A TEST OF BRAVERY.
It must have been three or four hours later that Paul heard what he
thought were mysterious noises and stealthy footsteps downstairs.
He had been lying restless and wakeful, haunted by a dread of he knew not
what, his mind continually dwelling on the runaway convicts out on the
moor, the clank of the iron as he had heard it that night sounding plainly
in his ears. He remembered, too, how deserted the house had been when his
mother and Mike had come into it, and how easily any one could have
walked in, had he or she been so inclined.
Then in on his thoughts broke those sounds. A dreadful certainty of harm
to come came to him, but he had plenty of pluck, and the memory of his
promise to his father was strong in his mind. He got out of bed softly
and opened his door; then he crept to his mother's door and listened; no
sound came from there, and he hoped she was fast asleep, and Michael, too,
whose cot had been moved in there for the time. Paul felt sincerely
thankful. But though it was plain that the sounds had not come from
there, he was certain they came from somewhere within the house.
He crept softly along the passage and stood at the head of the stairs
listening. At first all was quiet, but just as he was thinking of
creeping back to his bed again, telling himself he had made a mistake,
there came from below a faint sound of scraping, and of stealthy
movements. At the sounds, so unmistakably those of a person bent on
concealment, his heart thumped madly, a cold sweat broke out on his brow;
his heart indeed thumped so loudly he was afraid it would be heard by the
person below, but he went bravely down a few steps further and listened
again. Yes, there was no doubt there was someone down there.
What could he, a small boy, do against a desperate man? Farmer Minards
slept on the other side of the house, and his room could only be reached
by a flight of stairs running up from the kitchen. To get at him Paul
must go right down, and through the house, close to, if not actually
passing by the burglar, or whoever it might be who was acting so
stealthily. But Farmer Minards must be roused somehow. This was the one
thing Paul was certain of. Without making a sound he crept down another
stair or two. Whoever it was down below, he had a light, for Paul could
see a faint glimmer, and it came, he imagined, from the little room the
farmer called his 'office.'
Scarcely knowing to what his thoughts led, Paul thought he might possibly
creep down and pass the office unnoticed, then fly softly through the
kitchen and up to the farmer's room. All chance of success would depend,
though, on the man not being near the office door, or facing that way.
But before his thoughts were really formed Paul had put them into action.
He was too much alarmed and too full of the responsibility of his position
to dawdle. Suppose any harm should come to his mother or the children!
He grew sick with terror at the thought, and flew on faster.
There was only a faint swish in the air to indicate that anyone had moved,
a sound so faint that the thief in the office did not hear it. He was
busily engaged on the lock of the farmer's safe.
The kitchen reached, Paul flew up the back stairs, and burst like a
hurricane into the first room he came to. Luckily it was the right one.
It took him some time to rouse the old farmer and to make him understand
what was happening, and when that was accomplished nothing would satisfy
him but that he must dress as fully as on every other morning, and then
rouse the household in that part of the house.
Paul quivered with impatience. "Quick! quick!" he groaned. "He may go up
and murder mother or Stella while we are here." But the farmer had never
been quick in his life, and did not know the meaning of the word.
"Plenty of time," he said, and Paul groaned with anguish. "Plenty of
time, sir. That there lock'll keep un quiet for a brave bit, and I ain't
going to trust myself in that place without plenty to back me up."
"I must go back alone, then," said Paul at last, in an agony of
impatience; "I promised father I'd take care of them." And he began to
descend the stairs, hoping by his departure to accelerate the movements of
the others. But his hope was a forlorn one, and he went back by himself,
in spite of the farmer's repeated injunctions to "wait a bit."
He hoped by being equally swift and silent to escape the notice of the
thief again, but the man was no longer in the office. Whether he had
succeeded in robbing the safe or not Paul did not know, but he soon
gathered that he had gone upstairs; in fact, as Paul himself reached the
landing, he heard him raise the latch of Stella's door and creep into the
room.
"Who are you--what do you want?" gasped Paul. He was rendered well-nigh
speechless at coming suddenly face to face with the burglar.
The man turned on him like a hunted animal at bay. "If you make a sound
I'll shoot you!" he snarled, and with the same he whipped a revolver from
his pocket. "If you'll hold your tongue and say nothing no harm'll come
to anybody, but if you give the alarm I'll--"
But he did not complete his sentence, for their voices had wakened Stella,
and at the sight of the stranger she started up in bed with a scream.
Frantic and desperate, the man turned from Paul to her. "Stop that noise,
will you?" he hissed, "or I'll--" But at that moment Paul rushed past
him, sprang on the bed, and placed his own body in front of his sister's.
"No, you don't," he half sobbed, half screamed, "you--you coward, you'll
hit me first!"
It is doubtful if the man would have fired at little Stella; probably he
meant only to frighten the children, but at that instant he heard the
sound of footsteps on the stairs, and with a frenzied look around him for
a means of escape, he saw the doorway filled by the burly form of Farmer
Minards.
Now Farmer Minards was not accustomed to the capturing of desperate men.
A better man with a kicking horse, or a savage bull, could not perhaps, be
found on Dartmoor, and if the convict had stood and allowed himself to be
pinioned with only a moderate amount of struggling and kicking, the
farmer's presence of mind would have been sufficient, but, as it was, when
the man made one bold rush, with pistol cocked, for the very spot where he
stood, he gave way before the rush; but for an instant there was a
struggle and a fight, for Muggridge and the man who slept at the farm were
close behind the farmer, little expecting their master to give way so
soon, and leave them to grapple with their visitor, and it may have been
that he intended to shoot down one of them, or that in the struggle the
pistol accidentally went off, but in another second a bullet whistled
through the air, and, passing clean through the fleshy part of Paul's arm,
became embedded in the wall behind.
Certain it is that if Paul had not dragged his sister flat down behind him
on the bed poor Stella's life would have been ended then and there.
But Paul had expiated his sin nobly, and he had nearly laid down his life
for hers. Stella really thought he had laid it down in very truth when he
fell forward on his face with blood pouring from him, and, overcome with
grief and horror, she fainted dead away beside him.
Farmer Minards saw the children fall, and he, too, thought Paul was
killed. In fact, for the moment he thought they both were, and with the
horror of it, forgetting the convict and everything else, he rushed to the
bedside, leaving Muggridge and Davey to manage as best they could.
But the convict had the best of it, and the two had never a chance to
close with him. By the force and unexpectedness with which he came he
burst through them, and dealing Davey a blow on the head with his pistol,
and Muggridge one in the face with his fist, which left them both stunned
and bleeding, he flew down the stairs and out of the house by the very
window through which he had entered.
When Stella and Paul at last awoke again to life, and to a recollection of
what had taken place, it seemed to be everybody's aim to banish from their
minds the painful past, and the memory of that terrible night, and to fill
their lives with everything that could brighten and cheer them and help
them to forget. Paul was quite a hero in all their eyes; to Stella he
seemed the very ideal of all that was splendid and brave, and to Paul's
credit it must be said that the opinion he had of himself was far lower
and more contemptuous than he deserved, and he would not listen to one
word of praise.