WALTER.
The wind was westerly, and the boat ran fast down the river from
Gravesend; Roberts and Andrew, both in civilian clothes, were sitting in
the bows, where there were stowed a large hamper and a small
traveling-bag with some clothes. One waterman sat by the mast, in case
it should be necessary to lower sail; the other was aft at the tiller.
The men must have thought that they had never had so silent and grave a
pleasure party before: two elderly gentlemen and two girls, none of whom
seemed inclined to make merry in any way. Colonel Bulstrode, indeed,
tried hard to keep up a conversation about the ships, barges, and other
craft that they met, or which lay at anchor in the stream, and recalling
reminiscences of trips on Indian rivers.
Netta was the only one of his hearers who apparently took any interest
in the talk. To her the scene was so new that she regarded everything
with attention and pleasure, and looked with wonder at the great ships
which were dragged along by tiny tugs, wondered at the rate at which the
clumsy-looking barges made their way through the water, and enjoyed the
rapid and easy motion with which their own boat glided along. Mr.
Pettigrew was revolving in his mind the problem of what should next be
done; while Hilda's thoughts were centered upon Walter, and the joy that
it would be to have him with her again.
"This is Hole Haven," the boatman in the stern said, as a wide sheet of
water opened on their left.
"Why don't you turn in, then?" Colonel Bulstrode asked.
"There is scarce water enough for us, sir; they are neap tides at
present, and in half an hour the sands will begin to show all over
there. We have to go in onto the farther side--that is, where the
channel is. You see those craft at anchor; there is the landing, just in
front of the low roof you see over the bank. That is the 'Lobster
Smack,' and a very comfortable house it is; and you can get as good a
glass of beer there as anywhere on the river."
As they turned into the creek they saw two constables on the top of the
bank, and at the head of the steps stood a gentleman talking with a
coastguard officer.
"That is my friend, Mr. Bostock," Mr. Pettigrew said. "He told me that,
if he could manage it, he would drive over himself with the two
constables. I am glad that he has been able to do so; his presence will
strengthen our hands."
A coast guard boat, with four sailors in it, was lying close to the
steps, and the officer came down with Mr. Bostock, followed by the two
constables. The magistrate greeted Mr. Pettigrew and took his place in
the boat beside him, after being introduced to the two ladies and the
Colonel. The officer with the two constables stepped into the coastguard
boat, which rowed on ahead of the other.
"I could not resist the temptation of coming over to see the end of this
singular affair, of which I heard from Mr. Pettigrew," Mr. Bostock said
to Hilda. "The officer of the coastguard is going on, partly to show us
the way to the house, and partly because it will be a good opportunity
for him to search the place thoroughly for smuggled goods. He tells me
that the barge is up the creek now; it went up yesterday evening. So we
may find the fellow at home."
"Now, my men," Colonel Bulstrode said to the boatmen, "we have got to
follow that boat. You will have plenty of time for beer when you get
there, and a good lunch besides. So pull your hardest; we have not got
very far to go. Can either of you men row?"
[Illustration: "I AM A MAGISTRATE OF THE COUNTY OF ESSEX."--_Page 289._]
"I can pull a bit," Roberts said, and, aided by the sail and the
three oars, the boat went along at a fair rate through the water, the
coastguard boat keeping a short distance ahead of them. After a quarter
of an hour's rowing the bargeman's house came in view. The revenue
officer pointed to it.
"Now, row your hardest, men," Colonel Bulstrode said; "we have but a
hundred yards further to go."
The two boats rowed up to the bank together; Mr. Bostock sprang out, as
did the constables and sailors, and ran up the bank, the others
following at once. As they appeared on the bank a boy working in the
garden gave a shrill whistle; a man immediately appeared at the door and
looked surprised at the appearance of the party. He stepped back a foot,
and then, as if changing his mind, came out and closed the door after
him.
"I am a magistrate of the County of Essex," Mr. Bostock said, "and I
have come to see a warrant executed for the search of your house for a
child named Walter Rivington, who is believed to be concealed here, and
who has been stolen from the care of his guardians."
"I know nothing of any child of that name," the man replied, "but I have
a child here that I am taking care of for a gentleman in London; I have
had him here for just a year, and no one has made any inquiries about
him. You are welcome to enter and see if he is the one you are in search
of. If he is, all that I can say is that I know nothing about his being
stolen, and shall be very sorry to lose him."
He stood aside, and the two constables entered, followed closely by
Hilda. The latter gave a cry of joy, for seated on the ground, playing
with a box of soldiers, was Walter. She would hardly have known him
anywhere else. His curls had been cut short, his face was brown and
tanned, and his clothes, although scrupulously clean, were such as would
be worn by any bargeman's boy at that age. The child looked up as they
entered. Hilda ran to him, and caught him up in her arms.
"Don't you know me, Walter? Don't you remember Cousin Hilda?"
"Yes, I remember you," the child said, now returning her embrace. "You
used to tell me stories and take me out in a carriage for drives. Where
have you been so long? And where is grandpapa? Oh, here is Netta!" and
as Hilda put him down he ran to her, for during the four months spent in
the country she had been his chief playmate.
"I have learned to swim, Netta. Uncle Bill has taught me himself; and he
is going to take me out in his barge some day."
The woman, who had come in with her arms covered with lather, from the
little washhouse adjoining the house, now came forward.
"I hope, miss, that there is nothing wrong," she said to Hilda. "We have
done our best for the little boy, and I have come to care for him just
as if he had been my own; and if you are going to take him away I shall
miss him dreadful, for he is a dear little fellow," and she burst into
tears.
Walter struggled from Netta's arms, and ran to the woman, and, pulling
her by the apron, said:
"Don't cry, Aunt Betsy; Jack is not going away from you. Jack will stay
here; he likes going in a barge better than riding in a carriage."
"Well, Miss Covington," Mr. Bostock said, "the recognition appears to be
complete on both sides; now what is the next step? Do you give this man
into custody for unlawfully concealing this child and aiding and
abetting in his abduction?"
"Will you wait a minute while I speak to Mr. Pettigrew?" she said; and
they went out of the house together.
"Well, what do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?"
"I have been thinking it over all the way as we came down," the lawyer
said. "Of course, we have no shadow of proof that this man was aware who
the child was, and, in fact, if he had seen the placards offering
altogether fifteen hundred pounds for his recovery, we must certainly
assume that he would have given him up; for however well he may have
been paid for taking charge of him, the offer would have been too
tempting for a man of that kind to have resisted. No doubt he had strong
suspicions, but you can hardly say that it amounted to guilty knowledge
that the child had been abducted. If Walter had been ill-treated I
should have said at once, 'Give him into custody'; but this does not
seem to have been the case."
"No; they have evidently been very kind to him. I am so grateful for
that that I should be sorry to do the man any harm."
"That is not the only point," the lawyer went on. "It is evident that
the other people very seldom come down here, and from what you heard, in
future Simcoe is going to write. If we arrest this man the others will
know at once that the game is up. Now, if you will take the child away
quietly, we can tell the man that he shall not be prosecuted, providing
that he takes no steps whatever to inform his employers that the child
is gone; even if one of them came down here to see the child, the wife
must say that he is away on the barge. Anyhow, we shall have ample time
to decide upon what steps to take against Simcoe, and can lay hands upon
him whenever we choose; whereas, if he got an inkling that we had
discovered the child, he and his associate would probably disappear at
once, and we might have lots of trouble to find them."
"Yes, I think that would be a very good plan, Mr. Pettigrew. I will ask
him and his wife to come out."
"That will be the best way, my dear. We could hardly discuss the matter
before Bostock."
Hilda went in. As soon as she spoke to the man and his wife Mr. Bostock
said, "If you want a conference, Miss Covington, I will go out and leave
you to talk matters over."
He and the two constables withdrew, and Mr. Pettigrew came in.
"Now, my man," he began, "you must see that you have placed yourself in
a very awkward position. You are found taking care of a child that has
been stolen, and for whose recovery large rewards have been offered all
over the country. It is like the case of a man found hiding stolen
goods. He would be called upon to account for their being in his
possession. Now, it is hardly possible that you can have been ignorant
that this child was stolen. You may not have been told so in words, but
you cannot have helped having suspicions. From what the child no doubt
said when he first came here, you must have been sure that he had been
brought up in luxury. No doubt he spoke of rides in a carriage, of
servants, his nurse, and so on. However, Miss Covington is one of the
child's guardians, and I am the other, and we are most reluctant to give
you in charge. It is evident, from the behavior of the child, and from
the affection that he shows to yourself and your wife, that you have
treated him very kindly since he has been here, and these toys I see
about show that you have done your best to make him happy."
"That we have, sir," the man said. "Betsy and I took to him from the
first. We have no children of our own, none living at least, and we have
made as much of him as if he had been one of our own--perhaps more. We
have often talked it over, and both thought that we were not doing the
fair thing by him, and were, perhaps, keeping him out of his own. I did
not like having anything to do with it at first, but I had had some
business with the man who gave him to me, and when he asked me to
undertake the job it did not seem to me so serious an affair as it has
done since. I am heartily sorry that we have had any hand in it; not
only because we have done the child harm, but because it seems that we
are going to lose him now that we have come to care for him as if he was
our own."
"Of course you played only a minor part in the business, Nibson. We
quite understand that, and it is the men who have carried out this
abduction that we want to catch. Do you know the name of the man who
brought the child to you?"
"I don't, sir. He knows where to find me, but I have no more idea than a
child unborn who he is or where he lives. When he writes to me, which he
generally does before he comes down, which may be two or three times a
month, or may be once in six months, he signs himself Smith. I don't
suppose that is his right name, but I say fairly that if I knew it, and
where he lived, I would not peach upon him. He has always been straight
with me in the business I have done with him, and I would rather take
six months for this affair than say anything against him."
"We are not asking you at present to say anything against him, and he is
not the principal man in this business. I believe he is only acting as
agent for another more dangerous rascal than himself. We are not
prepared at the present moment to arrest the chief scoundrel. Before we
do that we must obtain evidence that will render his conviction a
certainty. We have reason to believe that this man that you know will
not come down for some time, and that you will receive the money for the
child's keep by post; but if we abstain altogether from prosecuting you
in this matter, you must give us your word that you will not take any
steps whatever to let them know that the child is no longer with you. He
says that you promised to take him out in your barge. Well, if by any
chance this man--not your man, but the other--comes down here, and wants
to see the child, you or your wife will lead him to believe that he is
on board your barge. It will also be necessary that, if we do arrest
them, you should enter as a witness to prove that the man handed the
child over to you. You could let it be seen that you are an unwilling
witness, but the evidence of the handing over of the child will be an
absolute necessity."
"All right, sir, I will undertake that. There is no fear of my letting
him know that the child has gone, for I don't know where to write him;
and if he or the other should come down, if I am here I shall have no
difficulty in keeping it from him that the child has gone, for my man
has never set foot in this house. He just meets me on the road near
Pitsea, says what he has to say, and gives me what he has to give me,
and then drives off again. Of course, if I am summoned as a witness, I
know that the law can make me go. I remember now that when he gave me
the child he said he was doing it to oblige a friend of his, and he may
be able to prove that he had nothing to do with carrying it off."
"That is as it may be," the lawyer said dryly. "However, we are quite
content with your promise."
"And I thank you most heartily, you and your wife," Hilda Covington said
warmly, "for your kindness to the child. It would have made me very
happy all this time if I could have known that he was in such good
hands, but I pictured him shut up in some vile den in London, ill
treated, and half starved. He has grown very much since he has been with
you, and looks a great deal more boyish than he did."
"Yes, he plays a good deal with my barge boy, who has taken to him just
as we have."
"Well, your kindness will not be forgotten nor unrewarded, Mr. Nibson."
"I'm sure we don't want any reward, miss; we have been well paid. But
even if we hadn't been paid at all after the first month, we should have
gone on keeping him just the same."
"Now, Walter," Hilda said, "we want you to come home with us; we have
all been wanting you very badly. Nurse and Tom Roberts have been in a
terrible way, and so has Dr. Leeds. You remember him, don't you? He was
very kind to you all the time that you were down in the country."
The child nodded. "I should like to see Tom Roberts and nurse, but I
don't want to go away. I am going out in the barge soon."
"Well, dear, I dare say that we shall be able to arrange for you to come
down sometimes, and to go out in it, especially as you have learned to
swim. We are going away now in a boat."
"I often go out in the boat," Walter pouted. "I go with Joshua; he is a
nice boy, Joshua is, and I like him."
"Well, dear, we will see what we can do for Joshua."
"You are sure that I shall come back and go out in the barge?"
"Quite sure, dear; and perhaps I will go out with you, too."
"Yes, you must go, like a good boy," Mrs. Nibson said. "You know, dear,
that I shall always love you, and shall be very, very glad if the ladies
can spare you to come down to see me sometimes. You won't forget me,
will you?"
"No, Aunt Betsy, I shall never forget you; I promise you that," the
child said. "And I don't want to go away from you at all, only Cousin
Hilda says I must."
Mr. Pettigrew went out to tell Mr. Bostock that they should not give
Nibson into custody.
"The principal scoundrels would take the alarm instantly," he said,
"and, above all things, we want to keep them in the dark until we are
ready to arrest them. It will be much better that we should have this
man to call as a witness than that he should appear in the dock as an
accomplice."
"I think that you are right there," the magistrate agreed; "and really,
he and his wife seem to have been very kind to the child. I have been
talking to this young barge boy. It seems he is no relation of these
people. His mother was a tramp, who died one winter's night on the road
to Pitsea. He was about ten or eleven years old then, and they would
have sent him to the workhouse; but Nibson, who was on the coroner's
jury, volunteered to take him, and I dare say he finds him very useful
on board the barge. At any rate, he has been well treated, and says that
Nibson is the best master on the river. So the fellow must have some
good in him, though, from what the coastguard officer said, there are
very strong suspicions that he is mixed up in the smuggling business,
which, it seems, is still carried on in these marshes. Well, no doubt
you have decided wisely; and now, I suppose, we shall be off."
At this moment they were joined by the coastguard officer.
"He has done us again," he said. "We have been investigating these
outhouses thoroughly, and there is no question that he has had smuggled
goods here. We found a clever hiding-place in that cattle-shed. It
struck me that it was a curious thing that there should be a stack of
hay built up right against the side of it. So we took down a plank or
two, and I was not surprised to find that there was a hollow in the
stack. One of the men stamped his foot, and the sound showed that there
was another hollow underneath. We dug up the ground, and found, six
inches below it, a trapdoor, and on lifting it discovered a hole five or
six feet deep and six feet square. It was lined with bricks, roughly
cemented together. It is lucky for him that the place is empty, and I
should think that after this he will go out of the business for a time.
Of course we cannot arrest a man merely for having a hidden cellar; I
fancy that there are not many houses on the marshes that have not some
places of the sort. Indeed, I am rather glad that we did not catch him,
for in other respects Nibson is a decent, hard-working fellow. Sometimes
he has a glass or two at the 'Lobster Smack,' but never takes too much,
and is always very quiet and decent in his talk. I doubt whether the men
would have found that hiding-place if I had not been there; they all
know him well, and would not get him into a scrape if they could help
it, though there are some fellows on the marshes they would give a
month's pay to catch with kegs or tobacco."
The door of the house opened, and the three women and Nibson came out
with Walter, who was now dressed in the clothes that they had brought
down for him.
While the others were getting ready to enter the boat the officer took
Nibson aside.
"You have had a close squeak of it, Nibson; we found your hiding-place
under the stack, and it is lucky for you that it was empty. So we have
nothing to say to you. I should advise you to give it up, my man; sooner
or later you are bound to be caught."
The man's brow had darkened as the officer began, but it cleared up
again.
"All right," he said; "I have been thinking for the last half hour that
I shall drop the business altogether, but when a man once gets into it,
it is not so easy to get out. Now that you have found that cellar, it is
a good excuse to cut it. I can well say that I dare not risk it again,
for that, after so nearly catching me, you would be sure to keep an
extra sharp eye on me in the future."
"You give me your word for that, Nibson?"
"Yes, sir; I swear off it altogether from the present day."
"Good. I will take your word for it, and you can go in and come out as
you like without being watched, and you need not fear that we shall pay
you another visit."
Walter went off in fair spirits. The promise that he should come down
again and see his friends and have a sail in the barge lessened the pang
of leaving, and as Hilda's and Netta's faces came more strongly back to
him, as they talked to him and recalled pleasant things that had almost
faded from his memory, he went away contentedly, while Betsy Nibson went
back to the house and had what she called "a good cry." She too,
however, cheered up when her husband told her how narrow an escape he
had had, and how he had given his word that he would drop smuggling
altogether.
"That makes my mind easier than it has been for years, Bill. And will
you give up the other thing, too? There may not be much harm in running
kegs and bacca, but there is no doubt about its being wrong to have
anything to do with stolen goods and to mix yourself up with men who
steal them."
"Yes, I will give that up, too, Betsy; and, as soon as I have time to
look round, I will give an order for a new barge to be built for me. I
have been ashamed of the old thing for a long time past with her patched
sails. Of course, she suited my purpose, for when the other barges kept
on their course it gave me a good excuse for anchoring; but it aint
pleasant to have every barge passing you. There is old Joe Hargett; he
said the other day that, if I ever thought of getting a new barge, he
would give a hundred for her. He has got a set of decent sails, and he
is a pretty handy carpenter, and no doubt he will make her look decent
again. A hundred pounds aint much, but it will help. I can get a new one
complete, sails and all, for fourteen or fifteen hundred, and have a
hundred or two left in the bag afterwards. I tell you what, Betsy, I
will get an extra comfortable cabin made, and a place forward for
Joshua. It will be dull for you here now the child is gone, and it would
be a sight more comfortable for us both to be always together."
"That it will, Bill," she said joyfully. "I was always very happy on
board till we lost our Billy. I took a dislike to it then, and was glad
enough to come here; but I have got over it now, and this place is very
lonely during the long winter nights when you are away."
Then they talked over the barge, and how the cabin should be fitted up,
and, in spite of having lost Walter, the evening was a pleasant one to
them.
That was not the only conversation that took place that day with
reference to a new barge for Bill Nibson. As they rowed up against the
tide, Hilda said:
"We must do something for that bargeman, Colonel Bulstrode. I am sure we
cannot be too grateful to him and his wife for their treatment of
Walter. Think how different it might have been had he fallen into bad
hands. Now he looks the picture of health; the change in the life and
the open air has done wonders. You know, Dr. Leeds said that the officer
of the coastguard had told him that Nibson's barge was one of the oldest
and rottenest crafts on the river. Now, I propose that we buy him a new
one. What would it cost, Colonel Bulstrode?"
"I have not the slightest idea," the Colonel replied; "it might cost
five hundred pounds, or it might cost five thousand, for all I know."
"I will ask the waterman," Hilda said, and raising her voice she said,
"How much do barges cost when they are new?"
"From ten or eleven hundred up to fifteen," the man said.
"Does that include sails and all?"
"Yes, miss; down to the boat."
"Who is considered the best barge-builder?"
"Well, there are a good many of them, miss; but I should say that Gill,
of Rochester, is considered as good as any."
"What do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?" Hilda said. "Should we, as Walter's
guardians, be justified in spending this money? Mind, I don't care a bit
whether we are or not, because I would buy it myself if it would not be
right for us to use his money."
"I am afraid that it would not be right," Mr. Pettigrew said. "As a
trustee of the property, I should certainly not feel myself justified in
sanctioning such a sum being drawn, though I quite admit that this good
couple should be rewarded. I cannot regard a barge as a necessary;
anything in reason that the child could require we should be justified
in agreeing to. Of course, whatever may be his expenses at a public
school, we should pay them without hesitation; but for a child of that
age to give a present of fifteen hundred pounds would be altogether
beyond our power to sanction."
"Very well," Hilda said decidedly, "then I shall take the matter into my
own hands, and I shall go down to Rochester to-morrow and see if these
people have a barge ready built. I don't know whether they are the sort
of things people keep in stock."
"That I can't say, my dear. I should think it probable that in slack
times they may build a barge or two on speculation, for the purpose of
keeping their hands employed, but whether that is the case now or not I
don't know. If these people at Rochester have not got one you may hear
of one somewhere else. I want you all to come up to the office one day
next week to talk over this matter of the order Simcoe is applying
for--for us to carry out the provisions of the will--at any rate, as far
as his legacy is concerned."
"Very well, Mr. Pettigrew, I will come up any time that you write to me,
but you know that I have very strong opinions about it."
"I know your opinions are strong, as ladies' opinions generally are,"
Mr. Pettigrew said with a smile; "but, unfortunately, they are much more
influenced by their own view of matters than by the legal bearing of
them. However, we will talk that over when we meet again."
The arrival of Walter occasioned the most lively joy in Hyde Park
Gardens. Hilda had written to his nurse, who had gone home to live with
her mother when all hope of finding Walter had seemed to be at an end,
to tell her that he would probably be at home on Wednesday evening, and
that she was to be there to meet him. Her greeting of him was rapturous.
It had been a source of bitter grief to her that he had been lost
through a momentary act of carelessness on her part, and the relief that
Hilda's letter had caused was great indeed. The child was scarcely less
pleased to see her, for he retained a much more vivid recollection of
her than he did of the others. He had already been told of his
grandfather's death, but a year had so effaced his memory of him that he
was not greatly affected at the news. In the course of a few hours he
was almost as much at home in the house as if he had never left it.