BOB'S VERDICT.
She found Eustace standing beside his bed staring at it in utter
bewilderment.
"My dearest boy, what is it?" she asked.
"Why, look at that!" Eustace exclaimed, pointing down at the
coverlet.
From about the centre of the bed on the right side, down almost to
the foot, was a long brown streak like a burn: the coverlet was cut
and charred.
Mrs. Orban stared at it in astonishment
"What can it be?" she said.
"I can't think," Eustace replied.
"You had better fetch Robertson," Mrs. Orban said. "There is
something very odd about this."
"Don't you mind being left alone, mother?" Eustace asked, looking
round anxiously, as if he thought an explanation of the mystery
might jump from under a bed or out of a cupboard.
"Of course not, dear," Mrs. Orban replied gravely.
It amused her even in her anxiety that this slender scrap of
fourteen should assume such an air of protection, but it touched
her also, and she would not for worlds have let him fancy she could
smile at him.
Robertson hurried to the spot immediately, and when he saw the
condition of the coverlet he looked utterly nonplussed.
"Well, this is a queer state of things," he said, rubbing his head
meditatively. "I never saw anything to equal it."
Further examination proved that not only was the coverlet burnt
right through, but the under clothes were scorched and crumbled
like tinder at a touch.
"It looks like the track of a shot," Robertson said; "but how could
it come there?"
"I don't know," Eustace said, "unless some one was kneeling on the
floor at the foot of the bed and tried to shoot me without raising
his hand. The shot sounded most awfully close."
Robertson took a quick survey of the situation, ending with an
examination of the wall at the head of the bed.
"No," he said, "that couldn't be. The bullet would have gone into
the pillow or lodged in the wall, but there isn't a sign of it.
Seems to me it went the other way by the mark. It is broadest in
the middle of the bed."
He followed the line with his eye, then glanced across the room.
"Why," he exclaimed, going over to the opposite wall, "here is the
mark of the bullet--here is the bullet itself, deep in the wood.
That shot went off from the middle of your bed, lad."
Eustace looked incredulous, Mrs. Orban horrified. It was awful to
think that the boy had been in such danger. The man who had fired
that first alarming shot was close to him, perhaps bending over
him, when inadvertently the weapon had gone off! The mother could
picture it only too vividly, and she felt sick at the thought of
the ghastly peril.
"But what happened to the man?" questioned Eustace. "I was awake in
a minute, and must have seen him."
"Not if he ducked under the bed," suggested Mrs. Orban. "He must
have been there when you came to me, and made his escape the
instant you were out of the way."
"Much more likely if he had knocked the youngster on the head to
silence him," argued Robertson, as he stood toying with Mr. Orban's
revolver. "I don't think that story will wash."
Quite suddenly the man threw back his head and laughed aloud.
"I have it," he said. "Eustace, you young rascal, what a scare you
have given us!"
"I!" exclaimed Eustace, with a touch of indignation in his tone.
"Yes, you," was the reply. "Why, you fired that first shot
yourself; I'll bet you anything you did. You only shot once at the
dingo--there are two chambers empty in this revolver. Come, own up;
where was the revolver when you went to sleep?"
Eustace flushed crimson as the realization flooded his mind.
"It was in my hand when I jumped out of bed," he said. "I--I do
believe I went to sleep holding it. I dropped off suddenly."
He remembered how inexplicably queer and shaken he had felt when he
awoke. Now he came to think of it, he had been strangely jarred. A
mere sound could scarcely have accounted for the feeling.
"Well, that clears the whole mystery, then," said Robertson. "There
is no one lurking about the house, and there hasn't been anything
to be frightened about--except that you might have shot your own
foot through, and lamed yourself for life."
"He might have killed himself," said Mrs. Orban seriously. "It was
a terribly dangerous thing to do."
She said nothing more, for it was evident Eustace felt very small
and uncomfortable. It was the tamest possible ending to what had
promised to be such a stirring adventure--such a tale to tell!
Presently, when he was left alone to try and get a little sleep
before it was time to get up and dress, the full humiliation of it
overcame him. What would his father say? and Nesta? and, worse and
worse, Bob Cochrane? How he would be laughed at--teased! He would
never be allowed to forget the dingo he had mistaken for a
black-fellow; and he felt hot all over when he thought of that
foolish shot--the cause of all the commotion.
It was a very depressed Eustace who appeared at breakfast. He took
Robertson's unabated amusement so gravely that the engineer stopped
laughing at him, and wondered if the youngster were sulking.
Mrs. Orban felt a good deal distressed to see how pale the boy was,
and that he could hardly touch the food set before him. But every
one showed signs of exhaustion, as was natural after two nights of
such unusual strain. Mrs. Orban kept Eustace with her all day,
setting him small jobs to keep him occupied. They all went to bed
early that night, and the household slept without rocking.
Next day, in the cool of the morning, Bob Cochrane rode over to
inquire how the Orbans were getting on. Eustace heard him come--the
boy was on the lookout for this particular visit--and as Bob walked
round one side of the veranda, Eustace disappeared along the other,
left a message with Mary that he was going down to the mill, and
started away from the house at a run. The truth was, he felt he
simply could not be present while Bob listened to the story of his
absurd adventures; he wanted the narration to be over before he
faced the fusillade of chaff with which the young fellow might
pepper him. "He'll think me a silly little fool, I know he will,"
Eustace told himself again and again; "and he'll say, 'What did I
tell you about shooting recklessly?' I expect he'll think I'm a
baby, not fit to be trusted with firearms. It's disgusting, just
when I was hoping he might begin to think me worth taking out
shooting with him soon."
Thoroughly out of conceit with himself, Eustace wished he need not
go home at all until Bob was certain to be gone. But no sooner did
he reach the mill and begin wandering about the rooms full of
machinery than it struck him it had been rather cowardly even to
run away for a time. Bob would know he had not felt equal to facing
him, and perhaps he would despise that as much as he was bound to
be amused at the other. The lad had a sharp tussle with himself,
and at last started back up the hill with the feelings of a most
unwilling martyr going to the stake.
He was about two-thirds of the way up when he caught sight of Bob
Cochrane coming swinging down towards him. Bob was just the kind of
fellow every boy wants to grow into--big, well-made, splendidly
manly; he looked jolly in his riding-suit.
"Hulloa!" he called as soon as he came within speaking distance.
"Hulloa!" Eustace called back tonelessly, his heart thumping hard,
his colour coming and going ridiculously.
Bob waited till they met. Then, "Well, youngster," he said gravely,
putting a big hand on the lad's shoulder and walking on beside him,
"you've had a rough time since I saw you last. I don't wonder you
shot at that dingo in the way you did; I should have done it
myself, I believe, under the circumstances."
Eustace's heart almost stopped beating, he was so surprised; he
could not speak a word.
"Of course that chap coming the night before put you all on edge,"
proceeded Bob, "and you were flurried by the first shot. That might
have been a nasty business too. Glad you didn't hurt yourself."
There was another pause, but Bob did not seem to mind. He went on
again presently,--
"It is just this kind of thing, I always think, that gives one a
bit of a useful warning: first, to be cautious; and second, to keep
a cool head. You'll never go to sleep with a revolver ready cocked
again, and another time you will give yourself a second's
deliberation before you fire at anything looking like a man. It
might have been Robertson making a tour of the house, you know."
Eustace felt suddenly rather sick.
"I never thought of that," he said.
"Of course not," was the cheery response. "One doesn't look all
round a question in a hurry, but one has to learn to remember there
may be two sides to it. You'll get the hang of the idea one of
these days. I know it was a long time before I gave up wanting to
shoot down everything I didn't quite like the looks of. Sometimes
it turns out well, sometimes pretty badly."
He ended with a little laugh. Eustace, looking up into the merry,
kindly face, knew that the awful time he had so dreaded was over,
and it had not been an "awful time" after all. Bob did not think
him a fool; he might have done the same himself, he said. He only
warned him to be more careful another time, and gave him the
reasons why he should.
The boy had always admired this friend of the family; he positively
glowed with pride at this minute that Bob was a friend of his own.
Whatever might happen now, whoever might snub or laugh at him,
Eustace had this comforting knowledge always at heart--Bob
understood, and Bob was a man no one would laugh at.
"He is a brick," thought the lad warmly. "I wish there was
anything, anything in the world I could do to show him what a brick
I think him. If ever there is, won't I just do it! The more
dangerous it is the better."
"I remember once having a pretty gruesome experience," said Bob,
chatting on easily. "I expect you've never heard about it, because
you were nothing but a kiddy at the time, and it has been
forgotten lately. I was going home across our plantation with two
other fellows late at night--much later than the mater liked us to
be out. In order to be as quick as possible, when we got to the
little line running to the mill we hoisted the trolley on to the
rails and began pushing ourselves along at a great rate. It was the
sort of darkness one can peer through, making things look weird and
distorted, often much bigger than they really are."
"Like the dingo."
"Like the dingo. Well, we were getting along finely, when we got to
rather a steep gradient and had to go slower up it. Near the top
one of us suddenly caught sight of something unusual to the left of
the line. It looked like a huge cowering figure, wide but not tall.
Whether four-legged or two-legged it was impossible to say because
of the gloom. It wasn't a nice feeling to have this thing silently
waiting for one. We all boo'd and shoo'd first, thinking that if it
were a beast of any sort it would scoot at the noise; but it didn't
stir an inch or make a sound. We felt pretty creepy by then, for
black-fellow tales were even commoner in those days than they are
now. From the size of it we guessed it might have been a group of
three men. Then we shouted, 'Hands up and declare yourself, or we
fire!' But still the creature didn't move or speak."
"My hat!" exclaimed Eustace sympathetically.
"We had got to get past it somehow to reach home, for it wasn't
likely we could stay there all night. We gave it two more chances,
and then we fired for all we were worth. There were instantly
shrieks, groans, and such horrible sounds that we waited for
nothing more, but pushing our stakes into the ground, sent the
trolley flying past the awful spot and down the next hill. How we
didn't turn over and get killed down that incline I don't know--it
was the one nearest home, you know, where one has to be so
fearfully careful about putting on a brake as a rule. However, we
got in all right, and gave a detailed account of our adventure.
Every one was interested and puzzled. Father was a little inclined
to laugh; he said it was probably the stump of a tree, but of
course we had evidence against that in the genuine shrieks and
groans following our shots. 'Well, we must just go first thing
to-morrow,' father said, 'and look into the matter by daylight.'"
"And did you?" asked Eustace eagerly.
"Rather! I should just think we did--father, a friend of his who
was staying with us, and the two boys I had been out with. We rode,
and when we got to the spot the first thing we saw was the huge
stump of a newly-felled tree, right in the very place we had seen
the gruesome object."
Eustace whistled.
"But a tree couldn't shriek and groan," he objected.
"So _we_ said when father began minutely examining the bark; and to
our satisfaction there wasn't a single shot mark in the tree,
though we must have fired half a dozen between us. 'We can't have
seen this,' I said, feeling rather cock-a-hoopy; 'it must have been
something nearer.' We were just all puzzling our heads over the
matter when a Chinkee came running towards us from a group of huts
not very far off. He was gesticulating and making a fearful fuss.
We followed him in a fine state of excitement, and he led us to a
little low shed with a railing before it. We looked in, and there
lay two dead pigs!"
"Two dead pigs!" cried Eustace.
"Yes. It was pretty humiliating, for it just proved we had aimed at
the tree and missed it. Instead, we shot the Chinkee's inoffensive
pigs. It was many a long day before that joke was forgotten against
us. Moreover, amongst us we had to scrape a pound together to pay
the Chinaman for his loss. I never felt so small in my life."
Eustace could well appreciate the sensation after his own
experiences.
Bob took a very light view of the real visit the Orbans had had
from the black-fellow two nights before.
"He wouldn't have hurt any one," said the young fellow. "He was
nothing but a cowardly thief, or he wouldn't have behaved in the
way he did. I'm only sorry you've offered a reward for the things;
it will be an incentive to other fellows to do the same. However, I
dare say, with Robertson sleeping up here, no one will venture
again. I shouldn't worry if I were you, Mrs. Orban."
"I will try not to," Mrs. Orban answered bravely.
They had a quiet enough night again to warrant confidence, and
every one felt rested and refreshed next day.
Just after breakfast Kate appeared to tell her mistress that a
Chinaman from the plantation wished to speak to her. His name was
Sinkum Fung, and he was the plantation storekeeper, a man who
thought a good deal of himself, but for lying and trickery, Mr.
Orban declared, was no better than his neighbours the coolies who
dealt at his shop.
As soon as Sinkum Fung was shown on to the veranda, he did a good
deal of bowing and scraping by way of politeness, and he had so
much to say on the subject of his own unimpeachable integrity that
it was a long time before Mrs. Orban could bring him to an
explanation of his early visit. Both she and Eustace guessed he
must be wanting to sell something, and probably hoped to drive a
good bargain in Mr. Orban's absence, the cunning of the average
Chinese being unsurpassed.
After a considerable preamble, Sinkum began the following
remarkable tale, all told in such strange Chinkee patter, and with
so much self-praise interspersed, that it took the listeners' whole
attention to unravel it.