The hay had been gathered and stacked, and the stacks thatched;
and still Roger lived on at Steens unmolested. He began to feel that the
danger had blown over, and for this security old Malachi was responsible.
Malachi had witnessed the scene in the hayfield, and dreamed for nights
after of the look on his master's face. The next time a messenger arrived
(he told himself) there would be murder done; and the old man, hazy upon
all other points of the law and its operations, had the clearest notion of
its answer to murder. He had seen gibbets in his time, and bodies dangling
from them in chains.
He began to watch the road for messengers, and never slackened his watch.
Six in all he intercepted during the next three weeks and took their
papers to carry to his master. It seemed to him to be raining papers.
He could not read, and, had he been able, their contents would have
conveyed no meaning to him. He burned every one in secret.
It is possible, and even likely, that had they reached Roger they would
have had no effect beyond angering him. He believed--as for miles around
every man not a lawyer believed--that freehold land which had once
descended to an heir could not be alienated without the next heir's
consent: nor in all the countryside had such a wrong been perpetrated
within living memory. It would have taken twenty lawyers with their books
to shake him in this conviction. But it is a fact that he never received a
last letter from Lawyer Jose imploring him to appear and fight the suit
entered against him, and not to sit in obstinate slumber while his enemies
destroyed him.
After this for some weeks the stream of messengers ceased, and even
Malachi breathed more freely. He still, however, kept his eye lifting,
and was able to intercept the document announcing that in the case
of "Stephen _versus_ Stephen," judgment had been entered against the
defendant, who was hereby commanded to evade the premises and yield up
possession without delay. This also he destroyed.
But there arrived a morning when, as Roger sat at breakfast, the old man
came running with news of a gang of men on the road, not six hundred yards
away, and approaching the house.
"Are the gates bolted?" asked Roger, rising and taking down two guns from
the rack over the chimney-piece.
"Ay, master, bolted and locked." With some vague notion that thereby he
asserted possession, Roger had bought new padlocks and clapped them on all
three gates--the wrought-iron one admitting to the courtlage, the side
wicket, and the great folding-doors of the stable-yard at the back.
"Where's Joseph?"--this was the farm-hind.
"In the challs." [Cattle sheds.]
"Take you this gun and give him the other, and you're to fire on anyone
who tries to force the stable gate. They're loaded, the pair of 'em, with
buckshot. Now, this fellow,"--he reached down a third gun--"is loaded
blank, and here's another with a bullet in him. I'll take these out to
the front."
"But, master, 'tis a hanging matter!"
"And I'll hang, and so shall you, before e'er a one o' these scoundrels
sets foot in Steens. Go you off quick and tell Joseph, if there's
trouble, to let slip the tether of the shorthorn bull."
Roger crammed a powder-flask into one pocket with a handful of wadding, a
bag of bullets into another, took his two guns, and went forth into the
courtlage, in time to see a purple-faced man in an ill-fitting Dalmahoy
wig climb off his horse and advance to the gate, with half a dozen
retainers behind him.
He tried the latch, and, finding it locked, began to shake the gate by the
bars.
"Hullo!" said Roger. "And who may you be, making so bold?"
"Is your name Roger Stephen?" the purple-faced man demanded.
"I asked you a question first. Drop shaking my gate and answer it, or
else take yourself off."
"And I order you to open at once, sir! I'm the Under-Sheriff of Cornwall,
and I've come with a writ of ejectment. You've defied the law long
enough, Master Stephen; you've brought me far; and, if you've ever heard
the name of William Sandercock, you know he's one to stand no nonsense."
"I never heard tell of you," said Roger, appearing to search his memory;
"but speaking off-hand and at first sight, I should say you was either
half-drunk or tolerably unlucky in your face." And indeed the
Under-Sheriff had set out from Truro at dawn and imbibed much brandy on
the road.
"Open the gate!" he foamed.
Roger stepped back and chose his gun. "You'd best lead him away quiet,"
he advised the men in the road. "You won't? Then I'll give the fool till
I count three. One--two--three." And he let off his gun full in the
Under-Sheriff's face.
The poor man staggered back, clapped his hand to his jaw, and howled; for
the discharge was close enough to scorch his face and singe his wig.
Also one eyebrow was burnt, and before he knew if he still retained his
sight, his horse had plunged free and was galloping down the road with the
whole posse in pursuit, and only too glad of the excuse for running.
"Turn loose the bull!" shouted Roger, swinging round towards the house.
The Under-Sheriff found his legs, and bolted for dear life after his horse.