The Shadow of a Crime Part 46

What's his game in this hunt?"

"Shaf! he's bagged himself, stump and rump."

"I don't mind how soon we've done with this trapesing here and there.

Which will be the 'dictment, think ye?"

"Small doubt which." "Murder, eh? Can you manage it, Wilfrey and yourself?"

"Leave that to the pair of us."

The perspiration was standing in beads on every inch of Robbie's body.

He was struggling with an almost overpowering temptation to test the strength of his muscles at pitching certain weighty "bodies" off the top of that coach, in order to relieve it of some of the physical burden and a good deal of the moral iniquity under which it seemed to him just then to groan.

Snow began now to fall, and the driver gave the whip to his horses in order to reach a village which was not far away.

"We'll be bound to put up for the night," he said; "this snowstorm will soon stop us."

The two strangers were apparently much concerned at the necessity, and used every available argument to induce the driver to continue his journey.

Robbie could not bring himself to a conclusion as to whether it would be best for his purpose that the coach should stop, and so keep back the vagabonds who were sitting behind him, or go on, and so help him to overtake Ralph. The driver in due course settled the problem very decisively by drawing up at the inn of the hamlet of Mardale and proceeding to take his horses off the chains.

"There be some folk as have mercy neither on man nor beast," he said in reply to a protest from the strangers.

Jim's sentiment was more apposite than he thought.

The two men grumbled their way into the inn. Robbie remained outside and gave the driver a hand with the horses.

"Where's Haribee?" he asked.

"In Carlisle," said the driver.

"What place is it?" asked Robbie.

"Haribee?--why, the place of execution."

When left alone outside in the snow, Robbie began to reflect on the position of affairs. It was past midnight. The two strangers, who were obviously in pursuit of Ralph, would stay in this house at least until morning. Ralph himself was probably asleep at this moment, some ten miles or thereabouts farther up the road.

It was bitterly cold. Robbie's hands and face were numbed. The flakes of snow fell thicker and faster than before.

Robbie perceived that there was only one chance that would make it worth while to have come on this journey: the chance that he could overtake Ralph before the coach and its pa.s.sengers could overtake him.

To do this he must walk the whole night through, let it rain or snow or freeze.

He could and he would do it!

Bravely, Robbie! A greater issue than you know of hangs on your journey. On! on! on!

CHAPTER x.x.xII. WHAT THE SNOW GAVE UP.

The agitation of the landlord of the inn at Askham, who was an old Parliamentarian, on discovering the captain under whom he had served in the person of Ralph Ray, threatened of itself to betray him. With infinite perturbation he came and went, and set before Ralph and Sim such plain fare as his house could furnish after the more luxurious appet.i.tes of the Royalist visitors had been satisfied.

The room into which the travellers had been smuggled was a wing of the old house, open to the whitewashed rafters, and with the customary broad hearth. Armor hung about the walls--a sword here, a cutla.s.s there, and over the rannel-tree a coat of chain steel. It was clearly the living-room of the landlord's family, and was jealously guarded from the more public part of the inn. But when the door was open into the pa.s.sage that communicated with the rest of the house, the loud voices of the Royalists could be heard in laughter or dispute.

When the family vacated this room for the convenience of Ralph and Sim, they left behind at the fireside, sitting on a stool, a little boy of three or four, who was clearly the son of the landlord. Ralph sat down, and took the little fellow between his knees. The child had big blue eyes and thin curls of yellow hair. The baby lips answered to his smile, and the baby tongue prattled in his ear with the easy familiarity which children extend only to those natures that hold the talisman of child-love.

"And what is _your_ name, my little man?" said Ralph.

"Darling," answered the child, looking up frankly into Ralph's face.

"Good. And anything else?"

"Ees, Villie."

"Do they not say you are like your mother, Willie?" said Ralph, brushing the fair curls from the boy's forehead. "Me mammy's darling,"

said the little one, with innocent eyes and a pretty curve of the little mouth.

"Surely. And what will you be when you grow up, my sunny boy?"

"A man."

"Ah! and a wit, eh? But what will you be at your work--a farmer?"

"Me be a soldier." The little face grew bright at the prospect.

"Not that, sweetheart. If you have luck like most of us, perhaps you'll have enough fighting in your life without making it your trade to fight. But you don't understand me yet, Willie, darling?"

The little one's father entered the room at this moment, and the opening of the door brought the sound of jumbled voices from a distant apartment. The noisy party of Royalists apparently belonged to the number of those who hold that a man's manners in an inn may properly be the reverse of what they are expected to be at home. The louder such roysterers talk, the more they rap out oaths, the oftener they bellow for the waiters and slap them on the back, the better they think they are welcome in a house of public entertainment.

Amidst the tumult that came from a remote part of the inn a door was heard to open, and a voice was distinguishable above the rest calling l.u.s.tily for the landlord.

"I must go off to them," said that worthy. "They expect me to stand host as well as landlord, and sit with them at their drinking."

When the door closed again, Sim lifted the boy on to his knee, and looked at him with eyes full of tenderness. The little fellow returned his gaze with a bewildered expression that seemed to ask a hundred silent questions of poor Sim's wrinkled cheeks and long, gray, straggling hair.

"I mind me when my own la.s.s was no bigger nor this," said Sim.

Ralph did not answer, but turned his head aside and listened.

"She was her mammy's darling, too, she was."

Sim's voice was thick in his throat.

"And mine as well," he added. "We used to say to her, laughing and teasing like, 'Who will ye marry, Rotie?'--we called her Rotie then,--'who will ye marry, Rotie, when ye grow up to be a big, big woman?' 'My father,' she would say, and throw her little arms about my neck and kiss me."

Sim raised his hard fingers to his forehead to cover his eyes.