The Shadow of a Crime Part 5

The poor fellow would have fallen breathless and exhausted at Ralph's feet, but he held him up and spoke firmly but kindly to him,--

"Bravely, Sim; bravely, man; there," he said, as the tailor regained some composure.

"You sha'n't go back to-night. How wet you are, though! There's not a dry rag to your body, man. You must first return with me to the fire at the Red Lion, and then we'll go--"

"No, no, no!" cried Sim; "not there either--never there; better the wind and rain, aye, better anything, than that."

And he turned his head over his shoulder as though peering into the darkness behind. Ralph understood him. There were wilder companions for this poor hunted creature than any that lived on the mountains.

"But you'll never live through the night in clothes like these."

Sim shivered with the cold; his teeth chattered; his lank hands shook as with ague.

"Never live? Oh, but I must not die, Ralph; no not yet--not yet."

Was there, then, something still left in life that a poor outcast like this should cling to it?

"I'll go back with you," he said more calmly. They turned, and with Sim between them Ralph and Rotha began to retrace their steps. They had not far to go, when Sim reeled like a drunken man, and when they were within a few paces he stopped.

"No," he said, "I can't." His breath was coming quick and fast.

"Come, man, they shall give you the ingle bench; I'll see to that.

Come now," said Ralph soothingly.

"I've walked in front of this house for an hour to-night, I have,"

said Sim, "to and fro, to and fro, waiting for you; waiting, waiting; starting at my own shadow cast from the dim lowe of the windows, and then flying to hide when the door did at last--at long last--open or shut."

Ralph shuddered. It had been as he thought. Then he said,--

"Yes, yes; but you'll come now, like a brave fellow--'a braw chiel,'

you know."

Sim started at the pleasantry with which Ralph had tried to soothe his spirits. It struck a painful memory. Ralph felt it too.

"Come," he said, in an altered tone.

"No," cried Sim, clasping his hands over his head. "They're worse than wild beasts, they are. To-night I went up to the cave as usual. The wind was blowing strong and keen in the valley; it had risen to a tempest on the screes. I went in and turned up the bracken for my bed.

Then the rain began to fall; and the rain became hail, and the hail became sleet, and pelted in upon me, it did. The wind soughed about my lone home--my home!"

Again Sim reeled in the agony of his soul.

"This is peace to that wind," he continued; "yes, peace. Then the stones began to rumble down the rocks, and the rain to pour in through the great c.h.i.n.ks in the roof of the cave. Yet I stayed there--I stayed. Well, the ghyll roared louder and louder. It seemed to overflow the gullock, it did. I heard the big bowders shifted from their beds by the tumbling waters. They rolled with heavy thuds down the brant sides of the fell--down, down, down. But I kept closer, closer. Presently I heard the howl of the wolves--"

"No, Sim; not that, old friend." "Yes, the pack from Lauvellen. They'd been driven out of their caves--not even they could live in their caves tonight." The delirium of Sim's spirit seemed to overcome him.

"No more now, man," said Ralph, putting his arm about him. "You're safe, at least, and all will be well with you."

"Wait. Nearer and nearer they came, nearer and nearer, till I knew they were above me, around me. Yet I kept close, I did, I almost felt their breath. Well, well, at last I saw two red eyes gleaming at me through the darkness--"

"You're feverish to-night, Sim," interrupted Ralph.

"Then a great flash of lightning came. It licked the ground afore me--ay, licked. Then a burst of thunder--it must have been a thunderbolt--I couldn't hear the wind and sleet and water. I fainted, that must have been it. When I came round I groped about me where I lay--"

"A dream, Sim."

"No, it was no dream! What was it I touched? I was delivered! Thank heaven, _that_ death was not mine. I rose, staggered out, and fled."

By the glimmering light from the windows of the inn--there came the sound of laughter from within--Ralph could see that hysterical tears coursed down the poor tailor's cheeks. Rotha stood aside, her hands covering her face.

"And, at last, when you could not meet me here, you went to Fornside for Rotha to seek me?" asked Ralph.

"Yes, I did. Don't despise me--don't do that." Then in a supplicating tone he added,--

"I couldn't bear it from you, Ralph."

The tears came again. The direful agony of Sim's soul seemed at length to conquer him, and he fell to the ground insensible. In an instant Rotha was on her knees in the hardening road at her father's side; but she did not weep.

"We have no choice now," she said in a broken voice.

"None," answered Ralph. "Let me carry him in."

When the door of the inn had closed behind Ralph as he went out with Rotha, old Matthew Branthwaite, who had recovered his composure after Monsey's song, and who had sat for a moment with his elbow on his knee, his pipe in his hand and his mouth still open, from which the shaft had just been drawn, gave a knowing twitch to his wrinkled face as he said,--

"So, so, that's the fell the wind blows frae!"

"Blow low, my black feutt," answered Monsey, "and don't blab."

"When the whins is oot of blossom, kissing's oot o' fashion--nowt will come of it," replied the sage on reflection.

"Wrong again, great Solomon!" said Monsey. "Ralph is not the man to put away the girl because her father is in disgrace."

"Do ye know he trystes with the la.s.s?"

"Not I."

"Maybe ye'r like the rest on us: ye can make nowt on him, back ner edge."

"Right now, great sage; the sun doesn't shine through him."

"He's a great lounderan fellow," said one of the dalesmen, speaking into the pewter at his mouth. He was the blacksmith of Wythburn.

"What do you say?" asked Monsey.

"Nowt!" the man growled sulkily.

"So ye said nowt?" inquired Matthew.

"Nowt to you, or any of you."