The Yeoman Adventurer
"Clip me tight! Which way?"
"Round the spinney first, sir!"
Off we went, and this time I touched Sultan with the spur and he flew
along. Round the spinney; slantways across a field; up and over a gate,
the girl clinging to me like a leech; down a lane; up and over another
gate; and then the girl's shaking right arm was thrust over my shoulder.
"There's th' ouse! 0', God, if we anna in time!"
"How many are there?"
"Two, sir."
I pulled Sultan up at the farmyard gate, helped her down, and jumped
after her. Hitching the horse, we started across the yard.
Luckily the low-down moon was on the far side of the house, and we could
run softly up in the pitch dark. As I write I feel that brave girl's hard
grip of my hand as we raced on. At a half-open door we halted; she loosed
hold of me, and I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one
pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain,
searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the
vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out!
That'll open her mouth."
With wrath flaming in my heart I stepped into the doorway leading to the
kitchen. My eyes lit on a poor woman bound hard and fast in a chair, and a
masked beast, his big white teeth showing through lips thrust wide apart
in a grin of hellish rage, approaching a red-hot poker towards her face. I
shot him, and he tumbled into a squirming heap. The other villain raced
for dear life through the open front door. My second bullet got him on the
very threshold, for he yelped and sprang into the air like a stricken
buck, but he held on. I e'en let him go, not daring to leave the unkilled
scoundrel on the floor, for he had a regular battery of pistols in his
belt. The girl was already untying her mother, and her father, bound and
gagged in his chair in the ingle-nook, could bide a while. So I plucked
the pistols out, there were six of them, and rattled them down on the
table. The man was bleeding like a stuck pig, and his purpling face and
heaving throat showed that he was choking. As I destined him for the
gallows, I picked him up, flung him face down on the table, and thumped
him violently in the back, whereupon he coughed up a tooth. My bullet had
stripped out all his grinning front teeth clean and clear, just as our
Kate's dainty thumb strips the row of peas out of a peascod. Once the
tooth was up he was not greatly hurt, and, holding one of his own pistols
to his head, I bade him unstrap the farmer. As soon as the latter was
free, I ordered him to strap the robber to a kitchen chair, which he did
very thoroughly. The instant this job was done, he leaped to fondle and
hearten his wife. She kissed him back and, without a word, feebly pointed
to me, whereupon he turned and thanked me.
"Thank your brave daughter," said I, and then he jumped at her and hugged
her in his big arms, blubbing out, "My bonny, bonny Nance!"
At my wish he lit a lantern, and we went out and stabled Sultan. We went
back through the kitchen to make a search of the front of the house. A
pretty sight awaited me within doors. The good wife was sipping at a cup
of parsnip wine, and the girl was again wearing nothing but her
nightdress. With crimson face and downcast eyes, she stood there holding
my coat out.
"Hallo, ghostie!" said I, smiling at her. "You want to frighten me again,
do you?"
Too confused to say a word, she lackeyed me into my coat and then ran
upstairs. To cut short her mother's tearful thanks, I led the way to the
door, and we started our examination.
Some two yards from the door-sill the feeble rays of the lantern were
reflected from something on the ground. To my great satisfaction it was
fair booty to me, nothing less than my closest need, a rare good hat made
of the finest beaver. The band was buckled with gold, and there was a
taking and surely very fashionable cock to the brim. I sent my old one
spinning into the blackness and clapped my new treasure on my head. Now I
could walk side by side with Margaret and not be ashamed, at any rate not
of my hat.
"The rogue jerked it off when I winged him," said I.
"Gom! He did jump, that's sartin," said the farmer, whose name, I ought
to say, I had learned was Job Lousely.
It was quite a step down to the road, and we made no further discovery
till we got to the gate. Here it was his turn to be lucky, for there was
an excellent nag hitched to a rail. It was on Job's ground and he gave it
a home in his stable.
"It'll mak up for the crockery," he said, with great delight.
Back in the kitchen we found Nance fully dressed and busy laying a meal
on the table. She was so taken aback when I declared I was not hungry and
couldn't stay if I had been, that, to save her distress, I had a bite and
a sup of ale, while Job fetched Sultan round to the door. She was a sweet,
comely maiden, and it did my heart good to see her put a horn of ale to
the bleeding lips of the robber. He drank ravenously, like a dog after a
hard run. He was where he deserved to be, with his feet in the short,
straight path to the gallows, and I pitied him not. Nance did, and it's
good for the world that women are made that way.
"How far is it to Ellerton Grange?" I asked Job, who came in to tell me
Sultan was ready.
"A matter of six miles, sir. Three from here to Tutcheter, and three more
on to the Grange."
"How funny, father," interposed Nance. "This is the second time tonight a
gentleman has asked the road to Ellerton Grange."
It would hardly have struck Job as funny if it had been the
twenty-second, but Nance was quick and shrewd.
"Ho! Ho!" said I. "Tell me about it, little woman!"
"I was wishing my Jim good night at the gate, just before father came
home, when a man riding by pulled up and asked the road to Ellerton
Grange."
"Did you make him out, Nance?" I asked.
"Not much of him, sir, but the moon shone on his face when he took his
hat off to wipe his forehead, and it looked for all the world like an
addled duck-egg."
"Well put, Nance," said I, laughing. "First time I saw that face I
thought it was like a bladder of lard."
"You know him, sir?"
"I think I do, Nance, and I must be after him."
Out of the robber's string of pistols I selected a pair for myself. They
were lawful prize, and equal in quality to those Master Freake had given
me, so that the rascal had probably stolen them. I saw that all the others
were loaded, and advised Job to watch him all night and to lift him, chair
and all, into a cart the next morning and drive him off to the nearest
Justice.
Job and his wife renewed their thanks when I was in the saddle. Nance
insisted on coming to open the gate, and on the way there she gave me full
and careful directions as to the way to Tutcheter and thence to the Grange.
She swung the gate open and let me through. Then she came to my sword
side and held up her face to be kissed.
"Good-bye, ghostie!"
"Good-bye, sir! God bless you!"
Kissing and blessing were reward enough for my service, and I rode on
lighter at heart for them.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DOUBLE SIX
The time had not been wasted. I had had a stirring experience and got a
hint of dangers and uncertainties ahead. Moreover, and on this I plumed
myself most, I had acquired a handsome hat. It was a trifle roomy, but a
wisp of paper tucked within the inside rim would remedy that defect. The
moon was getting higher and brighter, and I pulled my new treasure off
again and again to admire it. It had belonged to a rascal with an
excellent taste in hats. I was very content with it, and looked forward
eagerly to catching the glint in Margaret's eyes when she saw it. After
all it behoved me to look well in her presence, and I regretted that the
rogue had not shed his coat and breeches as well. No doubt they were
equally modish and becoming, and would have set me up finely, though all
the tailors in London town couldn't make me a match for Maclachlan. A man
has to be born to fine clothes, like a bird to fine feathers, before he
looks well in them. The thought made me rueful. I jammed my hat on
fiercely, and slapped Sultan into a longer stride.
The man ahead of me was, out of question, the Government spy, Weir. It
was now a full day and more since I had crammed my Virgil into his maw,
and he had had time to get into these parts. Thirty years before there had
been much feeling for the honest party hereabouts, and among the gentry
along the border of the shires there would be some in whose hearts the old
flame still flickered. Indeed, my own errand proved so much, and a
noser-out like Weir would be well employed in rooting up fragments of
gossip over the bottle and memories of beery confidences at market
ordinaries--sunken straws which showed the back-washes of opinion beneath
the placid surface flow of our rural life. I dug my fingers into my thigh
and imagined I was wringing the rascal's greasy neck, and the feeling did
me good.
I began to ride past scattered houses and then between rows of cottages.
Sultan was tiring a little, but, being an experienced horse, pricked up at
the sight and cantered down the dead main street of the town. The shadows
of the houses on my left ended in an irregular line on the cobbled
causeway on my right. Near the town end I came on an exception to the
black-and-white stillness of the houses--an inn on my right ablaze with
light and full of noise. A merry liquorish company it held, some
quarrelling, some rowdily disputatious, and a few stentors trying to drown
the rest by roaring a tipsy catch. I pulled Sultan towards the verge of
the shadows to see if I could make anything out, and he, supposing, no
doubt, that I was guiding him towards bait and stable, made a half-turn
towards the portico that ran on pillars along the face of the inn. I
checked him at once, but, in that trice of time, a man leaped from behind
a pillar, laid one hand on the pommel of my saddle, and raised the other
in warning. He was a little man, and in his eagerness he stood on tiptoe
and whispered, "Ride on, Master Wheatman! One second may cost you dear!"
Even as he spoke, some movement within startled him, and he leaped back
into the shadow before I could question him.
I urged Sultan onward, and once out of footfall of the inn, pricked him
into a gallop. Out of the town he fled, past the end of the Stafford road,
along which two hours of Sultan's best would bring me to the Hanyards and
mother and Kate, and I kept him at it for a full two miles before I gave
him a breather and settled down to think out what it meant.
I did not know the man from Adam, but he had me and my name quite pat. He
was obviously a friend, for his bearing and his warning alike bespoke his
goodwill towards me. He must be waiting there for some purpose, and he
must have seen me somewhere and learned enough about me to know from what
source danger to me was certain to come. In this case it was plain that
the danger was within the inn. The carousers might be, nay, almost
certainly were, soldiers, though there had been none in the town when Job
Lousely had left it less than two hours ago. The news of my escapade might
well have leaked into Stafford by now; I was very well known in the town,
and the stranger might be some Stafford chap benighted at Uttoxeter after
his business at the market. As I say, I did not know the man, but he might
very well know me; he was, perhaps, some old schoolfellow, grown out of
recollection by moonlight, and still willing to serve an old butty. This
seemed the likeliest solution of the difficulty, and it made me very sad.
The news about Jack would be whispered round by now, and I could never
walk the old streets again without seeing nods and shudders everywhere.