DEAD SEA APPLES.
The two had advanced without thought to the foot of the tree which
Frank had indicated, and in doing so had quitted the shelter of the
rift, from which an open space a dozen yards in width now separated
them. The deep shade of the yew-tree which stretched its arms above
them still afforded some protection, the glare of the sun on the
moorland intensifying its gloom and blackness. But such protection was
partial only; it could not avail against persons approaching the tree
closely.
The horror of the two may be imagined, therefore, when they awoke
suddenly to this fact, and to the conviction that some one was
approaching--nay, was already near. Before Jack's muttered warning had
well been uttered, the sharp crack of a stick, broken under foot, and
the tones of voices drawing each moment nearer placed the danger
beyond dispute.
For a moment the brothers stood as still as stones, the man's face
growing hard and stern as he listened and comprehended too late the
reckless folly he had committed in leaving a secure hiding-place at
that time of the day. His eyes traveled from the boy's, in which he
read a pitiful alarm more overmastering if less intense than his own,
to the space which separated him from the rift and from safety. Alas!
he measured it with a despairing eye. A moment before he could have
passed that interval at a bound, and at will; now he recognized with
an inward groan that the attempt was hopeless. A single step in that
direction must place him at once in full view of those who were
approaching.
Would they stop short of the tree which hid him? That seemed his only
chance. He set his teeth together, and gripped Jack's shoulder hard as
he listened, and heard them still come on--come on and come nearer.
His brain sought desperately for some way, some plan of escape. At the
last moment, when all seemed lost, and less than a score of paces now
lay between him and the newcomers, he hit upon one which might
possibly help him.
"It is that woman!" he hissed in Jack's ear. "Lie down and pretend to
be asleep! Take their attention for a moment only, and I may slip
round this tree and reach another."
Jack, poor lad, was almost paralyzed with terror, but he understood;
and he found one part of his instructions easy enough to execute. His
knees were already so weak under him with fear and excitement that he
sank to the ground under the pressure of his brother's hand, with
scarce any volition of his own; and crouching in the shadow with his
knees drawn up to his chin, remained motionless with dismay.
For a moment after reaching the spot, Mistress Gridley and the butler
did not see him. The boy sat deep in the shadow, and the sun shone in
their eyes as they crossed from one tree to another, and from that
one to the farthest of all. The butler had even begun the argument
afresh--they had been disputing about the removal of the treasure--and
had stuck his spade into the ground that he might lean upon it while
he talked, when he espied the pale face shining in the gloom beside
the trunk, and started with affright. "Ha!" he exclaimed in a high
tone, "what is that?"
The woman started too. Her mind was ill at ease; and it was strange
that the child should have chosen that particular square yard of
ground to sit upon. But she recovered herself more quickly. "You
little brat!" she cried, peering at him with her eyes shaded, "what
are you doing here? Be off! Go to the house, and stay there till I
come, do you hear?"
[Illustration: "What is that!"--Page 118.]
The child did not move.
"Do you hear, you little booby?" she repeated angrily. "Get up and be
off before I give you something to remember me by!" As she spoke, she
advanced a step nearer to him and raised her hand to strike him.
Still the child did not move: and the woman's hand fell harmless by
her side. The peculiar pallor of the boy's face, a pallor heightened
by the shade in which he sat, his immobility, the strangeness of his
attitude and position, above all the fixed glare of his eyes, had
their effect upon her, scared and impressed as she already was by his
unexplained delivery from the closet. She hesitated and fell back a
step.
The butler, who knew nothing of the closet episode, attributed the
move to prudence. "Soft and easy," he muttered approvingly, "or he
may suspect something. It is odd he should be here."
"Suspect!" the woman answered with a shiver; for when a strong nature
gives way to panic, the rout is complete. "I doubt he knows. The child
is not canny," she added, staring at him in an odd, shrinking fashion.
The butler was at all times a coward, and without understanding the
woman's reasons he felt the influence of her fear. "Not canny!" he
said uneasily; "why, what is the matter with him? Hi, Jack, my boy,
what are you doing here?" he continued, addressing the lad with a poor
attempt at good-fellowship. "Are you ill, or what is it?"
The boy did not move.
Gridley advanced gingerly towards him, as a timid man approaches a
strange dog. When he came near, however, and saw that it really was
the boy, little Jack Patten whom he had known from his birth, the
assurance made him laugh at the woman's fears. "Come, get up, lad," he
said roughly; "get up and go and play!"
He seized Jack by the collar and raised him to his feet. "Jump, lad,
jump!" he said. "Be off! You will get the ague here. Go into the sun
and play!"
The boy had shaken off his first terror. Frank, he thought, must be
safe by this time. He kept his feet therefore, but hesitated in doubt
what to do; standing, to outward view a sullen pale-faced child,
beside the dark trunk of the yew. Gridley noticed that he kept his one
hand closed, and acting on a momentary impulse asked him roughly what
he had there. The boy, without answering, opened his fingers
mechanically, disclosing three tiny whinberries which he had picked
while he talked with his brother in the rift, and had involuntarily
retained in his hand ever since. The butler struck them out of his
little palm with a disappointed "pish!" and turning him round by the
shoulder sent him off with a push. "There, go and pick some more!" he
said. "Be off! Be off!"
The lad obeyed slowly, and with apparent reluctance. When he was out
of sight, Gridley, who had stepped a few paces from the tree that he
might watch him the better, returned and picked up his spade. "There,
he is gone!" he said, with an inquisitive look at the woman, whose
mood puzzled him. "And if you will have the things up, it must be
done. Let us lose no more time."
He struck the spade into the ground, and began to dig, while his
companion watched him. But her face betrayed none of the greedy
excitement which had always marked it before when the treasure was in
question. Instead, it wore a look of dread and expectation. Something
like grey fear lay like a shadow upon it, and left it only when the
man stopped digging, and throwing down his spade, dragged a small
white bundle from the shallow hole he had made.
Then she showed at last some animation. "They _are_ there," she
muttered, her eyes beginning to burn. "I fancied----"
"Oh, they are here," he answered, chuckling as he stooped to unfasten
the napkin. "They are here, never fear! Safe bind safe find, you know,
my lady."
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, however, when he fell back
pale and trembling. A hideous look of disappointment and dismay took
in a moment the place of the gloating smile which had before distorted
his features. The napkin being untied disclosed three stones; no gold,
no cups, no treasure, but only three stones!
For a moment the two stood silent and thunderstruck, gazing at the
pebbles, which in their perfect worthlessness seemed to mock them.
Then the man turned swiftly and suddenly on the woman, rage and
suspicion so transforming him, that he did not look like the same
person. "You hag!" he cried, with lips which writhed under the effort
he made to control himself. "You thieving witch! This is your work!
Where is my gold? Where is my gold, I say?" he repeated wildly. "Tell
me, or I will murder you!" And he advanced upon her, his hands opening
and shutting on the empty air.
His frantic gestures and the passion of his manner might have appalled
even a brave man. But the woman, who had evinced less surprise and
more fear on making the discovery, waved him back with the purest
contempt. "Fool!" she hissed, with a flash of scorn in her eyes, "do
you think that I should have played this farce with you?"
"But the gold?" he cried, cowering away from her in a moment like the
craven he was. "It is gone, woman! It is gone, you see! If you have
not taken it, who has? For heaven's sake, say you have taken it, and
hidden it somewhere else!"
She looked darkly at him, and the look did more to persuade him she
was innocent than any words. He wrung his hands and all but wept.
"Some one has taken it," he moaned. "It is gone, and I shall never see
it again!"
"What brought the boy sitting here?" she muttered on a sudden.
"Jack Patten?"
Mistress Gridley nodded with a strange look in her eyes. "Ay, little
Jack. And he had three whinberries in his hand," she continued in the
same hushed tone. "Look about, if you are not afraid. Find the
whinberries, and something may come of it!"
He did not understand, but he saw she was in deadly earnest; and he
was a coward, and afraid of her. "The whinberries?" he stammered,
edging a pace away from her. "What of them?"
"They are our gold cups," she muttered between fear and rage. "The
child has bewitched them."
Gridley cried out "Nonsense." But all the same he looked quickly over
his shoulder. The sun was high and gave him courage. "The child?" he
said; "why, I have known him from his birth!"
"Find the whinberries!" was all the answer she vouchsafed. And she
pointed imperatively to the ground. "Find them, I say, if you are not
afraid, man."
He went down on his knees and began to search. But the earth he had
thrown out of the hole lay thick on the ground, and he failed to find
even one of them. He rose, and told the woman so; and she nodded as if
she had expected the answer.
He shuddered at that. He saw her afraid, and he knew she feared few
things. Besides, she had all the influence over him which a strong
mind is sure to possess over a weak one. Seeing her afraid he grew
fearful also. Though he did not believe, he trembled. He remembered
how strangely the boy had looked at him, how obstinately he had
refused to speak, what an odd persistence he had shown in clinging to
that spot. Yet how had the boy known? How had he found the place?
Doubtfully he put that thought into words, and got his answer. "How
did he get out of the wood closet when I locked him in last night?"
Mistress Gridley asked contemptuously. "I left the door locked when I
went to bed, and the boy inside. I found the door locked this morning,
but the boy was in his own bed. That is not canny."
"He may have taken the cups without--without that," said the butler,
glancing round him with a shiver.
"Then where are they?" the woman retorted swiftly. "Or do you mean
that he took them and hid them, and then came again and sat on the
place for us to find him? I tell you the lad can go through locked
doors."
The butler was not convinced, but he trembled. He stood gnawing his
nails with a gloomy face, one thing only quite clear to him; that
whether the child possessed the power which the woman attributed to
him or not, it was certainly he who had taken the treasure. This
excited such a degree of rage in Gridley's mind as fear alone kept
within bounds. He longed to follow the child and force the secret and
the gold from him, and only the dread which the woman manifested kept
him from doing this on the instant. As it was, he stood undecided,
turning over in his mind all the stories he had heard of strange
powers and weird possession--stories which then filled all the
country-side, especially in lonely and ill-populated districts--and
striving to recollect whether anything in little Jack's history seemed
to bring him within the scope of these marvellous narratives.
Mistress Gridley watched him for a time, but presently her patience
gave way. She bade him, fiercely, pick up the spade and come to the
house; and together the two returned, each hating the other as the
cause of a fruitless and unprofitable sin.