And when she had, she came out into the road, where Oswald, pale but
resolute, was already pacing with firm steps. And he said:
'Look here, let's go and tell. Let's say you and I made the balloon. The
others can stop out of it if they like.'
'They won't if it's really prison,' said Alice. 'But it would be noble
of us to try it on. Let's----'
But we found we didn't know who to tell.
'It seems so fatal to tell the police,' said Alice; 'there's no getting
out of it afterwards. Besides, he's only Jameson, and he's very stupid.'
The author assures you you do not know what it is like to have a crime
like arsenic on your conscience, and to have gone to the trouble and
expense of making up your mind to confess it, and then not to know who
to.
We passed a wretched day. And all the time the ricks were blazing. All
the people in the village went over with carts and bikes to see the
fire--like going to a fair or a show. In other circumstances we should
have done the same, but now we had no heart for it.
In the evening Oswald went for a walk by himself, and he found his
footsteps turning towards the humble dwelling of the Ancient Mariner who
had helped us in a smuggling adventure once.
The author wishes to speak the truth, so he owns that perhaps Oswald had
some idea that the Ancient Mariner, who knew so much about smugglers and
highwaymen, might be able to think of some way for us to save ourselves
from prison without getting an innocent person put into it. Oswald found
the mariner smoking a black pipe by his cottage door. He winked at
Oswald as usual. Then Oswald said:
'I want to ask your advice; but it's a secret. I know you can keep
secrets.'
When the aged one had agreed to this, Oswald told him all. It was a
great relief.
The mariner listened with deep attention, and when Oswald had quite
done, he said:
'It ain't the stone jug this time mate. That there balloon of yours, I
see it go up--fine and purty 'twas, too.'
'We all saw it go _up_,' said Oswald in despairing accents. 'The
question is, where did it come down?'
'At Burmarsh, sonny,' was the unexpected and unspeakably relieving
reply. 'My sister's husband's niece--it come down and lodged in their
pear-tree--showed it me this morning, with the red ink on it what
spelled your names out.'
Oswald, only pausing to wring the hand of his preserver, tore home on
the wings of the wind to tell the others.
I don't think we were ever so glad of anything in our lives. It is a
frightfully blighting thing when you believe yourself to be an
Arsenicator (or whatever it is) of the deepest dye.
As soon as we could think of anything but our own cleanness from guilt,
we began to fear the worst of Tom Simkins, the farmer at Crown Ovenden.
But _he_ came out of it, like us, without a stain on his fair name,
because he and his sister and his man Honeysett all swore that he had
given a tramp leave to sleep up against the beanstack the night before
the fire, and the tramp's pipe and matches were found there. So he got
his insurance money; but the tramp escaped.
But when we told father all about it, he said he wished he had been a
director of that fire insurance company.
We never made another fire-balloon. Though it was not us that time, it
might have been. And we know now but too well the anxieties of a life of
crime.