Gray’s Proceedings.—A Narrow Escape.—The Night Visit to Learmont.
The necessity for some immediate movement, in order to insure his
personal safety, now came strongly across the oppressed and wavering
mind of Gray, and hastily tearing down the bill from the tree, he
clasped his throbbing temples with his hands, and strove to reduce his
thoughts to order and consistency. That the bill-sticker had gone to
get assistance to apprehend him, was the frightful notion that never
for one instant left his mind, and without any definite notion of where
he was going, he went round the declivity of the hill, until he arrived
completely on the other side. The only means of concealment that there
presented itself was a thick hedge, but then he thought how very
insecure a place of refuge would that be, in the event of an active
search being made for him.
The country before him was level for a considerable distance, with only
here and there a small clump of trees. After some minutes more of
painful thought an idea suggested itself to him, which was very much in
accordance with his usual complicated habits of thought. That was, to
leave some portions of his apparel on the bank of the pond, to induce a
belief that he had drowned himself in its waters, and then to scramble
into one of the trees, and hide till nightfall among the branches.
This was the only feasible plan of escape that suggested itself to him,
for with his utter ignorance of the localities of the fields, an
attempt to cross them to the village would most probably be seen, and
but a short race in his exhausted and sickly state would ensure his
capture. “At night,” he thought, “I will venture to Learmont’s—it is my
only chance. I will then offer for a thousand pounds to deliver up Ada
to him, and he still supposing, probably, that nothing material has
happened, may consent, when I will find a means of leaving England for
ever, and mature at my leisure plans of revenge against them all. But
now most of all, Ada, will I mark you well. You, who have reduced me to
my present state, my bitterest malediction light upon you. I would, I
could have made you great and wealthy, but now I will devise some
finely woven scheme to revenge myself on those I hate, without missing
you.”
He then laid several articles of his clothing by the bank of the pond
to which he had walked, while the reflections we have worded were
passing through his brain. Then hastily repairing to one of the clumps
of trees we have mentioned, he with much difficulty and pain, for he
was sadly bruised, contrived to ascend it, and although the pangs of
hunger began, even now to harass him, he resolved that the shadows of
evening should shroud all things before he ventured from his retreat.
From his elevated position he now commanded a good view of the
surrounding country, and far down the hill he had first ascended, he
saw the forms of three persons rapidly approaching.
At that distance he could not see their forms distinctly, but as they
neared the brow of the hill, he felt no doubt that one of them was the
man who had stuck the placard to the tree. Now he saw them pause and
point forwards, then with an accelerated pace they all three advanced
towards the tree near which the bill sticker had left them. They now
paused, and appeared to be consulting upon their next step, when one
apparently saw the articles of clothing which Gray had left by the bank
of the pond, and they all came to the spot using gestures to each other
of astonishment.
They remained for several minutes in close consultation now, and then
as if in accordance with an arrangement they had just made, one of them
remained by the pond while the others commenced carefully peering into
the hedges and bushes.
After satisfying themselves that he they sought was not immediately at
hand, they both ran up Traitor’s-hill, and from its summit took a long
searching glance at all the surrounding fields. One of these men, Gray
could see now to his intense fright, had a gun in his hand, and that
fright was increased to absolute abject terror when he saw him level it
at one of the trees in the vicinity, and fire among the branches,
awakening many echoes and starting from their covert many birds who
flew twittering and screaming from among the branches.
Then to his agony he saw the gun again loaded, and the man pointed it
at another tree and fired. The sharp report went through Jacob Gray’s
excited brain like electricity, and it was only by twining his feet
round an arm of the tree in which he was, and clutching another with
his hands, that he saved himself from falling in his agitation to the
ground.
The two men now conversed for some minutes in an undertone. Then one
raising his voice, said in a tone that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s
anxiously straining ears,—
“Oh, don’t give it up yet—it’s worth a try.”
“So it is, but it’s a bore to fire away so much powder for nothing,”
said the other.
“Oh, nonsense, blaze away,” said the first, “I call it good sport.”
“Well, here goes then,” remarked the man with the gun, as he
deliberately rammed down another charge.
Jacob Gray now trembled so excessively that had the men been near at
hand the shaking of the branches of the tree must have at once betrayed
him; but fortunately for him they were too much occupied with the trees
they were firing into to heed any other at a distance, however short.
As they came sauntering on, Jacob Gray with a deep groan that he could
not repress, saw that a very few minutes more would bring the tree in
which he was, under the aim of the man with the gun.
Bang went the piece again, and another flight of screaming birds flew
from the tree fired at, and along with a number of crows took refuge in
the one occupied by Gray. The men were now within a few paces of the
tree, and he could hear in his elevated position with painful
distinctness every word they said.
By a great effort, he in a great measure stilled the trembling which
would have betrayed him, and lay along a thick branch nearly breathless
from terror.
“You may depend he’s off,” said the man with the gun. “He wouldn’t wait
for you.”
“Unless he’s drowned himself,” remarked the other, who was the
bill-sticker.
“No fear of that,” remarked the other with a laugh, “these kind of
fellows never cheat the hangman that way. He has had time to run across
the field to Highgate or Hampstead, or even to skulk into town you may
depend.”
“Well, I’d take my oath it was him as was mentioned in the bill,” said
the man who had brought all this danger upon Gray. “I was thankful I
got off scot-free from him, I can tell you. He would soon have blown my
brains out if I had said half a word.”
“Oh, bother you,” cried the other, “you were too fainthearted, you mean
to lay hold of him.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk with a gun in your hand, but what
odds was I with a paste-pot against a right down regular murderer, I
should like to know?”
“Upon my faith,” said he with the gun, “I should have enjoyed seeing
you sneak off—I really should.”
As he spoke, he commenced reloading his gun with deliberation. Oh, what
a horrible process that was to Jacob Gray. Each moment gave him a pang
of fear that nearly stopped the beating of his heart. How he watched
the action of the ramrod as the powder was pressed down. Then the
rattle of a number of small shot as they went down the barrel, came
upon his ears with dreadful distinctness. Again there was a piece of
paper pressed into the muzzle of the piece, and as the ramrod forced it
home with a dull sound upon the charge, Jacob Gray perspired in every
pore, and with difficulty kept himself from shrieking, mercy! Mercy!
“That’s an old tree,” remarked the man, as he primed the gun, and
stepping back a pace or two levelled it among the branches. “I
recollect it when I was a boy.”
“Fire away,” said the other, who seemed quite to enjoy the sport.
“Now—now,” thought Jacob, “now to fall a bleeding wounded man to the
ground—now for pain, horror, capture, death.”
He closed his eyes, and clung to the branch on which he lay with pure
desperation. All thought of a consistent character became lost in
abject terror. It seemed to him an age ere the man fired into the tree.
Then suddenly a loud report reached his ears. Small branches of the
tree fell about him, and he uttered a deep groan, as he felt a shock
upon his face, and along one arm, which assured him he had been hit by
some of the shots. The pain of a gun-shot wound is not immediate; the
first effect is rather as if sensation had been suddenly stunned, but
when the shock subsides, and the blood again resumes its wonted
channels, the agony of the wound commences. Such was the case with
Jacob Gray, and although but very few of the shots had struck him in
the face, the neck, and on one arm, he could have screamed with pain in
the course of a few moments, and it required all the counteracting
influence of the master feeling of his mind—fear—to prevent him from
discovering himself. Clinging still to the branch desperately he
endured the pain in silence for he durst not even moan. His first groan
had been drowned in the report of the gun, but now that the echoes had
died away, and all was still, the least sound of pain from his lips
might be his utter destruction.
The men were silent for some moments after the discharge of the
gun—then he who had fired it remarked in a disaffected tone,—
“He ain’t there. It’s no use. He must have given us the slip.”
“No, he could not stand that, I’m sure I couldn’t,” said the
bill-sticker, “I never saw so many birds fly out of a tree in my life.”
“That’s because we have hunted them from all the others, and they took
refuge in this one blockhead,” cried the man with the gun, whose temper
did not seem at all improved by the non-success of his expedition.
“Well, you needn’t get in a passion,” suggested the other.
“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe
you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”
“Upon my conscience—”
“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”
“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself.
What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why
don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”
“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with
the gun.
“What?”
“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”
“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should
never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very
face. Oh, oh!”
“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow
yourself for all I care.”
“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”
“I shan’t stay here to be fooled any longer,” said the other.
“Will you lend me the gun, then?”
“Lend you my gun?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you particularly well—never mind.”
So saying, he of the gun marched off in very great dudgeon, leaving the
bill-sticker gazing after him.
“Well,” he muttered, “there’s an air and a grace, I never knew he was
so hasty before. I—I think I’ll have a hunt for the fellow myself,
and—yet he might master me, and I think I won’t. It’s all very well to
take a prisoner, but when the prisoner takes you, it ain’t near so
pleasant.”
Having come to this sage conclusion, the bill-sticker rapidly walked
away, glancing every now and then around him in terror, lest Gray
should make a sudden dart at him from behind some tree or hedge.
“Here! Here,” moaned Jacob Gray, as he smeared the blood from his face
with his hand, “here I must remain in hunger and pain till night, and
then my only hope now is to crawl to Learmont’s!”