Deep Moat Grange

All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis had amassed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers, farmers and cattle dealers – that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for a dangerous malefactor.

There must, however, have been a Breckonside traitor among them, for as soon as they reached the town they made straight for the cottage at the Bridge End. The door was burst in, the poor furniture turned topsy-turvy – Elsie's books thrown about. But I knew better than to interfere at this point. There was something much more serious coming.

I knew very well that my father would never let poor Nance Edgar suffer for something that she had not been mixed in at all. When Joseph Yarrow started in to do a thing – I don't mean me – it had to be gone through with, even though it cost some odd halfpence. For my father, keen at a bargain as he was, did not spare his money when once he put his hand deep into his pocket.

So I pegged it down the road and over the bridge, with the hottest of the pack at my heels. Somebody must have told them that Elsie had gone to "the Mount." And if I could find who that person was, I would wring his neck on the High Street of Breckonside – which would be not a bit more than he deserves.

"Death to the Stennises! Death to the murderers!"

I could hear the shout right at my heels, turning after turning, till at last I was in the home stretch, and clambering up the steep ascent to the red brick wall within which stood the house that was my home. What was my surprise to find all the iron window shutters, which ever since I could remember had been turned back against the wall (and each caught there with a screw catch) fitted into the window frames!

My father was on the housetop. I could just see him over the railings, for it was darkish in spite of the moon.

"Is that you, Joe?" he called out, leaning forward till I thought he would fall off.

I answered that it was – I and no other.

"Then be off with you round by the stables. All is shut here. One of the two Robs will let you in!"

He meant Rob Kingsman or Rob McKinstrey. So I tell you I tracked it about the house and thumped on the gate. There was not much time, you understand, for the first of the band were already shouting and gesticulating to my father to give up Elsie Stennis. They meant to make an end of all the "murdering lot," and of any who sheltered them! So they said, and by the accent and the taint of whiskey in the air, I could make out that there were a lot of Irish among them. Now the Irish that stay at home are very decent people indeed, as I have good reason to know, but those that come about Breckonside to work at the quarries and waterworks are the devil and all – if Mr. Ablethorpe and the vicar will excuse me the expression.

Well, I knocked and I shouted, but never an answer got I.

At last, at the window of the sleeping-room that was Rob Kingsman's, I saw a white blob which I made out to be the occupant's face.

"Hey, Rob!" I cried; "let me in, Rob. They are after me – at my heels!"

"Reason the mair for you bidin' where ye are," said Rob, whose strong point was certainly not courage, "if they have done ye no harm as yet, just keep quiet and they will do ye none whatever. Ye are no Stennis. The Stennises are a' weel-faured!"

"But I want to help – I want to get in! De'il tak' ye, Rob, let me in!"

I think even the vicar, good Churchman as he is (though not in Mr. Ablethorpe's sense) would have forgiven me the strength of the last expression – considering the provocation, that is. As also the fact that, living so near Scotland, where there are so many "Presbies" about, the very best Churchman is sometimes seduced into their rough, but picturesque, habit of speech.

"Here, Joe!" said Rob, after a while, taking pity on me. He opened a little wicket – just one pane of his iron-barred window, for my father had had everything about the place strengthened at the first scare about Riddick of Langbarns and the other lost farmers and drovers; "here, lad, tak' haud o' this! There's a barrel that had sugar intil't doon by the weighing machine. Creep into that. And mind – dinna shoot onybody. Use the pistol only in self-defence. There's nae law again' that!"

The next moment I had a revolver in one hand and a pouch of cartridges in the other – yellow bag, waist belt and all! I tell you I felt the citizen of no mean city as I buckled them on. I would not have changed places with the Prince of Wales going to open an Aquarium. For, you see, I had never been allowed to go near the little room where my father kept the firearms for sale, the sporting ammunition, and the other touch-and-go truck, which interested me more than anything in the place. Of course, when father was lost for so long, I could have gone and helped myself. But, though you mayn't think it, I had a sort of pride about that.

I wasn't going to do when he was away what I durstn't do when he was stamping about the yard and stores. So I didn't. But to have a real, real revolver given me, with proper cartridges – and me outside and all the others inside – why, it was just the primest thing that ever happened to me in all my life.

When I reached the outer gate (that by which Dapple had entered, Mad Jeremy, no doubt, riding her to the door) Rob McKinstrey shouted that if I looked sharp he would let me in and have the yard door shut again before ever one of the Paddies could get his nose inside.

But I knew better than that – oh, ever so much better.

Not many fellows get a chance to die nobly, like a young hero, in front of his own father's house, in defence of his girl – with not only that girl, her own self, but also his second best – I mean another girl friend (of his mother's) looking out at him from the wall, just like the beautiful Jewess Rebecca, and Rowena the Saxon, and all that lot.

So I charged round, knowing that the eyes of Elsie and the Caw girls were on me. And there in front of the house was a whole mob of Geordies and Paddies, navvies, and all the general riff-raff, with here and there an angry Bewicker who knew no better – all calling for Elsie to be given up to them. My father was up on a flat part of the roof, and was haranguing them, as if he had been brought up to the business. They were flinging dirt and stones at him, too, and one had clipped him on the side of his head, so that the blood was trickling down his temple, which made me mad to watch. Morning had come by this time, so that was how I could see so well. It comes precious early at Breckonside this time of the year, as you would know if your father started you out as early as mine did. We have lots of winter there, but when the light time does arrive, it comes along early and stays to supper.

Well, you see, ever since my father took so stiffly to Elsie, I had been pretty much gone on the governor. I suppose, even before that, I would not have seen him mishandled without shaking a stick for him. But now, it just made my blood boil, and I am not one of your furious heroes either. I always think well before I let my courage boil over. As you may have noticed from this biography, I do not profess to be one of your fetch-a-howl-and-jump-into-the-ring heroes.

But, as father's spring sale advertisements say, this was an opportunity which might never occur again. (It didn't, as a fact.)

So I got right between the crowd and our varnished front door, over which stood my father with his broken head, still holding forth as to what he would do to every man present. "Twenty years hard" was the least that even the back ranks would get.

There was not a real armed man among them. So, when I stepped up on the stone stoop with the morning sun glinting down my revolver and my warlike eye squinting t'other way along the sights, one hand behind my back as I had seen them do in pictures of duellists in the Graphic (when they do half-page pictures to illustrate what father calls "bloodthirsty yarns." I never read the small print, of course, but the pictures are prime for sticking up over a fellow's bed) and the yellow leather belt and open pouch for cartridges – well, I wouldn't have taken the fanciest price for myself at that moment – I really wouldn't. If it had been at Earl's Court, they would have marked me Hors Concours, and set me to judge the other exhibits!

Well, of course, these fellows had never seen the funny round black dot a loaded revolver makes when it is pointed square at your right eye and the fellow behind looks like pulling the trigger. And I tell you they scurried back, fifty yards at least, and some of the less keen even began to sneak off. Pretty soon they all did so. I think they felt that they had been behaving foolishly.

But what they felt was nothing to what I did a moment after.

You see, my father didn't know what had been happening down below. He couldn't see, for one thing. The jut of the porch hid my warlike array and bold defence. So he couldn't understand who the – umph – was down there. To make out he came forward and leaned over the stone cornice at the end of the railings, with Elsie on one side of him and Harriet Caw on the other.

I stood up as noble as the boy on the burning deck or Fitz-James, when he said —

"Come one, come all, this rock shall flyFrom its firm base as soon as I!"

Or, at any rate, something like that. But my feet were really on my native doorstep, while as for Fitz-James – my father says that, whether the rock flew or not, he had no title to it that could stand the least sniff of law.

Before my father spoke to me, both Elsie and Harriet Caw thought that I looked "just too heroic." This I heard on good authority, and it pleased me, for that was the exact effect I was trying to produce. Elsie was such a brick as to swear that she thought so even after, and to this day she sticks to it. Girls have some good points.

But it was awful enough at the time.

"Joe," shouted my father, and I could see his face red and threatening above me, with the effort of leaning so far over, "if you do not put up that popgun and come in the house directly, I will come out with a cane and thrash you within an inch of your life!"

He even went on to give particulars, which I think was mean of him in the circumstances. But no fellow can argue with his father – at least, not with one like mine – so I stepped round to the door. My father met me, took the revolver away from me, and made as if he would box my ears. Last of all, he told me to go into the back kitchen and wash my face – and ears.

I could have forgiven him all but that word.

Then Harriet Caw giggled, and said she would come and see that I did it. But just then the tide turned. For, hearing Harriet say this, Elsie came along, too, and though I was, indeed, pretty grimy with racing and scratching along after these Bewick pit fellows, she took my hands, right under the nose of Harriet Caw, and said, "Joe, I thank you for saving my life!"

Then, loosing one of my hands, she put her palm on my shoulder, and stooped and kissed me on the forehead, ever so stately and noble, like another of those Graphic pictures.

But evidently Harriet Caw did not think so, for she only sniffed and, turning on her patent india-rubber heels (which she had bought to imitate Elsie), she went right upstairs.

So it was Elsie who helped me to wash away the smoke of battle. That wasn't so altogether bad. You should have seen her eyes, all you other fellows, when I undid the yellow leather belt from about my war-worn waist, and gave her the pouch of cartridges to put away.

"Are they Dum-Dum?" she said reverently.

And I said they were.

I didn't really know about the cartridges, but at least I was – and Elsie liked it very well. The fellows who talk a lot at such times never get on with girls.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A FIT OF THE SULKS

Jove, wasn't it just ripping to think that at last a chap could go where he liked, and do what he liked – all that horrid lot at the Grange being either dead or with the locksmith's fingers between them and the outside world! Ripping? Rather! It was like a new earth.

All the same, you have no idea what a show place the ruined Grange became. Old Bailiff Ball stayed on and made a pretty penny by showing the people over. Especially the weaving-room, and where old Hobby sat, and the keyhole through which Elsie peeped to see her grandfather as if praying over the loom, with Jeremy's knife hafted between his shoulder blades! I think they would have had a magic lantern next! But finally this was stopped by the police people. For Miss Orrin was still to be tried, and all the money that could be got out of the grounds of Deep Moat Grange was to be given back to the friends and relatives of the people who had been "arranged for." But the mischief was, nobody wanted to buy, and the whole place was in danger of going to rack and ruin.

As for me, I took to wandering about a good deal there. Maybe I was love-sick – though I hope not, for my good name's sake. At least, it was about this time father said that we were far too young for any thought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. Then Elsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to Nance Edgar's and her teaching at Mr. Mustard's – because my mother had got accustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, and could not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course, would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.

We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for this worry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the time behind the Monks' Oven). But, of course, he would not go openly against mother – that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected. If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he would simply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would have done it, too. But with the house it was different.

Well, all this made me pretty melancholy – with no more stand-up in me than a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly – such rot, as I now see – never anything written plain out, but all the words twisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. I don't wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing – and even then never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.

So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thought of Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustard breathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to a pretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing. She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left side front) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silk underthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt a drain.

At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer. Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and just desperately sad, but can't for the life of you tell why. Doctors, I believe, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinned and said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. The broth would be none the worse!"

But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for that matter. Yet through the glass of the office door I actually saw the doctor grin at my father, and my father – yes, he actually winked back! Old brutes, both of them – fifth commandment or no fifth commandment!

"No books – no office!" said old McPhail, "not for a while. Let the colt run till he tires!"

So the colt was, as it were, turned out to grass. The official explanation was that between nineteen and twenty there occurred a dangerous period – twenty-one was a yet more dangerous age. And I had overgrown my strength!

I liked that —I who could vault the counter twenty-five times back and forth, leaning only on the fingers of one hand!

Something during the long summer days drew me persistently to the Deep Moat Woods. Some magnet of danger past and gone for ever – something, too, of nearness to the little schoolhouse, to which, spite of my father and myself, Elsie had carried her point and returned. I was sulky and jealous about this – much to Elsie's indignation.

"Mr. Mustard – Mr. Mustard!" she said, with her eyes cold and contemptuous; "I can keep Mr. Mustard in his place – ay, or ten of him – you too, Joseph Yarrow, mopping about the woods like a sick cat! You are not half the man your father is!"

And, indeed, I never set myself up to be.

The day I am telling about was a Saturday. Elsie was to have gone for a walk with me; I expected it. But, instead, she informed me in the morning, when I met her setting out to go to the school-house for an extra lesson, that she had arranged to spend the afternoon with father in his office, going into her grandfather's affairs.

"Mr. Yarrow," she said, "thinks that everything which my grandfather possessed before he began to kill people is quite rightly mine. He had weaved hard for that. It would have been my mother's, and it ought to be mine, too. Even a bad man, your father says, ought to be allowed to do a little good after he is dead, if it can be arranged honestly. That is what your father says."

"My father!" I repeated after her bitterly, "it is always my father now."

"And good reason!" cried Elsie, firing up, "he gives the best and wisest advice, and it would tell on you, Master Joe, if you took it a little oftener."

"No wonder mother prefers Harriet Caw!" I muttered. And the next moment I would have given all that I had in possession to have recalled the words, but it is always that way with a tongue which runs too easily.

Turning, Elsie gave me one long look, hurt, indignant, almost anguished. Then she went slowly up the stairs, and in ten minutes her little chest and bundle of wraps were out on the yard pavement. I saw her bargaining with Rob Kingsman to take them across to Nance Edgar's for her. And I think she took a shilling out of her lean purse to give him. I tell you I felt like a hog. I was a hog. I knew it and, shamefaced, betook me to the woods as to a sty.

I had wounded Elsie to the quick, and wronged my father also… I did not believe that either of them would ever forgive me. For, of course, she would go straight and tell father. I did not feel that I could ever go back. At the wood edge I turned and looked once at the smoke curling up from the chimney of "the Mount" kitchen. It was so hot there was no fire in any of the other rooms. Ah, 'home, sweet, sweet home'!

Then I peeped at the schoolhouse, and saw Mr. Mustard and Elsie walking slowly up to the front door together. She had had that extra lesson, the nature of which she had not thought fit to tell me. Then she would go – well, no matter where. It was all over between us at any rate.

Did you ever know such a fool? Why, yes – there was yourself, dear reader – that is, if you have been wise. If not, it may not even yet be too late to be foolish.

I wasted the day in the woods. That is, I took out my pocket-book, jerked my fountain pen into some activity, and scribbled verses. I was too proud to go back home. And I knew well that my father had accepted in its fullest sense the doctor's advice, "Let him run!" He would neither send after me himself nor allow anyone else to meddle with my comings and goings.

It was curious and fascinating to linger about the Deep Moat Woods, once so terrible, now become a haunt of the sightseer and the day tripper. But I who had seen so much there, and heard more, who with beating heart had adventured so often into these darkling recesses, could not lose all at once the impression of brooding danger they had given me, ever since that first morning when Elsie and I crossed the road and plunged into them on the day of poor Harry Foster's death.

I suppose it was the moody state of my mind (Elsie unkindly calls it "sulks") which led me to stay on and on till the afternoon became the evening, and the shadows of the trees over the pond became more and more gloomy – mere dark purple with blobs and blotches of fire where the sunset clouds showed between the leaves.

I stood leaning against the trunk of a tree, the branches bending down umbrella fashion all about me. In those days I was a limber young fellow enough, and could have acted model for an illustrated-paper hero quite fairly – Childe Harold, the Master of Ravenswood, or one of those young Douglases to whom they brought in the Black Bull's Head in the Castle of Edinburgh, as a sign that they must die.

Of course, I had no business to be there at that time of night, but my own loneliness and Elsie's desertion made me stay on and on – miserable and cherishing my misery, petting my "sulks," and swearing to myself that I would never, never give in —never forgive Elsie, never return to those who had so ill used and misunderstood me.

Yes, what a fool, if you like! But I wasn't the first and I won't be the last to feel and say just the same things.

Then, quick and chillish, like the breaking of cold sweat on a man, though he doesn't know quite why, there passed over me the thrill which tells a fellow that he is not alone. Yet anything more lonely than the Moat Pond ruins, with what remained of the square hulk of the tower cutting the sky – the same from which Jeremy had hurled himself – could not be imagined.

Nevertheless I did not breathe that night air alone. I was sure of that. The bats swooped and recovered, seeing doubtless the white blur of my face in the dusk of the tree shadows.

Before me I could see the green lawn all trampled that had been Miss Orrin's pride. The lilies were mostly uprooted to allow of the perquisitions of the law. But whether it was something supernatural (in which at the time I was quite in a mood to believe), or merely owing to the moving of a soil so pregnant with the exhalations of the marsh – certain it is that I saw the distinct outline of a man's body, with limbs extended, lie in the same place where each of Miser Hobby's "cases" had been interred. They were marked out with a kind of misty fire, like the phosphorus when a damp match won't strike – not bright like the boiling swirl in a vessel's wake. Each of them kept quite still. There was no movement save, perhaps, that of a star, when you see it through the misty air low on the horizon of the west, and kind of swaying, which after all may only have been in my head.

I don't think I was particularly frightened at first. I had had some chemistry lessons with Mr. Ablethorpe, and we had gone pretty far on – boiling a penny in one kind of acid, and making limestone fizz with another – nitrochloric, or hydrochloric, I think. So I knew enough not to be frightened – at least not very badly. But what I saw next scared me stiff. I don't hide the fact. And so it would have scared you!

There was something on the lawn, dabbling among the shiny glimmer of the uprooted lily plots, crouching and scratching!

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE THING THAT SCRATCHED

Something living it was, and pretty active, too – no mistake about that. A dog? Possibly! But the next moment it stood erect on two feet like a man, and, turning slowly, peered all about. Then as suddenly it dropped down on all fours again and fell to the scraping. I could hear the sound distinctly in that lonesome place, where the water in the pond was too thick and heavy even to ripple, and where only the owl cried regularly once in five minutes.

I could not have spoken if I had tried, and I did not try. My tongue dried up like a piece of old bark, and I knew what the Bible meant when it said that sometimes a fellow's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Mine would, if the roof had not been as dry as a chip also.

You ask if I watched the Thing. You may take it for gospel that I could not have turned my head or averted my eyes for all the wealth of the Indies, though that, I understand, is a poor country enough.

Well, I saw the Thing scramble from grave to empty grave, scratch at each furiously, obscuring the dim phosphorescent glimmer. Then, standing erect, it flung up great clawlike hands with a ghoulish gesture of disappointment, moaning lamentably to the stars!