Boy Woodburn Part 42

She said nothing.

"Billy Bluff!" called the young man. He shoved the knife under the dog's nose. "Sik him out!" he called. "Good dorg!"

Billy Bluff skirmished round and went off up the hill at score.

Silver mounted and followed.

The trail carried the dog up on to the Downs.

He pursued it at speed and unfaltering in the dusk.

Against the pale west, on the brow, the figure of a man soon came into view. Billy Bluff raced up and greeted the pedestrian effusively.

Silver, pounding up behind, found himself face to face with the vicar.

The dog, his task completed to his own entire satisfaction, sought applause and sympathy from the horseman.

"Is that you, Mr. Haggard?" called the young man in the dusk.

"Yes; I came up to have a look at the sunset."

"You haven't seen that man Joses about?"

"Our lurid friend," said the vicar absently. "No; and I don't want to see him just now. It's all so quiet."

Boy, who had stayed behind to examine the colt, came cantering up.

The dusk was drawing down apace, the earth dark about them, and seaward that window in the west pale and lovely.

"Wonderful!" said Mr. Haggard, dreamily, and repeated slowly and to himself--

_Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and s.p.a.ce To greet you. You will understand._

The riders turned away.

Neither spoke for a while.

"Mr. Haggard's like mother," said the girl at last. "He's got _that_."

She added: "I'm glad we met him. I was very angry."

"Aren't you now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "but in a different way. It's white now. It was red then."

They rode slowly off the crest amid the gorse, the lights of Putnam's burning far beneath them in the dusk.

"Give me that knife, please," she said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I want it."

"What for?"

He didn't answer.

"I know," she said. "To get him put away."

"He deserves it," replied the young man doggedly. "If it had only been the shed now!--but--"

"Four Pound," she said. "I know." Her little hand came reaching toward him in the dusk. "Give me that knife, please."

He fenced with her.

"Don't you believe in punishment?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Not even for cruelty?"

"I don't think you can stop cruelty by being cruel yourself."

"Wouldn't you give him in charge?"

"Yes," she said, "if I was sure they'd kill him. But they wouldn't.

They'd only cage him. And I can't believe in the cage for anyone." She was breathing deeply.

"Here you are," said the young man.

She laid her hand on his a moment.

He grasped it, and drew toward her silently.

The horses moved side by side down the hill, a few pale stars sprinkling the dull heavens, and somewhere behind, the glimmer of a young moon.

They pa.s.sed into the Paddock Close, stealing softly over the turf, the wood moving gently on their right in the darkness.

He came looming up beside her.

"Boy," he said deeply.

It was the first time he had dared.

"Yes," she answered, and her voice trembled ever so little.

"Will you share something besides Four-Pound-the-Second?"