the last event in the six years' struggle 'twixt Red and Gray It was the last time those two great rivals would meet in battle.

The supremacy of one would be decided once and for all. For win or lose, it was the last public appearance of the Gray Dog of Kenmuir.

And as every hour brought the great day nearer, nothing else was talked of in the country-side. The heat of the Dalesmen's enthusiasm was only intensified by the fever of their apprehension. Many a man would lose more than he cared to contemplate were Th' Owd Un beat. But he'd not be!

Nay; owd, indeed, he was--two years older than his great rival; there were a hundred risks, a hundred chances; still: "What's the odds agin Owd Bob o' Kenmuir? I'm takin' 'em. Who'll lay agin Th' Owd Un?"

And with the air saturated with this perpetual talk of the old dog, these everlasting references to his certain victory; his ears drumming with the often boast that the gray dog was the best in the North, M'Adam became the silent, ill-designing man of six months since--morose, brooding, suspicious, muttering of conspiracy, plotting revenge.

The scenes at the Sylvester Arms were replicas of those of previous years. Usually the little man sat isolated in a far corner, silent and glowering, with Red Wull at his feet. Now and then he burst into a paroxysm of insane giggling, slapping his thigh, and muttering, "Ay, it's likely they'll beat us, Wullie. Yet aiblins there's a wee somethin'--a somethin' we ken and they dinna, Wullie,--eh! Wullie, he!

he!" And sometimes he would leap to his feet and address his pot-house audience, appealing to them pa.s.sionately, satirically, tearfully, as the mood might be on him; and his theme was always the same: James Moore, Owd Bob, the Cup, and the plots agin him and his Wullie; and always he concluded with that hint of the surprise to come.

Meantime, there was no news of David; he had gone as utterly as a ship foundered in mid-Atlantic. Some said he'd 'listed; some, that he'd gone to sea. And "So he 'as," corroborated Sam'l, "floatin', 'eels uppards."

With no gleam of consolation, Maggie's misery was such as to rouse compa.s.sion in all hearts. She went no longer blithely singing about her work; and all the springiness had fled from her gait. The people of Kenmuir vied with one another in their attempts to console their young mistress.

Maggie was not the only one in whose life David's absence had created a void. Last as he would have been to own it, M'Adam felt acutely the boy's loss. It may have been he missed the ever-present b.u.t.t; it may have been a n.o.bler feeling. Alone with Red Wull, too late he felt his loneliness. Sometimes, sitting in the kitchen by himself, thinking of the past, he experienced sharp pangs of remorse; and this was all the more the case after Maggie's visit. Subsequent to that day the little man, to do him justice, was never known to hint by word or look an ill thing of his enemy's daughter. Once, indeed, when Melia Ross was drawing on a dirty imagination with Maggie for subject, M'Adam shut her up with: "Ye're a maist amazin' big liar, Melia Ross."

Yet, though for the daughter he had now no evil thought, his hatred for the father had never been so uncompromising.

He grew reckless in his a.s.sertions. His life was one long threat against James Moore's. Now he openly stated his conviction that, on the eventful night of the fight, James Moore, with object easily discernible, had egged David on to murder him.