They did not know exactly where to go, for the guidance afforded by a
sound is very deceptive, but there had been the splash of water, so that
the shot must have been from somewhere at the foot of the Toft, down
where the meadow land gave place to rough marsh, bog, and reedy water.
Dick listened as he ran; but there was no splash now--no sound of
footstep.
As the lads advanced the dawning light increased, and a startled bird
flew out from the bushes, another from a tuft of dry grass; and once
more there was the _chink_--_chink_ of a blackbird. The day was
awakening, and Dick Winthorpe asked himself what the dawn was to show.
It was still dark enough to necessitate care, and over the mere as they
neared it a low mist hung, completely screening its waters as they
vainly attempted to pierce the gloom.
Plash, plash through the boggy parts of the mere fringe, for Dick had
not paused to follow any track, stumbling among tufts of grass and marsh
growth, they hurried on with eager eyes, longing to shout, but afraid,
for there was a growing horror upon both the lads of having to be
shortly in presence of some terrible scene.
They neither of them spoke, but mutually clung together for support,
though all the time there was a strange repugnance in Dick's breast as
he now began to realise the strength of the suspicion he entertained.
But if they dared not shout, there was some one near at hand ready to
utter a lusty cry, which startled them as it rang out of the gloom from
away down by the labourers' cottages and the wheelwright's.
"Ahoy! Hillo!" rang out.
"Hillo, Hicky!" yelled Tom. "Here!"
"Where away, lads?" came back; and then there was the dull low beat of
feet, and they heard the wheelwright shout to his apprentice to follow
him.
The two little parties joined directly, to stand in the mist all panting
and excited, the wheelwright half-dressed, and his bare head rough from
contact with the pillow.
"Hey, lads," he cried, "was that you two shouting?"
Dick tried to speak, but he could not frame a word.
"No; we heard it from somewhere down here," panted Tom.
"I heered it too," cried Jacob, "and wackened the mester."
"Ay, that's a true word," cried Hickathrift. "What does it mean?"
"Hicky," panted Dick in piteous tones, "I don't know--I'm afraid I--my
father's out here somewhere."
"Hey! The squire?" cried Hickathrift with a curious stare at first one
and then the other. "Yow don't think--"
He paused, and Dick replied in a whisper:
"Yes, Hicky, I do."
"Here, let's search about; it's getting light fast. Now, then," cried
the wheelwright, "yow go that way, Jacob; I'll go this; and you two
lads--"
"No, no," said Dick. "It must be somewhere close by here, near the
water. Let's keep together, please."
"Aw reight!" muttered the wheelwright; and following Dick they went as
close to the water's edge as they could go, and crept along, with the
bushes and trees growing more plain to view, and the sky showing one
dull orange fleck as the advance guard of the coming glory of the morn.
They went along for a couple of hundred yards in one direction, but
there was nothing to be seen; then a couple of hundred yards in the
other direction, but there was nothing visible there. And as the light
grew stronger they sought about them, seeing clearly now that the
ghastly figure Dick dreaded to find was nowhere as far as they could
make out inshore.
"Hillo!" shouted Hickathrift again and again; "squire!"
There was no reply, and the chill of horror increased as the feeling
that they were searching in vain out and in pressed itself upon all, and
they knew that the man they sought must be in the water.
"Here, howd hard," cried Hickathrift. "What a moodle head I am! You,
Jacob, run back and let loose owd Grip."
The apprentice ran back as hard as he could, and the group remained in
silence till they saw him disappear behind the shed. Then there was a
loud burst of barking.
Hickathrift whistled, and the great long-legged lurcher came bounding
over the rough boggy land, to leap at his master and then stand panting,
open-mouthed, eager, and ready to dart anywhere his owner bade.
"Here, Grip, lad, find him, then--find him, boy!"
The dog uttered one low, growling bark, and then bounded off, hurrying
here and there in the wildest way, while the boys watched intently.
"Will he find him, Hicky?" said Dick huskily.
"Ay, or anyone else," said the wheelwright, who alternately watched the
dog, and swept the surface of the mere wherever the mist allowed.
"There! Look at that!" he cried, as, after a minute, the dog settled
down to a steady hunt, with his nose close to the ground, and rapidly
followed the track lately taken by someone who had passed.
"But perhaps he is following our steps!" said Dick excitedly.
"Nay, not he. Theer, what did I tell you?" cried Hickathrift as the dog
suddenly stopped by the water, opposite to a thick bed of reeds a dozen
yards or so from the bank.
Dick turned pale; the wheelwright ran down to the edge of the mere; and
as the dog stood by the water barking loudly, Hickathrift waded in
without hesitation, the boys following, with Grip swimming and snorting
at their side, and taking up the chase again as soon as he reached the
reeds.
It was only a matter of minutes now before the dog had rushed on before
them, disappeared in the long growth, and then they heard him barking
furiously.
"Let me go first, Mester Dick," said Hickathrift hoarsely. "Nay, don't,
lad."
There was a kindly tone of sympathy in the great fellow's voice, but
Dick did not give way. He splashed on through the reeds, his position
having placed him in advance of his companions, and parting the tall
growth he uttered a cry of pain.
The others joined him directly, and stood for a moment gazing down at
where, standing on the very edge of the mere, Dick was holding up his
father's head from where he lay insensible among the reeds, his face
white and drawn, his eyes nearly closed, and his hands clenched and
stretched out before him.
Hickathrift said not a word, but, as in similar cases before, he raised
the inanimate form, hung it over his shoulder, and waded back to firm
ground.
"Hey, Mester Dick," he said huskily, as he hurried towards his cottage,
"I nivver thowt to hev seen a sight like this."
"No, no," cried Dick; "not there."
"Yes, I'll tak' him home to my place," whispered Hickathrift. "You'd
scare your mother to dead. Here, Jacob, lad, don't stop to knock or ask
questions, but go and tak' squire's cob, and ride him hard to town for
doctor."
"Tell my father as you go by, Jacob," cried Tom excitedly; and as the
apprentice dashed off, Tom's eyes met those of Dick.
"Don't look so wild and strange, Dick, old chap," whispered the lad
kindly; and he laid a hand upon Dick's shoulder, but the boy shrank from
him with a shudder which the other could not comprehend.
Hickathrift shouted to his wife, who had risen and dressed in his
absence, and in a short time the squire was lying upon a mattress with
Hickathrift eagerly searching for the injury which had laid him low; but
when he found it, the wound seemed so small and trifling that he looked
wondering up at Dick.
"That couldn't have done it," he said in a whisper.
The wheelwright was wrong. That tiny blue wound in the strong man's
chest had been sufficient to lay him there helpless, and so near death
that a feeling of awe fell upon those who watched and waited, and tried
to revive the victim of this last outrage.
It was a terrible feeling of helplessness that which pervaded the place.
There was nothing to do save bathe the wounded man's brow and moisten
his lips with a little of the smuggled spirit with which most of the
coast cottages were provided in those distant days. There was no blood
to staunch, nothing to excite, nothing to do but wait, wait for the
doctor's coming.
Before very long Farmer Tallington arrived, and as he encountered Dick's
eyes fixed upon him he turned very pale, and directly after, when he
bent over the squire's couch and took his hand, the lad saw that he
trembled violently.
"It's straange and horrible--it's straange and horrible," he said: "only
yesterday he was like I am: as strong and well as a man can be; while
now--Hickathrift, my lad, do you think he'll die?"
The wheelwright shook his head--he could not trust himself to speak; and
Dick stood with a sensation of rage gathering in his breast, which made
him feel ready to spring at Farmer Tallington's throat, and accuse him
of being his father's murderer.
"The hypocrite--the cowardly hypocrite!" he said to himself; "but we
know now, and he shall be punished."
The boy's anger was fast growing so ungovernable that he was about to
fly out and denounce his school-fellow's father, but just then a hasty
step was heard outside, and a familiar voice exclaimed:
"Where is my husband?"
The next minute Mrs Winthorpe was in the room, wild-eyed and pale, but
perfectly collected in her manner and acts.
"How long will it be before the doctor can get here?" she said hoarsely,
as she passed her arm under the injured man's neck, and pressed her lips
to his white brow.
"Hickathrift's lad went off at a hard gallop," said Farmer Tallington in
a voice full of sympathy. "Please God, Mrs Winthorpe, we'll save him
yet."
Dick uttered a hoarse cry and staggered out of the room, for the man's
hypocrisy maddened him, and he knew that if he stayed he should speak
out and say all he knew.
As he reached the little garden there was a step behind him, a hand was
laid upon his shoulder, another grasped his arm.
"I can't talk and say things, Dicky," said Tom in a low half-choking
voice; "but I want to comfort you. Don't break down, old fellow. The
doctor will save his life."
This from the son of the man whom he believed to have shot his father!
and the rage Dick felt against the one seemed to be ready to fall upon
the other. But as his eyes met those of his old school-fellow and
companion full of sorrowful sympathy, Dick could only grasp Tom's hands,
feeling that he was a true friend, and in no wise answerable for his
father's sins.
"Ay, that's right," said a low, rough voice. "Nowt like sticking
together and helping each other in trouble. Bud don't you fret, Mester
Dick. Squire's a fine stark man, and the missus has happed him up
waarm, and you see the doctor will set him right."
"Thank you, Hicky," said Dick, calming down; and then he stood thinking
and asking himself how he could denounce the father of his old friend
and companion as the man who, for some hidden reason of his own, was the
plotter and executor of all these outrages.
At one moment he felt that he could not do this. At another there was
the blank suffering face of his father before his eyes, seeming to ask
him to revenge his injuries and to bring a scoundrel to justice.
For a time Dick was quite determined; but directly after there came
before him the face of poor, kind-hearted Mrs Tallington, who had
always treated him with the greatest hospitality, while, as he seemed to
look at her eyes pleading upon her husband's behalf, Tom took his hand
and wrung it.
"I'm going to stick by you, Dick," he said; "and you and I are going to
find out who did this, and when we do we'll show him what it is to shoot
at people, and burn people's homesteads, and hough their beasts."
Dick gazed at him wildly. Tom going to help him run his own father down
and condemn him by giving evidence when it was all found out!
Impossible! Those words of his old companion completely disarmed him
for the moment, and to finish his discomfiture, just then Farmer
Tallington came out of the cottage looking whiter and more haggard than
before.
He came to where the wheelwright was standing, and spoke huskily.
"I can't bear it," he said. "It is too horrible. Might hev been me,
and what would my poor lass do? Hickathrift, mun, the villain who does
all this must be found out."
"Ay, farmer, but how?"
"I don't know how," said the farmer, gazing from one to the other. "I
on'y know it must be done. If I'd gone on this morning I might have
found out something, but I went back."
Dick gazed at him searchingly, but the farmer did not meet his eyes.
"I've been straange and fidgety ever since my fire," continued the
farmer; "and it's med me get out o' bed o' nights and look round for
fear of another. I was out o' bed towards morning last night, and as I
looked I could see yonder on the mere what seemed to be a lanthorn."
"You saw that?" said Dick involuntarily.
"Ay, lad, I saw that," said the farmer, rubbing his hands together
softly; "and first of all I thowt it was a will-o'-the-wisp, but it
didn't go about like one o' they, and as it went out directly and came
again, I thought it was some one wi' a light."
"What, out on the watter?" said Hickathrift.
"Yes, my lad; out on the watter," said the farmer; "and that med me say
to mysen: What's any one doing wi' a light out on the watter at this
time? and I could on'y think as they wanted it to set fire to some one's
plaace, and I couldn't stop abed and think that. So I got up, and went
down to the shore, got into my owd punt, and loosed her, and went out
torst wheer I'd seen the light."
"And did you see it, mester?" said Hickathrift.
"Nay, my lad. I went on and on as quietly as I could go, and round the
reed-bed, but all was as quiet as could be."
"Didn't you see the poont?" said the wheelwright.
"What punt?" said Tom sharply.
Hickathrift looked confused.
"Poont o' him as hed the light, I meant," he said hurriedly.
"Nay, not a sign of it," said Farmer Tallington; "and at last I turned
back and poled gently home, keeping a sharp look-out and listening all
the way, but I niver see nowt nor heered nowt. But if I'd kept out on
the waiter I should p'raps have seen and saved my poor owd neighbour."
"You might, mebbe," said the wheelwright thoughtfully; while, after
gazing in the faces of the two men and trying to read the truth, Dick
turned away with his suspicions somewhat blunted, to go to his mother's
side, and watch with her till the sound of hoofs on the rough track told
that the messenger had returned.