The Torch and Other Tales Part 15

She ran on, but he stopped her, for he knew his number was up by now and didn't see no use in piling up no more agony for any of 'em.

"Listen!" he shouted out, so as the woods over against 'em echoed with the roar of his big voice. "Listen to me, the pair of you, and be done. I can't hear no more, because there's higher things on earth than love of woman. I'm paid--I'm paid the nation's money, you understand, to do my duty. I'm paid my wages by the State, and I've made an oath afore G.o.d Almighty to do what I've undertaken to do to the best of my human power.

And I've catched a man doing evil, and I've got to take him to justice if all the angels in heaven prayed me to let him free."

"If the angels in heaven be more to 'e than her you've called an angel on earth, Samuel," answered back Cicely, "then be it so. I understand now the worth of all you've said--and swore also; but your oath to the police stands higher than your oaths to me seemingly, so there's no call to waste no more of your time, nor yet mine. Only know this: if my father sleeps in clink to-night, I'll never wed you, nor look at you again, so help me, G.o.d! And now what about it?"

"Think twice," he said, walking very close to her and looking in her beautiful eyes. "Think twice, my dear heart."

But she shook her head and he only see tears there full of moonshine.

"No need to think twice," she answered. "You know me, Samuel."

He heaved a hugeous sigh then and looked at the waiting man. Chawner was swinging his pheasant by the legs and regarding 'em standing up together.

But he said nought.

Then Samuel turned and beckoned Mr. Green with a policeman's nod that can't be denied. And Chawner followed after him like a dog, while Cicely went in the house and slammed home the door behind her.

Not a word did either man utter on their tramp to the station; but there they got at last, and the lights was burning and Inspector Chowne, whose night duty it happed to be, was sitting nodding at his desk. And when Sam stood before him and in a very disordered tone of voice brought the sad news of how the Inspector's brother-in-law had been took red-handed coming out of Trusham, a strange and startling thing followed. For, to the boy's amazement, Inspector Chowne leapt from his seat with delight, and first he shook Chawner's hand so hearty as need be and then he shook Sam's fist likewise; and Chawner, the fox that he was, showed a lot of emotion and his voice failed him and he shook Samuel by the hand also! In fact, 'twas all so contrary to law and order, and reason also, that Samuel stared upon the elder men and prayed the scene was a nightmare and that he'd wake up in his bed any minute.

And then the Inspector spoke.

"Fear nothing, Borlase," he said. "You're saved alive, and you can take a drink out of my whisky bottle in the cupboard if you've got a mind to it.

'Tis this way, my bold hero. My brother-in-law, Mr. Green here, have a sense of fun as be hidden from the common likes of you and me. He's a great naturalist, and he haunts the woods for beetles and toadstools and the like; and I may tell you on his account that he's a person of independent means, and would no more kill a pheasant, nor yet a guinea-pig, that belonged to another man, than he'd fly over the moon. But when he heard the Trusham keepers thought he was a poacher, such was his love of a lark that he let 'em go on thinking so, and he's built up a doubtful character much to my sorrow, though there ain't no foundation in fact for it. But he laughs to see the scowling faces, though after to-night he'll mend his ways in that respect I shouldn't wonder."

Samuel stared and looked at the gun in his hand and the pheasant in Chawner's. It comed over him now that Inspector was going back on him and meant to take Green's side.

"What about these?" he said.

"I'll come to them," continued Chowne. "Now you fell in love with my niece and, as becomes a father, Mr. Green have got to size you up. And he took a tolerable stern way so to do; but there again his sense of fun mastered him. He told Sis you was still untried and a doubtful problem, though nought against you, and she said, being terrible trustful of you, that nought would come between you and your duty. And so this here man thought out a plan; and if the devil could have hit on a craftier, or yet a harsher, I'd be surprised. But mark this, Samuel: he laid it afore Cicely afore he done it. And such was her amazing woman's faith, she agreed to it, because her love for you rose above all doubt. 'Twas a plant, my boy; and if you'd let Mr. Green go his way, you'd have lost your future wife; but because you've done your duty, you've got her; and may she always have the rare belief in you she has to-night."

Still Sam found it hard to believe he was waking. But he done a sensible thing and went to Inspector's private tap and poured himself four fingers.

"Here's luck," he said; and Chawner Green always told afterwards that it was the first and last joke his son-in-law ever made.

'Twas he who spoke next.

"Now look at this pheasant," ordered Chawner; and the young man handled the bird and found it stiff and cold.

"How long should you judge it had been dead?" inquired Mr. Green. "Anyway, I'll tell you. Sis bought that creature at her sister's husband's fish and poultry shop two days agone. You'll certainly make a policeman to talk about, Sam; but I'm fearing you'll never rise to be a detective."

They went out together five minutes later, Sam to his beat and Green to his home. And the elder was in a very human frame of mind, but Samuel hadn't quite took it all in yet.

Then they came to the elder's house, and there was the girl at the gate waiting for 'em as before.

"When she went in and banged the door, you thought she'd gone to weep,"

said Chawner; "but for two pins, Samuel, I'd have told you she was dancing a fandango on the kitchen floor. 'Tis a very fine thing for a woman to know her faith is so truly founded, and she's got the faith in you would move mountains; and so have I; and you can wed when you've a mind to it."

So Chawner left 'em in each other's arms for five minutes, and then Samuel went on his way.

A very happy marriage, and a week after they joined up, Chawner married a new-made widow, which he had long ordained to do in secret; but she wouldn't take him till a year and a day was pa.s.sed.

And Samuel would often tell about his wife's faith in after-time and doubt if the young men he saw growing up around him would have rose to such fine heights as what he done.

But then Cicely would laugh at him and tell him that his own son was just so steadfast as ever he was, and plenty other women's sons also.

No. VIII

THE HOUND'S POOL

By day the place was inviting enough and a child wouldn't have feared to be there. Dean Burn came down from its cradle far away in the hills and threaded Dean Woods with ripple and flash and song. The beck lifted its voice in stickles and shouted over the mossy ap.r.o.n of many a little waterfall; and then under the dark of the woods it would go calm, nestle in a backwater here and there, then run on again. And of all fine spots on a sunny day the Hound's Pool was finest, for here Dean Burn had scooped a hole among the roots of forest trees and lay snug from the scythe of the east wind, so that the first white violet was always to be found upon the bank and the earliest primrose also. In winter time, when the boughs above were naked, the sun would glint upon the water; and sometimes all would be so still that you could hear a vole swimming; and then again, after a Dartmoor freshet, the stream would come down in spate, cherry-red, and roll big waters for such a little river. And then Hound's Pool would be like to rise over its banks and drown the woodman's path that ran beside it and throw up sedges and dead gra.s.ses upon the lowermost boughs of the overhanging thicket to show where it could reach sometimes.

'Twas haunted, and old folk--John Meadows among 'em--stoutly maintained that nothing short of Doomsday would lay the spectrum, because they knew the ancient tale of Weaver Knowles, and believed in it also; but the legend had gone out of fashion, as old stories will, and it came as a new and strange thing to the rising generation. 'Tis any odds the young men and maidens would never have believed in it; but by chance it happed to be a young man who revived the story, and as he'd seen with his own eyes, he couldn't doubt. William Parsloe he was, under-keeper at Dean, and he told what he'd seen to John Meadows, the head-keeper; but it weren't till he heard old John on the subject that he knew as he'd beheld something out of another world than his own.

The two men met where a right of way ran through the preserves--a sore trial to the keepers and the owners also, but sacred under the law--and Harry Wade, the returned native, as had just come back to his birthplace, was walking along with Parsloe at the time.

The keepers were a good bit fretted and on their mettle just then, because there was a lot of poaching afoot and pheasants going, and a dead bird or two picked up, as had escaped the malefactors, but died after and been found. So when Parsloe stopped Mr. Meadows and said as he'd got something to report, the old man hoped he might have a line to help against the enemy. One or two law-abiding men, Wade among 'em, had been aiding the keepers by night, and the police had also lent a hand; but as yet n.o.body was laid by the heels, nor even suspected. So it looked like stranger men from down Plymouth way; and the subject was getting on John Meadows'

nerves, because his master, a great sportsman who poured out a lot of money on his pheasants, didn't like it and was grumbling a good bit.

Then William Parsloe told his tale:

"I was along the Woodman's Path last night working up to the covers," he said, "and beside Hound's Pool I fell in with a hugeous great dog. 'Twas a moony night and I couldn't be mistook. 'Twas no common dog I knowed, but black as sin and near so large as a calf. He didn't make no noise, but come like a blot of ink down to the pool and put his nose down to drink, and in another moment I'd have shot the creature, but he scented me, and then he saw me, as I made to lift my gun, and was off like a streak of lightning."

John Meadows stared and then he showed a good bit of satisfaction.

"Ah!" he said. "I'm glad as it is one of the younger people seed it, and not me, or some other old man; because now 'twill be believed. Hound's Pool, you say?"

Parsloe nodded and Harry Wade asked a question. He was a tall, handsome chap tanned by the foreign sun where he'd lived and worked too.

"What of it, master?" he said.

"This of it," answered Meadows. "Bill Parsloe have seen the Hound and no less. And the Hound ain't no mortal dog at all, but he was once a mortal man and the tale be old history now, yet none the less true for that. My father, as worked here before me, saw him thrice, and his highest good came to him after; and Benny Price, a woodman, saw him once ten year ago, and good likewise came to him, for Mrs. Price ran away with a baker's apprentice at Buckfastleigh and was never heard of again. And since you've seen the Hound, Parsloe, I hope good will come to you."

Neither of t'other men had heard the tale and Harry Wade was very interested, because he minded that, when a nipper, his mother had told him something about it. And Parsloe, who was pretty well educated and a very sharp man, felt inclined to doubt he hadn't seen a baggering poacher's mongrel; but old John wouldn't tell 'em then. He was a stickler for his job and never wasted no time gossiping in working hours.

"'Tis too long to unfold now," he said, "because Bill and me have got to be about our duty; but if you'll drop in o' Sunday and drink a dish of tea, Wade, you can hear the truth of the Hound; and you can look in on your way to work, Bill, and hear likewise if you've a mind to it."

They promised to come and upon the appointed hour both turned up at the gamekeeper's cottage on Thurlow Down, where the woods end and the right of way gives to the high road. And there was John and his wife, Milly, and their daughter, Millicent, for she was called after her mother and always went by her full name to distinguish her. Meadows had married late in life and Milly was forty when he took her, and they never had but one child. A very lovely, shy, woodland sort of creature was Millicent Meadows, and though a good few had courted her, William Parsloe among 'em, none had won her, or tempted her far from her mother's ap.r.o.n-strings as yet. Dark and brown-eyed and lively she was, with a power of dreaming, and she neighboured kindlier among wild things than tame, and belonged to the woods you might say. She was a nervous maiden, however, and owing to her gift of make-believe, would people the forest with strange shadows bred of her own thoughts and fancies. So she better liked the sunshine than the moonlight and didn't travel abroad much after dark unless her father, or some other male, was along with her.

Another joined the tea-party--a very ancient man, once a woodman, and a crony of John's; and the keeper explained to the younger chaps why he'd asked Silas Belchamber to come to tea and meet 'em.

"Mr. Belchamber's the oldest servant on the property and a storehouse of fine tales, and when I told him the Hound had been seen, he was very wishful to see the man as had done so," explained Mr. Meadows. "You may say the smell of a saw-pit clings to Silas yet, for he moved and breathed in the dust of pine and larch for more'n half a century."

"And now I be waiting for the grey woodman to throw me myself," said Mr.

Belchamber. "But I raised up as well as threw down, didn't I, John?"