The Shadow of a Crime Part 71

"It was _I_ who gave you that blow," he said, with a cruel smile, pointing with his thin finger at the sheriff's forehead. It was false.

"You devil!" cried the sheriff, "and you have killed the man who saved your brother's life, and consorted with one of two who would have been his murderers."

"I was myself the second," said the man, with fiendish calmness. It was the truth. "I carry the proof of it here," he added, touching a place at the back of his head where the hair, being shorn away, disclosed a deep mark.

The sheriff staggered back with frenzied eyes and dilated nostrils.

His breast heaved; he seemed unable to catch his breath.

The man looked at him with a mocking smile struggling over clinched teeth. As if a reptile had crossed his path, Wilfrey Lawson turned about and pa.s.sed out without another word.

He returned to the castle and ascended the Donjon tower.

"Tell me how you became possessed of the warrant," he said. "Tell me, I beg of you, for my soul's sake as well as for your life's sake."

Ralph shook his head.

"It is not even yet too late. I shall take horse instantly for Newcastle."

Sim had crept up, and, standing behind Ralph, was plucking at his jerkin.

Ralph turned about and looked wistfully into the old man's face. For an instant his purpose wavered.

"For the love of G.o.d," cried the sheriff, "for your own life's sake, for this poor man's sake, by all that is near and dear to both, I charge you, if you are an innocent man, give me the means to prove you such."

But again Ralph shook his head.

"Then you are resolved to die?"

"Yes! But for my old friend here--save him if you will and can."

"You will give me no word as to the warrant?"

"None."

"Then all is over."

But going at once to the stables in the courtyard, he called to a stableman,--

"Saddle a horse and bring it round to my quarters in half an hour."

In less time than that Wilfrey Lawson was riding hard towards Newcastle.

CHAPTER XLVII. THE BLACK CAMEL AT THE GATE.

Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the rumor pa.s.sed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district.

Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the fearsome world without. They had watched for the fatal symptoms: they had waited for them: they had invited them. Every breeze seemed to be freighted with the plague wind; every harmless ailment seemed to be the epidemic itself.

Not faith in the will of G.o.d, not belief in destiny, not fort.i.tude or fatalism, not unselfishness or devil-may-care indifference, had saved the people from the haunting dread of being mown down by the unseen and insidious foe.

And now in very truth the plague seemed to have reached their doors.

It was at the cottage by the smithy. Rumor said that Mrs. Garth had brought it with her from Carlisle, but it was her son who was stricken down.

The blacksmith had returned home soon after Rotha had left him. His mother was there, and she talked to him of what she had heard of the plague. This was in order to divert his attention from the subject that she knew to be uppermost in his thoughts--the trial, and what had come of it. She succeeded but too well.

Garth listened in silence, and then slunk off doggedly to the smithy.

"I'm scarce well enough for work to-day," he said, coming back in half an hour.

His mother drew the settle to the fire, and fixed the cushions that he might lie and rest.

But no rest was to be his. He went back to the anvil and worked till the perspiration dripped from his forehead. Then he returned to the house.

"My mouth is parched to-day, somehow," he said; "did you say a parched mouth was a sign?"

"Shaf, lad! thou'rt hot wi' thy wark."

Garth went back once more to the smithy, and, writhing under the torture of suspense, he worked until the very clothes he wore were moist to the surface. Then he went into the house again.

"How my brain throbs!" he said; "surely you said the throbbing brain was a sign, mother; and my brain _does_ throb."

"Tut, tut! it's n.o.bbut some maggot thou's gitten intil it."

"My pulse, too, it gallops, mother. You said the galloping pulse was a sign. Don't say you did not. I'm sure of it, I'm sure of it; and _my_ pulse gallops. I could bear the parched mouth and the throbbing brain if this pulse did not run so fast."

"Get away wi' thee, thou dummel-heed. What f.a.got has got hold on thy fancy now?"

There was only the swollen gland wanted to make the dread symptoms complete.

Garth went back to the anvil once more. His eyes rolled in his head.

They grew as red as the iron that he was welding. He swore at the boy who helped him, and struck him fiercely. He shouted frantically, and flung away the hammer at every third blow. The boy slunk off, and went home affrighted. At a sudden impulse, Garth tore away the shirt from his breast, and thrust his left hand beneath his right arm. With that the suspense was ended. A mood of the deepest sadness and dejection supervened. Shuddering in every limb beneath all his perspiration, the blacksmith returned for the last time to the house.

"I wouldn't mind the parched mouth and the throbbing brain; no, nor the galloping pulse, mother; but oh, mother, mother, the gland, it's swelled; ey, ey, it's swelled. I'm doomed, I'm doomed. No use saying no. I'm a dead man, that's the truth, that's the truth, mother."

And then the disease, whether plague or other fever, pa.s.sed its fiery hand over the throbbing brain of the blacksmith, and he was put to bed raving.

Little Betsy, like the boy in the smithy, stole away to her own home with ghastly stories of the blacksmith's illness and delirium.

At first the neighbors came to inquire, prompted partly by curiosity, but mainly by fear. Mrs. Garth shut the door, and refused to open it to any comers.

To enforce seclusion was not long a necessity. Desertion was soon the portion of the Garths, mother and son. More swift than a bad name pa.s.sed the terrible conviction among the people at Wythburn that at last, at long last, the plague, the plague itself, was in their midst.

The smithy cottage stood by the bridge, and to reach the market town by the road it was necessary to pa.s.s it within five yards. Pitiful, indeed, were the artifices to escape contagion resorted to by some who professed the largest faith in the will of G.o.d. They condemned themselves to imprisonment within their own houses, or abandoned their visits to Gaskarth, or made a circuit of a mile across the breast of a hill, in order to avoid coming within range of the proscribed dwelling.

After three days of rumor and surmise, there was not a soul in the district would go within fifty yards of the house that was believed to hold the pestilence. No doctor approached it, for none had been summoned. The people who brought provisions left them in the road outside, and hailed the inmates. Mrs. Garth sat alone with her stricken son, and if there had been eyes to see her there in her solitude and desolation, perhaps the woman who seemed hard as flint to the world was softening in her sorrow. When the delirium pa.s.sed away, and Garth lay conscious, but still feverish, his mother was bewailing their desertion.