Notwithstanding the caution with which Captain Ryecroft made his
reconnaissance, it was nevertheless observed. And from beginning to
end. Before his boat drew near the end of the eyot, above the place
where for the second time it had stopped, it came under the eye of a man
who chanced to be standing on the cliff by the side of the summer-house.
That he was there by accident, or at all events not looking out for a
boat could be told by his behaviour on first sighting this; neither by
change of attitude nor glance of eye evincing any interest in it. His
reflection is--
"Some fellows after salmon, I suppose. Have been up to that famous
catching place by the Ferry, and are on the way home downward--to Rock
Weir, no doubt? Ha!"
The ejaculation is drawn from him by seeing the boat come to a stop, and
remain stationary in the middle of the stream.
"What's that for?" he asks himself, now more carefully examining the
craft.
It is still full four hundred yards from him, but the moonlight being in
his favour he makes it out to be a pair-oared skiff with two men in it.
"They don't seem to be dropping a net," he observes, "nor engaged about
anything. That's odd!"
Before they came to a stop he heard a murmur of voices, as of speech, a
few words, exchanged between them, but too distant for him to
distinguish what they had said. Now they are silent, sitting without
stir; only a slight movement in the arms of the oarsman to keep the boat
in its place.
All this seems strange to him observing: not less when a flood of
moonlight brighter than usual falls over the boat, and he can tell by
the attitude of the man in the stern, with face turned upward, that he
is regarding the structure on the cliff.
He is not himself standing beside it now. Soon as becoming interested
by the behaviour of the men in the boat, from its seeming eccentricity,
he had glided back behind a bush, and there now crouches, an instinct
prompting him to conceal himself.
Soon after he sees the boat moving on, and then for a few seconds it is
out of sight, again coming under his view near the upper end of the
islet, evidently setting in for the old channel. And while he watches,
it enters!
As this is a sort of private way, the eyot itself being an adjunct of
the ornamental grounds of Llangorren, he wonders whose boat it can be,
and what its business there. By the backwash it must be making for the
dock and stair; the men in it, or one of them, for the Court.
While still surprisedly conjecturing, his ears admonish him that the
oars are at rest, and another stoppage has taken place. He cannot see
the skiff now, as the high bank hinders. Besides, the narrow passage is
arcaded over by trees still in thick foliage; and, though the moon is
shining brightly above, scarce a ray reaches the surface of the water.
But an occasional creak of an oar in its rowlock, and some words spoken
in low tone--so low he cannot make them out--tell him that the stoppage
is directly opposite the spot where he is crouching--as predatory animal
in wait for its prey.
What was at first mere curiosity, and then matter of but slight
surprise, is now an object of keen solicitude. For of all places in the
world, to him there is none invested with greater interest than that
where the boat has been brought to. Why has it stopped there? Why is
it staying? For he can tell it is by the silence continuing. Above
all, who are the men in it?
He asks these questions of himself, but does not stay to reason out the
answers. He will best get them by his eyes; and to obtain sight of the
skiff and its occupants, he glides a little way along the cliff, looking
out for a convenient spot. Finding one, he drops first to his knees,
then upon all fours, and crawls out to its edge. Craning his head over,
but cautiously, and with a care it shall be under cover of some fern
leaves, he has a view of the water below, with the boat on it--only
indistinct on account of the obscurity. He can make out the figures of
the two men, though not their faces, nor anything by which he may
identify them--if already known. But he sees that which helps to a
conjecture, at the same sharpening his apprehensions. The boat once
more in motion, not moving off, but up into the little cove, where a
dead body late lay! Then, as one of the men strikes a match and sets
light to a lamp, lighting up his own face with that of the other
opposite, he on the bank above at length recognises both.
But it is no longer a surprise to him. The presence of the skiff there,
the movements of the men in it--like his own, evidently under restraint
and stealthy--have prepared him for seeing whom he now sees--Captain
Ryecroft and the waterman Wingate.
Still he cannot think of what they are after, though he has his
suspicions; the place, with something only known to himself, suggesting
them--conjecture at first soon becoming certainty, as he sees the
ex-officer of Hussars rise to his feet, hold his lamp close to the
cliff's face, and inspect the abrasions on the rock!
He is not more certain, but only more apprehensive, when the crushed
juniper twigs are taken in hand, examined, and let go again. For he has
by this divined the object of it all.
If any doubt lingered, it is set at rest by the exclamatory words
following, which, though but muttered, reach him on the cliff above,
heard clear enough--
"No accident--no suicide--murdered!" They carry tremor to his heart,
making him feel as a fox that hears the tongue of hound on its track.
Still distant, but for all causing it fear, and driving it to think of
subterfuge.
And of this thinks he, as he lies with his face among the ferns; ponders
upon it till the boat has passed back up the dark passage out into the
river, and he hears the last light dipping of its oars in the far
distance.
He even forgets a woman, for whom he was waiting at the summer-house,
and who there without finding him has flitted off again.
At length rising to his feet, and going a little way, he too gets into a
boat--one he finds, with oars aboard, down in the dock. It is not the
_Gwendoline_--she is gone.
Seating himself on the mid thwart, he takes up the oars, and pulls
towards the place lately occupied by the skiff of the waterman. When
inside the cove he lights a match, and holds it close to the face of the
rock where Ryecroft held his lamp. It burns out and he draws a second
across the sand paper; this to show him the broken branches of the
juniper, which he also takes in hand and examines. Soon also dropping
them, with a look of surprise, followed by the exclamatory phrases--
"Prodigiously strange! I see his drift now. Cunning fellow! On the
track he has discovered the trick, and 'twill need another trick to
throw him off it. This bush must be uprooted--destroyed."
He is in the act of grasping the juniper to pluck it out by the roots.
A dwarf thing, this could be easily done. But a thought stays him--
another precautionary forecast, as evinced by his words--
"That won't do."
After repeating them, he drops back on the boat's thwart, and sits for a
while considering, with eyes turned toward the cliff, ranging it up and
down.
"Ah!" he exclaims at length, "the very thing; as if the devil himself
had fixed it for me! That _will_ do; smash the bush to atoms--blot out
everything, as if an earthquake had gone over Llangorren."
While thus oddly soliloquising, his eyes are still turned upward,
apparently regarding a ledge which, almost loose as a boulder, projects
from the bank above. It is directly over the juniper, and if detached
from its bed, as it easily might be, would go crashing down, carrying
the bush with it.
And that same night it does go down. When the morning sun lights up the
cliff, there is seen a breakage upon its face just underneath the
summer-house. Of course, a landslip, caused by the late rains acting on
the decomposed sandstone. But the juniper bush is no longer there; it
is gone, root and branch!
Volume Three, Chapter III.