The Shadow of a Crime Part 4

"Wheariver there's screes There's mair stones nor trees."

The further sally provoked a louder laugh. Just then another gust came down the chimney and sent a wave of mingled heat and cold through the room. The windows rattled louder with the wind and crackled sharper with the pelting sleet. The dogs rose and growled.

"Be quiet there," cried Ralph. "Down, Laddie, down." Laddie, a large-limbed collie, with long s.h.a.ggy coat still wet and matted and glistening with the hard unmelted snow, had walked to the door and put his nose to the bottom of it.

"Some one coming," said Ralph, turning to look at the dog, and speaking almost under his breath.

Robbie Anderson, who had throughout been lounging in silence on the bench near the door, got up sleepily, and put his great hand on the wooden latch. The door flew open by the force of the storm outside. He peered for a moment into the darkness through the blinding sleet. He could see nothing.

"No one here!" he said moodily.

And, putting his broad shoulder to the stout oak door, he forced it back. The wind moaned and hissed through the closing aperture. It was like the ebb of a broken wave to those who had heard the sea. Turning about, as the candles on the table blinked, the young man lazily dashed the rain and sleet from his beard and breast, and lay down again on the settle, with something between a shiver and a yawn.

"Cruel night, this," he muttered, and so saying, he returned to his normal condition of somnolence.

The opening and the closing of the door, together with the draught of cold air, had awakened a little man who occupied that corner of the chimney nook which faced old Matthew. Coiled up with his legs under him on the warm stone seat, his head resting against one of the two walls that bolstered him up on either hand, beneath a great flitch of bacon that hung there to dry, he had lain asleep throughout the preceding conversation, only punctuating its periods at intervals with somewhat too audible indications of slumber. In an instant he was on his feet. He was a diminutive creature, with something infinitely amusing in his curious physical proportions. His head was large and well formed; his body was large and ill formed; his legs were short and shrunken. He was the schoolmaster of Wythburn, and his name Monsey Laman. The dalesmen found the little schoolmaster the merriest comrade that ever sat with them over a gla.s.s. He had a crack for each of them, a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow a.s.sociated with the idea of a French dancing master.

With the schoolmaster's awakening the conversation in the inn seemed likely to take a livelier turn. Even the whistling sleet appeared to become less fierce and terrible. True, the stalwart dalesman on the door bench yawned and slept as before; but even Ralph's firm lower lip began to relax, and he was never a gay and sportive elf. The rest of the company charged their pipes afresh and called on the hostess for more spiced ale.

"'Blessing on your heart,' says the proverb, 'you brew good ale.' It's a Christian virtue, eh, Father?" said Monsey, addressing Matthew in the opposite corner.

"Praise the ford as ye find it," said that sage; "I've found good yal maks good yarn. Folks that wad put doon good yal ought to be theirselves putten doon."

"Then you must have been hanged this many a long year, Father Matthew," said Monsey, "for you've put down more good ale than any man in Wythburn."

Old Matthew had to stand the laugh against himself this time. In the midst of it he leaned over to Ralph, and, as though to cover his discomfiture, whispered, "He's gat a lad's heart, the laal man has."

Then, with the air of one about to communicate a novel idea,--

"And sic as ye gie, sic will ye get, frae him."

"Well, well," he added aloud, "ye munnet think I cannot stand my rackups."

The old man, despite this unexpected fall, was just beginning to show his mettle. The sententious graybeard was never quite so happy, never looked quite so wise, never shook his head with such an air of good-humored consequence, never winked with such profundity of facetiousness, as when "the laal limber Frenchman" was giving a "merry touch." Wouldn't Monsey sing summat and fiddle to it too; aye, that he would, Mattha knew reet weel.

"Sing!" cried the little man,--"sing! Monsieur, the dog shall try me this conclusion. If he wag his tail, then will I sing; if he do not wag his tail, then--then will I not be silent. What say you Laddie?"

The dog responded to the appeal with an opportune if not an intelligent wag of that member on which so momentous an issue hung.

From one of the rosy closets in the wall a fiddle was forthwith brought out, and soon the noise of the tempest was drowned in the preliminary tuning of strings and running of scales.

"You shall beat the time, my patriarch," said Monsey.

"Nay, man; it's thy place to kill it," answered Matthew.

"Then you shall mark the beat, or beat the mark, or make your mark.

You could never write, you know."

It was a sight not to be forgotten to see the little schoolmaster brandishing his fiddlestick, beating time with his foot, and breaking out into a wild shout when he hit upon some happy idea, for he rejoiced in a gift of improvisation. A burst of laughter greeted the climax of his song, which turned on an unheroic adventure of old Matthew's. The laughter had not yet died away when a loud knocking came to the door. Ralph jumped to his feet.

"I said some one was coming; and he's been here before, whoever he is."

At that he walked to the door and opened it. Laddie was there before him.

"Is Ralph Ray here?"

It was the voice of a woman, charged with feeling.

Ralph's back had been to the light, and hence his face had not been recognized. But the light fell on the face of the new-comer.

"Rotha!" he said. He drew her in, and was about to shut out the storm behind her.

"No," she said almost nervously. "Come with me; some one waits outside to see you; some one who won't--can't come in."

She was wet; her hair was matted over her forehead, the sleet lying in beads upon it. A hood that had been pulled hurriedly over her head was blown partly aside. Ralph would have drawn her to the fire.

"Not yet," she said again. Her eyes looked troubled, startled, denoting pain.

"Then I will go with you at once," he said.

They turned; Laddie darted out before them, and in a moment they were in the blackness of the night.

CHAPTER IV. THE OUTCAST.

The storm had abated. The sleet and rain had ceased, but the wind still blew fierce and strong, driving black continents of cloud across a crescent moon. It was bitingly cold. Rotha walked fast and spoke little. Ralph understood their mission. "Is he far away?" he said.

"Not far."

Her voice had a tremor of emotion, and as the wind carried it to him it seemed freighted with sadness. But the girl would have hidden her fears.

"Perhaps he's better now," she said.

Ralph quickened his steps. The dog had gone on in front, and was lost in the darkness.

"Give me your hand, Rotha; the sleet is hard and slape."

"Don't heed me, Ralph; go faster; I'll follow."

Just then a sharp bark was heard close at hand, followed by another and another, but in a different key. Laddie had met a friend.

"He's coming," Rotha said, catching her breath.

"He's here."

With the shrill cry of a hunted creature that has got back, wounded, to its brethren, Sim seemed to leap upon them out of the darkness.

"Ralph, take me with you--take me with you; do not let me go back to the fell to-night. I cannot go--no, believe me, I cannot--I dare not.

Take me, Ralph; have mercy on me; do not despise me for the coward that I am; it's enough to make me curse the great G.o.d--no, no; not that neither. But, Ralph, Ralph--"