The Lost Heir

"We are not asking you at present to say anything against him, and he is not the principal man in this business. I believe he is only acting as agent for another more dangerous rascal than himself. We are not prepared at the present moment to arrest the chief scoundrel. Before we do that we must obtain evidence that will render his conviction a certainty. We have reason to believe that this man that you know will not come down for some time, and that you will receive the money for the child's keep by post; but if we abstain altogether from prosecuting you in this matter, you must give us your word that you will not take any steps whatever to let them know that the child is no longer with you. He says that you promised to take him out in your barge. Well, if by any chance this man – not your man, but the other – comes down here, and wants to see the child, you or your wife will lead him to believe that he is on board your barge. It will also be necessary that, if we do arrest them, you should enter as a witness to prove that the man handed the child over to you. You could let it be seen that you are an unwilling witness, but the evidence of the handing over of the child will be an absolute necessity."

"All right, sir, I will undertake that. There is no fear of my letting him know that the child has gone, for I don't know where to write him; and if he or the other should come down, if I am here I shall have no difficulty in keeping it from him that the child has gone, for my man has never set foot in this house. He just meets me on the road near Pitsea, says what he has to say, and gives me what he has to give me, and then drives off again. Of course, if I am summoned as a witness, I know that the law can make me go. I remember now that when he gave me the child he said he was doing it to oblige a friend of his, and he may be able to prove that he had nothing to do with carrying it off."

"That is as it may be," the lawyer said dryly. "However, we are quite content with your promise."

"And I thank you most heartily, you and your wife," Hilda Covington said warmly, "for your kindness to the child. It would have made me very happy all this time if I could have known that he was in such good hands, but I pictured him shut up in some vile den in London, ill treated, and half starved. He has grown very much since he has been with you, and looks a great deal more boyish than he did."

"Yes, he plays a good deal with my barge boy, who has taken to him just as we have."

"Well, your kindness will not be forgotten nor unrewarded, Mr. Nibson."

"I'm sure we don't want any reward, miss; we have been well paid. But even if we hadn't been paid at all after the first month, we should have gone on keeping him just the same."

"Now, Walter," Hilda said, "we want you to come home with us; we have all been wanting you very badly. Nurse and Tom Roberts have been in a terrible way, and so has Dr. Leeds. You remember him, don't you? He was very kind to you all the time that you were down in the country."

The child nodded. "I should like to see Tom Roberts and nurse, but I don't want to go away. I am going out in the barge soon."

"Well, dear, I dare say that we shall be able to arrange for you to come down sometimes, and to go out in it, especially as you have learned to swim. We are going away now in a boat."

"I often go out in the boat," Walter pouted. "I go with Joshua; he is a nice boy, Joshua is, and I like him."

"Well, dear, we will see what we can do for Joshua."

"You are sure that I shall come back and go out in the barge?"

"Quite sure, dear; and perhaps I will go out with you, too."

"Yes, you must go, like a good boy," Mrs. Nibson said. "You know, dear, that I shall always love you, and shall be very, very glad if the ladies can spare you to come down to see me sometimes. You won't forget me, will you?"

"No, Aunt Betsy, I shall never forget you; I promise you that," the child said. "And I don't want to go away from you at all, only Cousin Hilda says I must."

Mr. Pettigrew went out to tell Mr. Bostock that they should not give Nibson into custody.

"The principal scoundrels would take the alarm instantly," he said, "and, above all things, we want to keep them in the dark until we are ready to arrest them. It will be much better that we should have this man to call as a witness than that he should appear in the dock as an accomplice."

"I think that you are right there," the magistrate agreed; "and really, he and his wife seem to have been very kind to the child. I have been talking to this young barge boy. It seems he is no relation of these people. His mother was a tramp, who died one winter's night on the road to Pitsea. He was about ten or eleven years old then, and they would have sent him to the workhouse; but Nibson, who was on the coroner's jury, volunteered to take him, and I dare say he finds him very useful on board the barge. At any rate, he has been well treated, and says that Nibson is the best master on the river. So the fellow must have some good in him, though, from what the coastguard officer said, there are very strong suspicions that he is mixed up in the smuggling business, which, it seems, is still carried on in these marshes. Well, no doubt you have decided wisely; and now, I suppose, we shall be off."

At this moment they were joined by the coastguard officer.

"He has done us again," he said. "We have been investigating these outhouses thoroughly, and there is no question that he has had smuggled goods here. We found a clever hiding-place in that cattle-shed. It struck me that it was a curious thing that there should be a stack of hay built up right against the side of it. So we took down a plank or two, and I was not surprised to find that there was a hollow in the stack. One of the men stamped his foot, and the sound showed that there was another hollow underneath. We dug up the ground, and found, six inches below it, a trapdoor, and on lifting it discovered a hole five or six feet deep and six feet square. It was lined with bricks, roughly cemented together. It is lucky for him that the place is empty, and I should think that after this he will go out of the business for a time. Of course we cannot arrest a man merely for having a hidden cellar; I fancy that there are not many houses on the marshes that have not some places of the sort. Indeed, I am rather glad that we did not catch him, for in other respects Nibson is a decent, hard-working fellow. Sometimes he has a glass or two at the 'Lobster Smack,' but never takes too much, and is always very quiet and decent in his talk. I doubt whether the men would have found that hiding-place if I had not been there; they all know him well, and would not get him into a scrape if they could help it, though there are some fellows on the marshes they would give a month's pay to catch with kegs or tobacco."

The door of the house opened, and the three women and Nibson came out with Walter, who was now dressed in the clothes that they had brought down for him.

While the others were getting ready to enter the boat the officer took Nibson aside.

"You have had a close squeak of it, Nibson; we found your hiding-place under the stack, and it is lucky for you that it was empty. So we have nothing to say to you. I should advise you to give it up, my man; sooner or later you are bound to be caught."

The man's brow had darkened as the officer began, but it cleared up again.

"All right," he said; "I have been thinking for the last half hour that I shall drop the business altogether, but when a man once gets into it, it is not so easy to get out. Now that you have found that cellar, it is a good excuse to cut it. I can well say that I dare not risk it again, for that, after so nearly catching me, you would be sure to keep an extra sharp eye on me in the future."

"You give me your word for that, Nibson?"

"Yes, sir; I swear off it altogether from the present day."

"Good. I will take your word for it, and you can go in and come out as you like without being watched, and you need not fear that we shall pay you another visit."

Walter went off in fair spirits. The promise that he should come down again and see his friends and have a sail in the barge lessened the pang of leaving, and as Hilda's and Netta's faces came more strongly back to him, as they talked to him and recalled pleasant things that had almost faded from his memory, he went away contentedly, while Betsy Nibson went back to the house and had what she called "a good cry." She too, however, cheered up when her husband told her how narrow an escape he had had, and how he had given his word that he would drop smuggling altogether.

"That makes my mind easier than it has been for years, Bill. And will you give up the other thing, too? There may not be much harm in running kegs and bacca, but there is no doubt about its being wrong to have anything to do with stolen goods and to mix yourself up with men who steal them."

"Yes, I will give that up, too, Betsy; and, as soon as I have time to look round, I will give an order for a new barge to be built for me. I have been ashamed of the old thing for a long time past with her patched sails. Of course, she suited my purpose, for when the other barges kept on their course it gave me a good excuse for anchoring; but it aint pleasant to have every barge passing you. There is old Joe Hargett; he said the other day that, if I ever thought of getting a new barge, he would give a hundred for her. He has got a set of decent sails, and he is a pretty handy carpenter, and no doubt he will make her look decent again. A hundred pounds aint much, but it will help. I can get a new one complete, sails and all, for fourteen or fifteen hundred, and have a hundred or two left in the bag afterwards. I tell you what, Betsy, I will get an extra comfortable cabin made, and a place forward for Joshua. It will be dull for you here now the child is gone, and it would be a sight more comfortable for us both to be always together."

"That it will, Bill," she said joyfully. "I was always very happy on board till we lost our Billy. I took a dislike to it then, and was glad enough to come here; but I have got over it now, and this place is very lonely during the long winter nights when you are away."

Then they talked over the barge, and how the cabin should be fitted up, and, in spite of having lost Walter, the evening was a pleasant one to them.

That was not the only conversation that took place that day with reference to a new barge for Bill Nibson. As they rowed up against the tide, Hilda said:

"We must do something for that bargeman, Colonel Bulstrode. I am sure we cannot be too grateful to him and his wife for their treatment of Walter. Think how different it might have been had he fallen into bad hands. Now he looks the picture of health; the change in the life and the open air has done wonders. You know, Dr. Leeds said that the officer of the coastguard had told him that Nibson's barge was one of the oldest and rottenest crafts on the river. Now, I propose that we buy him a new one. What would it cost, Colonel Bulstrode?"

"I have not the slightest idea," the Colonel replied; "it might cost five hundred pounds, or it might cost five thousand, for all I know."

"I will ask the waterman," Hilda said, and raising her voice she said, "How much do barges cost when they are new?"

"From ten or eleven hundred up to fifteen," the man said.

"Does that include sails and all?"

"Yes, miss; down to the boat."

"Who is considered the best barge-builder?"

"Well, there are a good many of them, miss; but I should say that Gill, of Rochester, is considered as good as any."

"What do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?" Hilda said. "Should we, as Walter's guardians, be justified in spending this money? Mind, I don't care a bit whether we are or not, because I would buy it myself if it would not be right for us to use his money."

"I am afraid that it would not be right," Mr. Pettigrew said. "As a trustee of the property, I should certainly not feel myself justified in sanctioning such a sum being drawn, though I quite admit that this good couple should be rewarded. I cannot regard a barge as a necessary; anything in reason that the child could require we should be justified in agreeing to. Of course, whatever may be his expenses at a public school, we should pay them without hesitation; but for a child of that age to give a present of fifteen hundred pounds would be altogether beyond our power to sanction."

"Very well," Hilda said decidedly, "then I shall take the matter into my own hands, and I shall go down to Rochester to-morrow and see if these people have a barge ready built. I don't know whether they are the sort of things people keep in stock."

"That I can't say, my dear. I should think it probable that in slack times they may build a barge or two on speculation, for the purpose of keeping their hands employed, but whether that is the case now or not I don't know. If these people at Rochester have not got one you may hear of one somewhere else. I want you all to come up to the office one day next week to talk over this matter of the order Simcoe is applying for – for us to carry out the provisions of the will – at any rate, as far as his legacy is concerned."

"Very well, Mr. Pettigrew, I will come up any time that you write to me, but you know that I have very strong opinions about it."

"I know your opinions are strong, as ladies' opinions generally are," Mr. Pettigrew said with a smile; "but, unfortunately, they are much more influenced by their own view of matters than by the legal bearing of them. However, we will talk that over when we meet again."

The arrival of Walter occasioned the most lively joy in Hyde Park Gardens. Hilda had written to his nurse, who had gone home to live with her mother when all hope of finding Walter had seemed to be at an end, to tell her that he would probably be at home on Wednesday evening, and that she was to be there to meet him. Her greeting of him was rapturous. It had been a source of bitter grief to her that he had been lost through a momentary act of carelessness on her part, and the relief that Hilda's letter had caused was great indeed. The child was scarcely less pleased to see her, for he retained a much more vivid recollection of her than he did of the others. He had already been told of his grandfather's death, but a year had so effaced his memory of him that he was not greatly affected at the news. In the course of a few hours he was almost as much at home in the house as if he had never left it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A NEW BARGE

The next morning Hilda went down to Rochester with Netta, Tom Roberts accompanying them. They had no difficulty in discovering the barge-builder's. It seemed to the girls a dirty-looking place, thickly littered as it was with shavings; men were at work on two or three barges which seemed, thus seen out of the water, an enormous size.

"Which is Mr. Gill?" Hilda asked a man passing.

"That is him, miss," and he pointed to a man who was in the act of giving directions to some workmen. They waited until he had finished, and then went up to him.

"I want to buy a barge, Mr. Gill," Hilda said.

"To buy a barge!" he repeated in surprise, for never before had he had a young lady as a customer.

Hilda nodded. "I want to give it to a bargeman who has rendered me a great service," as if it were an everyday occurrence for a young lady to buy a barge as a present. "I want it at once, please; and it is to be a first-class barge. How much would it cost?"

The builder rubbed his chin. "Well, miss, it is a little unusual to sell a barge right off in this way; as a rule people want barges built for them. Some want them for speed, some want them for their carrying capacity."

"I want a first-class barge," Hilda replied. "I suppose it will be for traffic on the Thames, and that he will like it to be fast."

"Well, miss," the builder said slowly, for he could not yet quite persuade himself that this young lady was really prepared to pay such a sum as a new barge would cost, "I have got such a barge. She was launched last week, but I had a dispute with the man for whom I built her, and I said that I would not hold him to his bargain, and that he could get a barge elsewhere. He went off in a huff, but I expect he will come back before long and ask me to let him have her, and I should not be altogether sorry to say that she is gone. She is a first-class barge, and I expect that she will be as fast as anything on the river. Of course, I have got everything ready for her – masts, sails, and gear, even down to her dingey – and in twenty-four hours she would be ready to sail. The price is fifteen hundred pounds," and he looked sharply at Hilda to see what effect that communication would have. To his great surprise she replied quietly:

"That is about the sum I expected, Mr. Gill. Can we look at her?"

"Certainly, miss; she is lying alongside, and it is nearly high tide."

He led the way over piles of balks of timber, across sloppy pieces of ground, over which at high tide water extended, to the edge of the wharf, where the barge floated. She was indeed all ready for her mast; her sides shone with fresh paint, her upper works were painted an emerald green, a color greatly in favor among bargemen, and there was a patch of the same on her bow, ready for the name, surrounded by gilt scrollwork.

"There she is, miss; as handsome a barge as there is afloat."

"I want to see the cabin. What a little place!" she went on, as she and Netta went down through a narrow hatchway, "and how low!"

"It is the usual height in barges, miss, and the same size, unless especially ordered otherwise."

"I should like the cabin to be made very comfortable, for I think the boatman will have his wife on board. Could it not be made a little larger?"

"There would be no great difficulty about that. You see, this is a water-tight compartment, but of course it could be carried six feet farther forward and a permanent hatchway be fixed over it, and the lining made good in the new part. As to height, one might put in a good-sized skylight; it would not be usual, but of course it could be done."

"And you could put the bed-place across there, could you not, and put a curtain to draw across it?"

"Yes, that could be managed easy enough, miss; and it would make a very tidy cabin."

"Then how much would that cost extra?"

"Forty or fifty pounds, at the outside."

"And when could you get it all finished, and everything painted a nice color?"

"I could get it done in a week or ten days, if you made a point of it."

"I do make a point of it," Hilda said.

"What do you say to our leaving this bulkhead up as it is, miss, and making a door through it, and putting a small skylight, say three feet square, over the new part? You see, it will be fifteen feet wide by six feet, so that it will make a tidy little place. It would not cost more than the other way, not so much perhaps; for it would be a lot of trouble to get this bulkhead down, and then, you see, the second hand could have his bunk in here, on the lockers, and be quite separate."

"Isn't there a cabin at the other end?"

"Well, there is one, miss; you can come and look at it. That is where the second hand always sleeps when the bargeman has got his wife on board."

"I think that it would be better to have the second hand sleep there," Hilda said. "This is very rough," she went on, when she inspected the little cabin forward; "there are all the beams sticking out. Surely it can be made more comfortable than this."

"We could matchboard the timbers over if you like, but it is not usual."

"Never mind, please do it; and put some lockers up for his clothes, and make it very comfortable. Has the barge got a name yet?"

"Well, miss, we have always called her the Medway; but there is no reason that you should stick to that name. She has not been registered yet, so we can call her any name you like."

"Then we will call her the Walter," Hilda said, for the girls had already settled this point between them.

"And now, Mr. Gill, I suppose there is nothing to do but to give you a check for fifteen hundred pounds, and I can pay for the alterations when I come down next Monday week. Can you get me a couple of men who understand the work – bargees, don't you call them? I want them to take her as far as Hole Haven and a short way up the creek."

"I can do that easily enough," the builder said; "and I promise you that everything shall be ready for sailing, though I don't guarantee that the paint in the new part of the cabin will be dry. All the rest I can promise. I will set a strong gang of men on at once."

A few days later Hilda wrote a line to William Nibson, saying that she intended to come down with the child on the following Monday, and hoped that he would be able to make it convenient to be at home on that day.

"She is not long in coming down again, Betsy," he said, when on the Friday the barge went up to Pitsea again, and he received the letter, which was carried home and read by his wife, he himself being, like most of his class at the time, unable to read or write. "I suppose the child pined in his new home, and she had to pacify him by saying that he should come down and see us next week. That will suit me very well. I have a load of manure waiting for me at Rotherhithe; it is for Farmer Gilston, near Pitsea, so that I shall just manage it comfortably. Next week I will go over to Rochester and see if I can hear of a good barge for sale."

On the following Monday morning the girls again went down to Rochester, this time taking Walter with them; having the previous week sent off three or four great parcels by luggage train. Roberts went to look for a cart to bring them to the barge-builder's, and the girls went on alone.

"There she lies, miss," Mr. Gill said, pointing to a barge with new tanned sails lying out in the stream; "she is a boat any man might be proud of."

"She looks very nice indeed," Hilda said, "though, of course, I am no judge of such things."

"You may be sure that she is all right, Miss Covington."

"Is the paint dry, down below?"

"Yes. I saw that you were anxious about it, so put plenty of drier in. So that, though she was only painted on Saturday morning, she is perfectly dry now. But you are rather earlier than I had expected."

"Yes; we have sent a lot of things down by rail. Our man is getting a cart, and I dare say they will be here in a quarter of an hour."

The things were brought on a large hand-cart, and as soon as these were carried down to the boat they went off with Mr. Gill to the barge.

"There, miss," he said, as he led the way down into the cabin; "there is not a barge afloat with such a comfortable cabin as this. I put up two or three more cupboards, for as they will sleep in the next room there is plenty of space for them."

Except in point of height, the cabin was as comfortable a little room as could be desired. It was painted a light slate color, with the panels of the closets of a lighter shade of the same. The inner cabin was of the same color. A broad wooden bedstead extended across one end, and at the other were two long cupboards extending from the ceiling to the floor. The skylight afforded plenty of light to this room, while the large one in the main cabin gave standing height six feet square in the middle.

"It could not have been better," Hilda said, greatly pleased.

"Well, miss, I took upon myself to do several things in the way of cupboards, and so on, that you had not ordered, but seeing that you wanted to have things comfortable I took upon myself to do them."

"You did quite right, Mr. Gill. This big skylight makes all the difference in height. I see that you have painted the name, and that you have got a flag flying from the masthead."

"Yes; bargemen generally like a bit of a flag, that is to say if they take any pride in their boat. You cannot trade in the barge until you have had it registered; shall I get that done for you?"

"Yes, I should be very much obliged if you would."

"And in whose name shall I register it? In yours?"

"No; in the name of William Nibson. If you want his address it is Creek Farm, Pitsea."

"Well, miss, he is a lucky fellow. I will get it done, and he can call here for the register the first time he comes up the Medway."