Johnny Ludlow Second Series Part 96

"What a stunning thing!" he exclaimed. "Good luck, Fred! we'll help you.

I knew he was innocent, Johnny. Food? Yes, of course; we must get it for him. Molly, you say? Molly be shot!"

"Well, you know what Molly is, Tod. Let half a grain of suspicion arise, and it might betray him. If she saw us rifling her larder, she would go straight to the Squire; and what excuse should we have?"

"Look here, Johnny. I'll go out fishing to-morrow, you understand, and order her to make a lot of meat pasties."

"But he must have something to eat to-morrow morning, Tod: he might die of hunger, else, before night."

Tod nodded. He had little more diplomacy than the Squire, and would have liked to perch himself upon the highest pillar in the parish there and then, and proclaim Fred Westerbrook's innocence.

We stole round to the kitchen. Supper was over, but the servants were still at the table; no chance of getting to the larder then. Molly was in one of her tempers, apparently blowing up Thomas. There might be more chance in the morning.

Morning light. Tod went downstairs with the dawn, and I followed him.

Not a servant was yet astir. He laid hold of a great tray, lodged it on the larder-floor, and began putting some things upon it--a cold leg of mutton and a big round loaf.

"I can't take in all _that_, Tod. It is daylight, you know, and eyes may be about: old b.u.mford's are sure to be. I can only take in what can be concealed in my pockets."

"Oh, bother, Johnny! You'd half famish him."

"Better half famish him than betray him. Some slices of bread and meat will be best--thick sandwiches, you know."

We soon cut into the mutton and the bread. Wrapping them in paper, I stowed the thick slices away in my pockets, leaving the rest of the loaf and meat on the shelves again.

"How I wish I could smuggle him in a bottle of beer!"

"And so you can, Johnny. Swear to old b.u.mford it is for your own drinking."

"He would know better."

"Wrap a sheet of music round the bottle, then. He could make nothing of that."

Hunting out a bottle, we went down to the cellar. Tod stooped to fill it from the tap. I stood watching the process.

"I've caught you, Master Johnny, have I! What be you about there, letting the ale run, I'd like to know?"

The words were Molly's. She had come down and found us out: suspecting something, I suppose, from seeing the cellar-door open. Tod rose up.

"I am drawing some beer to take out with me. Is it any business of yours? When it is, you may interfere."

I was n.o.body in the household--never turning upon them. She'd have gone on at me for an hour, and probably walked off with the beer. Tod was altogether different. He held his own authority, even with Molly. She went up the cellar-stairs, grumbling to herself.

"I want a cork for this bottle," said bold Tod, following her. And Molly, opening some receptacle of hers with a jerk, perforce found him one.

"Oh, and I shall want some meat pasties made to-day, for I think of going fishing," went on Tod. "Let them be ready by lunch-time. I have cut myself some slices of meat to go on with--if you chance to miss any mutton."

Molly, never answering, left her kitchen-grate, where she was beginning to crack up the huge flat piece of coal that the fire had been raked with the previous night, and stalked into the larder to see what depredations had been done. We tied up the bottle in paper on the parlour-table, and then wrapped it in a sheet of loose music. It looked a pretty thick roll; but n.o.body would be likely to remark that.

"I have a great mind to go with you and see him, Johnny," said Tod, as we went together down the garden-path.

"Oh, don't, Tod!" I cried. "For goodness' sake, don't. You know you never do go in with me, and it might cause old b.u.mford to wonder."

"Then, I'll leave it till after dark to-night, Johnny. Go in then, I shall."

b.u.mford was astir, but not down yet. I heard him coughing, through his open cas.e.m.e.nt; for I went with a purpose round the path by his house, and called out to him. He looked out in his shirt-sleeves and a cotton night-cap.

"You see how early I am this morning. I'll bring you the key when I leave."

"Eugh!" growled b.u.mford. "No rights to ha' took it."

Locking the church-door securely after me, I went down the aisle, calling softly to Fred. He came forward from a dark, high-walled pew behind a pillar, where he had slept. You should have seen him devour the bread and meat, if you'd like to know what hunger means, and drink the bottle of beer. I sat down to practise. Had old b.u.mford not heard the sound of the organ, he might have come thundering at the door to know what I was about, and what the silence meant. Fred came with me, and we talked whilst I played. About the first question he asked was whether Gisby was dead; but I could not tell him. He said he had gone out cautiously in the night and walked about the churchyard for an hour, thinking over what he could do. "And I really had an unpleasant adventure, Johnny," he added.

"What was it?"

"I was pacing the path under the hedge towards b.u.mford's, when all at once there arose the sound of voices and steps on the other side of it--fellows on the look-out for me, I suppose."

I held my breath. "What did you do?"

"Crouched down as well as I could--fortunately the hedge is high--and came softly and swiftly over the gra.s.s and the graves to the porch. I only slipped inside just in time, Johnny: before I could close the door, the men were in the churchyard. The key has a trick of creaking harshly when turned in the lock, you know; and I declare I thought they must have heard it then, for it made a fearful noise, and the night was very still!"

"And they did not hear it?"

"I suppose not. But it was some minutes, I can tell you, before my pulses calmed down to their ordinary rate of beating."

He went on to say that the only plan he could think of was to endeavour to get away from the neighbourhood, and go out of the country. To stand his trial was not to be thought of. His word, that he had not been the guilty man, had never even had a gun in his hand that night, would go for nothing, against Gisby's word and Shepherd's. Whatever came of it, he would have to be out of the church before Sunday. The great question was: how could he get away unseen? I told him Tod was coming with me at night, and we would consult together. Locking up the church again, and the prisoner in it, I gladdened b.u.mford's heart by handing over the key, and ran home to breakfast.

Life yet lingered in Gisby; but the doctors thought he could not live through the day. The injury he had received was chiefly internal, somewhere in the region of the lungs. Fresh parties went out with fresh ardour to scour the country after Fred Westerbrook; and so the day pa.s.sed. Chancing to meet Shepherd late in the afternoon, he told me Gisby still lived.

At sundown I went in to practise again, and took a big mould-candle with me, showing it to b.u.mford, that he might not be uneasy on the score of his stock in the vestry. As soon as dusk came on, and before the tell-tale moon was much up, I left the organ, opened the church-door, and stood at it, according to the plan concerted with Tod. He came swiftly up with his basket of provisions which he had got together by degrees during the day; and then we locked the door again. After Fred had regaled himself, we consulted together. Fred was to steal out of the church about one o'clock on Sunday morning, and make off across the country. But to do this with safety it was necessary he should be disguised. By that time the ardour of the night-searching might have somewhat pa.s.sed; and the hour, one o'clock in the morning, was as silent and lonely a one as could be expected. It was most essential that he should not be recognized by any person who might chance to meet him.

"But you must manage one thing for me," said Fred, after this was settled. "I will not go away without seeing Edna. She can come in here with you to-morrow night."

We both objected. "It will be very hazardous, Fred. Old b.u.mford would be sure to see her: his eyes are everywhere."

"Tell him you want her to sing over the chants with you, Johnny. Tell him anything. But go away for an indefinite period, without first seeing her and convincing her that it is not guilt that sends me, I will not."

So there was no more to be said.

Getting provisions together seemed to have been easy compared with what we should have to get up now--a disguise. A smock-frock, say, and the other items of a day-labourer's apparel. But it was more easy to decide than to procure them.

"Mack leaves belongings of his in the barn occasionally," said Tod to me, as we walked home together. "We'll look to-morrow night."

It was our best hope. Failing that, there would be no possibility of getting a smock-frock anywhere; and Fred would have to escape in his coat turned inside out, or something of that sort. His own trousers, braced up high, and plastered with mud at the feet, would do very well, and his own wideawake hat, pulled low down on his face. There would be no more trouble about provisions, for what Tod had taken in would be enough.

Sat.u.r.day. And Tod and I with our work before us. Gisby was sinking fast.