"H'out yer goes!" repeated the landlord. "And think yerself lucky it
aint worse," added the drover.
With no further defence I slunk out into the night once more.
A small crowd of children (Heaven knows whence or how they gathered)
followed me up the court and out into the street. Their numbers
swelled as I went on, and some began to hoot and pelt me; but when I
gained the top of the hill, and a lonelier district, I turned and
struck among them with my stick. It did my heart good to hear their
screams.
After that I was let alone, and tramped forward past the scattered
houses, towards the open country and the moors. Up here there was
scarcely any fog, but I could see it, by the rising moon, hanging
like a shroud over the town below. The next town was near upon
twelve miles off, but I do not remember that I thought of getting so
far. I could not have thought at all, in fact, or I should hardly
have taken the high-road upon which the jeweller had been stopped and
murdered.
There was a shrewd wind blowing, and I shivered all over; but the
cold at my heart was worse, and my hate of the man who had set it
there grew with every step. I thought of the four months and more
which parted the two lives of Gabriel Foot, and what I should make of
the new one. I had my chance again--a chance gained for me beyond
hope by that counsel but for whom I should be sleeping to-night in
the condemned cell; a chance, and a good chance, but for that same
cursed lawyer. Ugh! how cold it was, and how I hated _him_ for it!
There was a little whitewashed cottage on the edge of the moorland
just after the hedgerows ceased--the last house before the barren
heath began, standing a full three hundred yards from any other
dwelling. Its front faced the road, and at the back an outhouse and
a wretched garden jutted out on the waste land. There was a light in
each of its windows tonight, and as I passed down the road I heard
the dismal music of a flute.
Perhaps it was this that jogged my thoughts and woke them up to my
present pass. At any rate, I had not gone more than twenty yards
before I turned and made for the door. The people might give me a
night's lodging in the outhouse; at any rate, they would not refuse a
crust to stay the fast which I had not broken since the morning.
I tapped gently with my knuckles on the door, and listened.
I waited five minutes, and no one answered. The flute still
continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a
learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept
breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. But the performer had
patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a
time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. The blinds were drawn
in all the windows. The glow of the candles through them was
cheerful enough, but nothing could be seen of the house inside.
I knocked a second time, and a third, with the same result.
Finally, tired of this, I pushed open the low gate which led into the
garden behind, and stole round to the back of the cottage.
Here, too, the window on the ground floor was lit up behind its
blinds, but that of the room above was shuttered. There was a hole
in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and
a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried
itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the
loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the
flute-playing was going on. The crackling of my footsteps on the
thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of
earth and pitched it up against the pane. The flute stopped for a
minute or so, but just as I was expecting to see the shutter open,
went on again: this time the air was "Pretty Polly Oliver."
I crept back again, and began to hammer more loudly at the door.
"Come," said I, "whoever this may be inside, I'll see for myself at
any rate," and with that I lifted the latch and gave the door a heavy
kick. It flew open quite easily (it had not even been locked), and I
found myself in a low kitchen. The room was empty, but the relics of
supper lay on the deal table, and the remains of what must have been
a noble fire were still smouldering on the hearthstone. A crazy,
rusty blunderbuss hung over the fireplace. This, with a couple of
rough chairs, a broken bacon-rack, and a small side-table, completed
the furniture of the place. No; for as I sat down to make a meal off
the remnants of supper, something lying on the lime-ash floor beneath
this side-table caught my eye. I stepped forward and picked it up.
It was a barrister's wig.
"This is a queer business," thought I; and I laid it on the table
opposite me as I went on with my supper. It was a "gossan" wig, as
we call it in our parts; a wig grown yellow and rusty with age and
wear. It looked so sly and wicked as it lay there, and brought back
the events of the day so sharply that a queer dread took me of being
discovered with it. I pulled out my pistol, loaded it (they had
given me back both the powder and pistol found on me when I was
taken), and laid it beside my plate. This done, I went on with my
supper--it was an excellent cold capon--and all the time the flute
up-stairs kept toot-tootling without stopping, except to change the
tune. It gave me "Hearts of Oak," "Why, Soldiers, why?" "Like Hermit
Poor," and "Come, Lasses and Lads," before I had fairly cleared the
dish.
"And now," thought I, "I have had a good supper; but there are still
three things to be done. In the first place I want drink, in the
second I want a bed, and in the third I want to thank this kind
person, whoever he is, for his hospitality. I'm not going to begin
life No. 2 with housebreaking."
I rose, slipped the pistol into my tail-pocket, and followed the
sound up the ramshackle stairs. My footsteps made such a racket on
their old timbers as fairly to frighten me, but it never disturbed
the flute-player. He had harked back again to "Like Hermit Poor" by
this time, and the dolefulness of it was fit to make the dead cry
out, but he went whining on until I reached the head of the stairs
and struck a rousing knock on the door.
The playing stopped. "Come in," said a cheery voice; but it gave me
no cheerfulness. Instead of that, it sent all the comfort of my
supper clean out of me, as I opened the door and saw _him_ sitting
there.
There he was, the man who had saved my neck that day, and whom most I
hated in the world, sitting before a snug fire, with his flute on his
knee, a glass of port wine at his elbow, and looking so comfortable,
with that knowing light in his grey eyes, that I could have killed
him where he sat.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, just the very least bit surprised and
no more. "Come in."