Thirty-six hours had elapsed since Manston’s escape.
It was market-day at the county-town. The farmers outside and inside
the corn-exchange looked at their samples of wheat, and poured them
critically as usual from one palm to another, but they thought and spoke
of Manston. Grocers serving behind their counters, instead of using
their constant phrase, ‘The next article, please?’ substituted, ‘Have
you heard if he’s caught?’ Dairymen and drovers standing beside the
sheep and cattle pens, spread their legs firmly, readjusted their hats,
thrust their hands into the lowest depths of their pockets, regarded the
animals with the utmost keenness of which the eye was capable, and said,
‘Ay, ay, so’s: they’ll have him avore night.’
Later in the day Edward Springrove passed along the street hurriedly and
anxiously. ‘Well, have you heard any more?’ he said to an acquaintance
who accosted him.
‘They tracked him in this way,’ said the other young man. ‘A vagrant
first told them that Manston had passed a rick at daybreak, under
which this man was lying. They followed the track he pointed out
and ultimately came to a stile. On the other side was a heap of
half-hardened mud, scraped from the road. On the surface of the heap,
where it had been smoothed by the shovel, was distinctly imprinted the
form of a man’s hand, the buttons of his waistcoat, and his watch-chain,
showing that he had stumbled in hurrying over the stile, and fallen
there. The pattern of the chain proved the man to have been Manston.
They followed on till they reached a ford crossed by stepping-stones--on
the further bank were the same footmarks that had shown themselves
beside the stile. The whole of this course had been in the direction
of Budmouth. On they went, and the next clue was furnished them by a
shepherd. He said that wherever a clear space three or four yards wide
ran in a line through a flock of sheep lying about a ewe-lease, it was a
proof that somebody had passed there not more than half-an-hour earlier.
At twelve o’clock that day he had noticed such a feature in his flock.
Nothing more could be heard of him, and they got into Budmouth. The
steam-packet to the Channel Islands was to start at eleven last night,
and they at once concluded that his hope was to get to France by way
of Jersey and St. Malo--his only chance, all the railway-stations being
watched.
‘Well, they went to the boat: he was not on board then. They went again
at half-past ten: he had not come. Two men now placed themselves under
the lamp immediately beside the gangway. Another stayed by the office
door, and one or two more up Mary Street--the straight cut to the quay.
At a quarter to eleven the mail-bags were put on board. Whilst the
attention of the idlers was directed to the mails, down Mary Street
came a man as boldly as possible. The gait was Manston’s, but not the
clothes. He passed over to the shaded part of the street: heads were
turned. I suppose this warned him, for he never emerged from the shadow.
They watched and waited, but the steward did not reappear. The alarm
was raised--they searched the town high and low--no Manston. All
this morning they have been searching, but there’s not a sign of him
anywhere. However, he has lost his last chance of getting across
the Channel. It is reported that he has since changed clothes with a
labourer.’
During this narration, Edward, lost in thought, had let his eyes follow
a shabby man in a smock-frock, but wearing light boots--who was stalking
down the street under a bundle of straw which overhung and concealed
his head. It was a very ordinary circumstance for a man with a bundle
of straw on his shoulders and overhanging his head, to go down the High
Street. Edward saw him cross the bridge which divided the town from the
country, place his shaggy encumbrance by the side of the road, and leave
it there.
Springrove now parted from his acquaintance, and went also in the
direction of the bridge, and some way beyond it. As far as he could see
stretched the turnpike road, and, while he was looking, he noticed a man
to leap from the hedge at a point two hundred, or two hundred and fifty
yards ahead, cross the road, and go through a wicket on the other side.
This figure seemed like that of the man who had been carrying the bundle
of straw. He looked at the straw: it still stood alone.
The subjoined facts sprang, as it were, into juxtaposition in his
brain:--
Manston had been seen wearing the clothes of a labouring man--a brown
smock-frock. So had this man, who seemed other than a labourer, on
second thoughts: and he had concealed his face by his bundle of straw
with the greatest ease and naturalness.
The path the man had taken led, among other places, to Tolchurch, where
Cytherea was living.
If Mrs. Manston was murdered, as some said, on the night of the fire,
Cytherea was the steward’s lawful wife. Manston at bay, and reckless of
results, might rush to his wife and harm her.
It was a horrible supposition for a man who loved Cytherea to entertain;
but Springrove could not resist its influence. He started off for
Tolchurch.