The Star-Gazers Part 40

He must see them; he could not help seeing them, thought Marjorie; and then her heart stood still, and the mist began to close her in, for, to her horror, the culmination of her shame seemed to have arrived. Rolph stopped short, leaned over, apparently to part the brambles and gaze through them at the hiding pair, and then muttered something half aloud as he reached over more and more till his face was not six feet from his cousin's, staring up at him with her eyes full of horror.

A guilty conscience needs no accuser; so runs the old proverbial saying.

Rolph had caught sight of an extra large blackberry and he had reached out and picked it, more from habit, fostered by a country life, than desire, and then pa.s.sed on.

A long time appeared to elapse, during which Marjorie lay listening to steps which thundered upon her ear, before a voice, that sounded as if it came from far away, whispered,--

"It's all right, now. I don't think he saw."

Marjorie looked at the speaker strangely, and then turned away, plunging into the thickest part of the wood to try and grow calm before making her way home, and in perfect unconsciousness of the fact that, not twenty yards away, Caleb Kent was following her, gliding from tree to tree, and always keeping her in sight.

Sometimes she stopped to rest her hand upon one of the pine trunks, apparently wrapt in thought; and Caleb Kent drew a long breath and told himself that she was thinking about him. Then she walked swiftly on again till she was at the very edge of the wood, where she stepped down into the sandy lane where he could not follow; but, quickly, almost as a squirrel, he mounted a tall spruce by its short, dense, ladder-like branches, to where, high up, he could still keep the girl in sight, elated by his adventure, and little thinking that she was asking herself whether it would be very difficult to kill Caleb Kent next time she met him in the woods, and so silence for ever a tongue whose utterances might ruin her beyond recovery.

"Something to drink--something to drink," she kept on thinking. "To drink my health."

Her eyes brightened, and her strange look told of an excitement within her which made every pulse throb and bound.

"It would be so easy," she said to herself. But the feeling of elation pa.s.sed away as she recalled the man's furtive, suspicious nature, and, in imagination, saw him fixing his keen eyes upon her, and asking her to drink first.

Volume 2, Chapter V.

THE SETTING OF A DOG'S STAR.

The gentlemen were seated over their claret at the Hall, and the party had become very quiet. Sir John had been preaching on the subject of the value of a cross of the big, coa.r.s.e, wool-bearing Lincolnshire sheep with the Southdown, as being likely to prove advantageous, the Lincolnshire sheep giving increased wool-bearing qualities, while the lamb would inherit the fine properties of its mother's mutton.

At the words mutton and Southdown lamb, Rolph had p.r.i.c.ked up his ears for a moment, since they had suggested under-done chops and cuts out of good haunches, with the gravy in grand supplies of stamina to an athlete; but the suggestion came at the wrong end of the dinner, and, with a yawn, the captain had wished Sir John and his pigs and sheep at Jericho, and begun thinking of his coming match with the Bayswater Stag for a hundred pounds a side, a race for which he told himself he was in training now, though his proceedings in the way of wines and foods would have horrified a trainer and frightened his backers into fits of despair.

When Sir John had had his innings, the major began to talk about the translation of a paper by Fries, on the persistency of certain forms of parasitic fungi in the lower plants. To make himself a little more comprehendible to his companions, he kept introducing the word mushroom into his discourse, with the effect of bringing back Rolph's wandering attention, and rousing Sir John from the doze into which he was falling.

Both gentlemen saw mushrooms directly, through a medium of claret, and while the major was thinking of spores, mycelium, and rapid generation, Sir John and the captain saw mushrooms growing, mushrooms cooked, mushrooms in rich sauces, but always of a deep purply claret colour, that was pleasant to the eye.

"Hang 'em, they'll drive me mad between 'em," thought Rolph. "I wonder how much of this sort of thing a man could stand. Offend the old buffers or no, I must go and have a cigar."

"Yes, what is it?" said Sir John, starting out of a doze.

"Morton would like to speak to you, Sir John."

"Morton; what does he want?" said Sir John. "Send him in."

A good deal of shoe wiping was heard outside, and a fine-looking, elderly man, whose velveteens proclaimed his profession, entered, to bow to all three gentlemen in turn.

"Sorry to trouble you, Sir John, but I've got information that a party from out Woodstay way, sir, are coming netting and snaring to-night."

"Confound their impudence!" cried Sir John, leaping from his chair.

"What the deuce do you mean, standing staring there like a fool, man?

Why don't you get the helpers and the watchers together, and go and stop the scoundrels?"

"Men all waiting, Sir John," said the keeper, quietly, "but I thought you and the captain would like to be there, and the major could give us a bit of advice as to plans, Sir John."

"Quite right, Morton. Of course. Quite right. Take a gla.s.s of wine.

Here's a claret gla.s.s. You won't have claret though, I suppose."

"Thank ye, kindly, Sir John, but you give me a gla.s.s of port last time."

"And you haven't forgotten it, Morton? Quite right. It's a fine port.

Help yourself, man. We'll change, and be with you directly. You'll come, Rolph?"

"By George, yes," cried the captain, whose face had flushed with excitement. "I'm ready there."

"You'll come, Jem?"

"To be sure--to be sure," said the major, rubbing his hands. "We'll have a bit of tactics here."

Ten minutes later, Sir John and the major, each carrying a heavy staff, and Rolph, armed with a gun, were following the keeper along one of the paths leading to the fir woods, and with a great mastiff dog close at the keeper's heels.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the keeper, touching his hat, as they drew near to where a knot of men were gathered waiting for them, "but I wouldn't use that gun."

"Oh, it's only loaded with Number 7, Morton," said the captain. "I sha'n't fire; but if I did, it would only pepper them."

The man drew back, muttering to himself, "I saw a chap shot dead with Number 7, and they wasn't chilled shot, neither. I've done my duty, though."

There were six men waiting, all armed with short staves, and looking a steady set of fellows as Sir John cast his eye over them, and now increased to ten by the coming of the little party from the Hall, they looked more than a match for any gang of poachers likely to be met, and he said so.

"I don't know, Sir John," said the keeper, st.u.r.dily. "I haven't much faith in 'em. If it warn't for the show they'll make, I'd as soon trust to you, Sir John, the major, the captain, and Nero here. They're safe to run, some of 'em, if it comes to a fight. That chap of the captain's, Thompson, has got arms like pipe shanks, and two of the helpers about as much pluck as a cuckoo."

"Oh, they'll fight if it comes to the proof, I daresay," said Sir John.

"How are you, my lads; how are you?" he continued, as they came up.

"Now, then, if we come across the scoundrels, we must take all we can.

There's no excuse for poaching. I'd give any man out of work in the parish something to do on the farm. So it's as bad as stealing, and I'll have no mercy on them. Now, Morton, what are you going to do?"

"Well, Sir John, from what I can understand, they're coming with their nets and dogs to scour the meadows and the cut clover patches. There's a sight of young birds there, as I know. They've got to know of it, too, somehow; and I propose, if the major thinks it right, to 'vide ourselves in three. You and me, Sir John, with one man and the dog, and the major and the captain take the other two parties, and lay up till we see 'em come."

"But how shall we know which way they'll come?" said Sir John.

"They'll come over the common from Woodstay way, Sir John, through the fir wood, and down at once into the long meadow, safe. We'll take one side, the major the other, and Captain Rolph the bottom of the meadow.

We'll let them get well to work, and then when I whistle all close in, and get as many of 'em as we can. We shall be sure of their nets anyhow, but when I whistle they'll scatter, and I don't suppose we shall catch more'n one or two."

"Capital plan," said the major. "Why, you would have made a good general, Morton."

"Thank ye, sir," said the keeper, touching his hat. "All ready there?

Long Meadow."

It was a soft, dark night, with not a breath of wind to chase the heavy clouds that shrouded the sky. There was no talking--nothing to be heard but the dull tramp of feet, and the rustling noise made by the herbage and heather brushing against the leather leggings worn by the men who followed the lead of the keeper and his dog.

There was about half a mile to go to reach the indicated spot, and the blood of both Rolph and the major seemed to course a little more rapidly through their veins as the one hailed the prospect of a bit of excitement with something like delight, and the other recalled night marches and perilous episodes in his old Indian campaigning life, and then sighed as he compared his present elderly self with the smart, dashing young officer he used to know.

"Halt here!" said Sir John, interrupting the musings of his brother; and from where they stood, they could dimly make out the extent of the long open s.p.a.ce, with fir plantations on either side, a patch of alder in the damp, boggy s.p.a.ce where they stood, and about two hundred yards away, right at the top of the slight slope, there was something black to be seen against the sky--something black, that by daylight would have resolved itself into a slope of tall firs.

This was the part that the poachers were expected to traverse, and the three parties were therefore stationed according to the plan, and for three hours they waited in utter silence, hidden in the plantations and the alder clump.