THE BURNPLATTERS.
ON the slope of the hill as it shelves down to the Colne from Pole Moor
lies the little cluster of houses called Burn Platts, and there dwelt,
if so nomadic a people could be properly said to dwell anywhere, those
terrors of the countryside, the bogeys of all the children for miles
around, the Burnplatters--horse-dealers, gipsies, fortune-tellers
cloth-lifters, roost-spoilers poachers, tramps, thieves,
whiskey-spinners, and evil-doers generally. I could not remember a time
when I had not lived in awe of the Burnplatters. The direst threat my
mother knew, when my little sister Ruth and I were more than ordinarily
perverse, was to send us to the Burnplatters.
The stories told of them and their wild doings were legion. They were
said to have no religion of any sort of all, though, to be sure, it was
conceded that when they were married they were properly tied at St.
James's Church. And a brave display they made at a wedding: bride and
bridegroom, bravely decked, walking to and from the Church, a fiddler or
two heading a procession of all the Burnplatters, old and young, male
and female, twenty to thirty souls. The knot firmly tied, the procession
made a round of all the public houses, in Slaithwaite, and finished the
day with a sumptuous repast at the "Rose and Crown" on Cop Hill; and it
was the general belief that the viands, of which there was no lack,
were, to a chicken, either begged, borrowed, or stolen. Whether there
was or ever had been any strain of Oriental blood among the Burnplatters
I hesitate to say, though I incline to think there must have been some
Spanish tinge, for no one could look upon Ephraim Sykes, the reputed
leader of the gang, and credit him with nought but British blood. He was
of about my own age. His face was tanned, his black hair curled close to
his poll, his eye dark as night, and his passions as tumultuous as hell.
A blow first and the word afterwards was ever his way. And he was as
handsome as a picture. Half the girls in the valley were ready to
forswear home, chapel, and respectability and join the Burnplatters at a
word from Ephraim. He was the best horsebreaker between Leeds and
Manchester. He feared nothing that went on four legs or two--men, dogs,
horses or bullocks. When Armitage's bull--Dick o' Lijah's that kept the
"Rose" at the Cop--went mad they sent for Ephraim, and with my own eyes
I saw him vault upon the raging creature's back and ride it in a tearing
rage twenty times round the paddock and then down to Booth Banks, and
when they got back it was covered with foam and as quiet as a lamb. And
Ephraim was popular even with the men folk, though feared. He made a
mint, of money, horse--breaking, and it was light come, light go with
him. Whenever he went into the "Silent Women," or the "Globe," or the
"Star", or the "Rose and Crown", you should have seen the landlord's
face light up. It was open house while Ephraim was there, and, I'm sore
to say it, there were in my young days more than two or three of the
weavers and croppers of the Valley who liked a cheap drink if the Evil
One himself had paid.
In my boyhood I had struck up an acquaintance with Ephraim Sykes. A
Yorkshire tyke that a devout member of my father's congregation had
presented to me had been the first bond of union. Ephraim had come
across me as I wandered aimlessly about the fields, with Tear'em at my
heels, and had unceremoniously introduced himself, by way of Tear'em,
in whom he manifested an interest that clearly did not embrace myself.
"Will she rot?" he asked, after surveying the bitch and commenting
approvingly upon various points of perfection only patent to the eyes of
a fancier. "Will she rot?"
"Not till she's dead, I hope," I replied in all innocence.
"Pool! thou ninny. Will she tak' rotten?" and I gathered that he meant
rats.
"She could if she liked," I asseverated boldly, seeing that this was
expected of her. "But, you see, she has the best of everything at the
Manse. I share my porridge with her night and morning."
"Porridge!" sniffed Ephraim disdainfully. "It's rotten she wants, and
rabbits. Han you a ferret" I confessed with shame that I had not.
"Well, I han." And Ephraim produced from his jacket pocket a long white,
snakey, writhing thing that eyed me viciously, but which curled and
cuddled about Ephraim as if it loved him, as I don't doubt it did.
"That's the cliverest ferret this side o' Owdham," observed Ephraim in a
tone that challenged contradiction. "Just yo' feel the weight on him,"
and he held out the creature in the palm of his hands. It eyed me as
though to determine which was the juiciest part of my anatomy, and I
declined the intimate acquaintance Ephraim was willing to press upon me.
"Feart o' a ferret!" he sneered. "Tha'rt noan as gam' as thi feyther."
"What do you know of my father?" I asked quickly, for even as a lad I
was jealous of that good man's name and fame.
"Why more, happen, than yo think, though I am a Burnplatter. Hasn't he
been to th' Burnplatts preichin' time an' time agen, though we'n towd
him plain we don't want him? An' hasn't he towd us to our faces wheer
we're bun to end if we don't mend our ways? Didn't he plump down on his
knees i' th' very midst o' us, an' pray to heaven to remove the scales
fro' our eyes, as he ca'd it? An' didn't he come neet after neet to sit
an' pray wi' little Lil when she were down wi' th' sma' pox, an' owd
Jackson th' Slowit passon, wouldn't come within a mile o' Burnplatts for
love or money? Oh! he's a gam' 'un, is thi feyther. He wouldn't be feart
o' a bit o' a ferret, aw'll be bun. Why he'd tak' it bi' th' scruff o'
th' neck an' dip it th' font if he thowt it 'ud do it onny guid. That's
th' sort he is."
This hearty commendation of my sire atoned no little for the slighting
opinion Ephraim had evidently formed of myself--that and his approval
of Tear'em for whom he volunteered to swop that wretch ferret, assuring
me with tears in his eyes that the exchange would well-nigh--he said
"welly"--ruin him, and that it was only the high regard he entertained
for my father that prompted him to make this huge sacrifice. But part
with Tear'em I would not. On this point I was adamant.
"Well," said Ephraim, "let's see if she'll tak' a rabbit. I don't
suppose she will. Come to look at her, she's nobbut a poorish sort. Not
much breed about that cur, aw' rekkon. Aw'm fain yo' didn't ha' th'
ferret after all"--a remark that proved Ephraim was a philosopher of
sorts, and knew how to console himself in affliction.
But Tear'em had promptly falsified this last adverse judgment on her
merits. Ephraim found a long drain that ran the length of a neighbouring
field. The ferret went in at one end, whilst I nursed Tear'em at the
other. Presently a rabbit bolted, and Tear'em tossed it in the air
before it had run ten yards in the open.
And so began my friendship with Ephraim Sykes. Lord! what times we had
on those dear old moors. It was Ephraim taught me to swim in Clough
House mill dam; it was Ephraim who made me horrid sick with my first
pipe; Ephraim who knew every bird nest on ground, in hedge, or wall, or
tree; Ephraim who haunted old laithes and mistals with his ferret and my
Tear'em; Ephraim who skinned the rats and dried and cured their skins
and made me a cap thereout; Ephraim who knew where the biggest trout
lurked under the sides of the brooks that babbled down the hillsides
into the river Colne; Ephraim, I blush to say, who knew the ways of the
nesting grouse and took their young before they left the nest.
He couldn't read and he couldn't write, and thought those
accomplishments fit only for lawyers, doctors, and parsons. But of
mother wit he'd enough to stock a parish. When I was not at my lessons
we were inseparable though I could never get him to cross my father's
threshold, and to all my hints that I should visit him at Burnplatts he
turned a deaf ear. And the years passed, and we grew older, and went our
several ways--he frequenting horse fairs and feasts, and wakes, and
thumps and I minding my warp at the tail of a loom. But Fate had much in
store for Ephraim and me in common and what it was the patient reader
will learn anon.
* * *
Now on the very Saturday after our junketing at the Wakes I announced to
Mary my pious intent to visit my father at Pole Moor, and to call in
upon Mr. Turner on my way. Jim, who heard me, eyed me narrowly, and then
knowingly winked the dexter eye.
"How far's th' Burnplatts fro' Pole Moor?" was all he said, but said in
such a tone as to make his mother glance questioningly from him to me.
"Shall aw go wi' thee, Abel?"
"You can if you like," I said curtly, and wishing that that confounded,
tell-tale colour would desert my cheeks.
"Well, aw calc'late not this bout, though mich obliged to yo' for your
hearty invitation. Aw nivver was so mich pressed i' my life. But, as yo'
sen, there's occasions when two's company and three's none."
Now I had said no such thing.
"I tell you I'm going to see Mr. Turner on my way, and I'm not sure that
he'd care to be moithered with company," I explained, somewhat lamely, I
fear.
"And I've made him some beef-tea and a custard," broke in Mary. "An'
mind yo' see he eits 'em. Aw'd go wi' yo' mysen an' red th' house up for
him, but to tell th' truth aw'm noan so keen on folk 'at go live bi
theirsen i' a hut on a moor. It's noan Christian, an' there's summat at
th' back on it, or my name's not Mary Haigh."
It was a glorious day of early autumn, and I strode blithely up the
steep ascent that led from the Valley to the Cutting. (The Cutting is a
rather deep defile where the road over Stanedge dips into the Diggle
Valley.) My young heart sang within me, and I felt almost ashamed of the
glad glow of perfect health and rich content that made the mere living
so rich a feast, even for one so poor as I, when I reached the hermit's
cot, and lifted the sneck of the door.
There was no one in the bottom room or "house," which was all uncared
for--no fire in the grate, which argued badly for the comforts a sick
man should have; and again I reproached myself that I had suffered
myself to be beguiled into going to the Wakes, though a quick
afterthought told me that to have missed the Wakes would have been to
have missed one whose dark bright eyes had haunted me day and night ever
since, dancing in and out with my shuttle at the loom, and mocking me in
my dreams. I took off my clogs and stole in my stocking feet up the
straight and narrow staircase that led to the upper chamber. Mr. Turner
was tossing and turning on the pallet, muttering in a feverish sleep. So
I lied me down again as softly as I could, raked out the embers from the
rusty fireplace, kindled a fire, and set about warming up the beef-tea
Mary's forethought had provided. A violent fit of coughing waked the
uneasy sleeper, and I carried up a basin-full of the broth, into which I
had broken some haver-bread I found on a rack above the fireplace. Mr.
Turner smiled and seemed pleased to see me. I propped him up in bed,
covered his thin bent shoulders with an old frieze coat, and coaxed him
to sip the broth out of a leaden spoon that I had found.
"I knew you'd not forget me, Abel," he said feebly, "and it's good of
Mrs. Haigh to have sent me this excellent soup. Convey to her my
compliments and thanks. Or, stay, you'll find a trinket or two in what
I'm going to hand over to you in charge. Select a fitting one, and ask
Mrs. Haigh to wear it when the old hermit's gone; the others keep in
memory of the man you have befriended, whose solitude you have shared."
I could scarce restrain a smile. I imagined Mary wearing anything the
sick man would be likely leave behind him. I thought sure his wits were
leaving him. But he went on:
"Put your arm up the chimney yonder. You'll have to pull out the
sacking. Don't be afraid of soot. It's little enough there's in that
flue. Your right arm, and feel on the left side."
Wondering greatly, I did as I was bid, and felt my groping fingers touch
what I rightly guessed to be the handle of a box. It was a rare weight,
but I got the case down and took it to the bed-side. Mr. Turner, with
trembling hands, undid the collar of his shirt, and took from a thin
chain around his neck a small key.
"Now, listen," he said, "and as you value your peace hereafter keep the
charge I commit to you. You're young, Abel, and I've not known you long.
But I think I can trust you. I am about to tell you what has never
before passed my lips. I know you have wondered often who I am, and why
I have lived this lonely and wretched life. It's a sad, sad tale--a
tale of sin and shame and sorrow but maybe I shall be the easier for the
telling of it, and there's that to be done which must be done if it can
be done There's retribution to be made if it can be made, and yours must
be the hands to do it."
Now it must not be supposed that all this was spoken straight off, as I
have written it. It was almost gasped out, and the cold, clammy sweat
stood on the poor man's brow as the words came feebly forth from his
pallid lips.
"You know me, as all about here know me, and have known me ever since,
some twenty long years ago, I came to dwell, to drag out my weary years
rather, in this wretched haunt in this cold, bleak, inhospitable
moor--known me as Mr. Turner, the mad hermit. But that is not my
name--it is Garside, the Reverend James Garside, for I am a deacon,
duly presented and admitted, of the Established Church. Aye, you may
well start and stare. My father was a manufacturer in Manchester. His
name, too, was James. I tell you this because you may need all the
particulars I can furnish. He died when I was in my second year, leaving
my mother in circumstances more than comfortable, I their only child.
She was but young when my father left her a widow--he was her senior by
many years. She never married again, but devoted her life to the
upbringing of her unworthy son. My God! my God! how have I repaid that
wealth of love so unstintingly lavished upon me. She could scarce bear
me out of her sight, and as I grew older rejected the counsel of her few
friends that I should be sent to the Grammar School. I must have a
tutor, and be taught at home.
"I think I must have been about ten years old when an event occurred
that disturbed the even tenour of our placid life. One winter's morning
I had risen betimes, and it so chanced that I was the first to open the
massive door that opened on to the street. The snow was falling in slow,
heavy flakes. It was scarcely light. There were no passers-by. The
street was deserted, and covered deep by snow. I was peering through the
gloom, looking for I know not what, when I was startled by a feeble wail
that seemed to come from my very feet. I became aware of a small bundle,
nigh buried in the cold coverlet of snow, that rested on the top most
step of the broad flight that led from the street to the door. I stooped
and picked up the bundle, and brushed off the snow, and carried it
hastily into the kitchen, where the maid was lighting the fire. Between
us we undid the wraps, and within we found a tiny infant, but a few
months old. A scrap of paper was pinned to the poor, thin dress in which
the babe was clad, and on it was scrawled in a rude hand: 'Her name is
Esmeralda.' My mother was hastily summoned from her room. I was banished
the kitchen, and when I was suffered to return beheld the child washed
and kempt and clad in soft, warm flannels, and slumbering peacefully
before a roaring fire on my mother's lap.
"Now, whether it was that my mother's heart yearned for a girl child, or
that the forlornness and helplessness of the babe appealed to her, or
that my own delight in the foundling--whom I made no delay in claiming
as my own treasure-trove--influenced her, I know not, but to all the
counsels of her friends to send the infant to the workhouse she turned a
deaf ear. I cannot, for time presses, and my strength ebbs fast away,
tell how the infant grew in years, in strength, and grace; how we were
brought up together, as though she were indeed my little sister. Now
when I was nineteen years of age, and she a beautiful dark-eyed maiden
some nine years younger, I was sent to the University of Oxford to
pursue my studies and qualify for the ministry, to which my mother had
destined me from my cradle. My vacations were spent mostly in foreign
travel, making the Grand Tour, as it used to be called in my young days.
And so it chanced that I saw little of Esmeralda, until, education being
considered complete, my degree taken, and I admitted to deacon's orders,
I returned in my twenty-seventh year to my mother's house to await my
first curacy. And I found the little maid I had nursed in my arms and
dandled on my knees a beautiful, bewitching woman, with a beauty rare it
made men thrill to look upon. I suppose there must have been some strain
of Eastern blood in her, for though but seventeen she looked older; her
form was fuller, more rounded than those of the maidens of our colder
clime, and there was a seductiveness and a passionate warmth about her
whole being that allured me probably all the more that both by
temperament and from my training my passions were not lightly kindled.
"I should have told you that some faint-hearted efforts had been made
by my mother to ascertain the mystery of Esmeralda's parentage.
Advertisements had been inserted in the papers and the police had been
communicated with shortly after Esmeralda was received into our
household--more from a sense of duty on my mother's part than from any
desire she felt to part with the child. But these efforts, if efforts
they could be called, bore no fruit. But I have reason to believe that
when Esmeralda was in her early teens she received secret communications
that revealed to her the mystery of her birth, and that she had
established secret relations with the author of her being, who, I
strongly suspect, preyed upon the slender allowance of pin-money my
mother gave to Esmeralda.
"But I must be brief. You will have guessed already that Esmeralda and
I, thus brought together again when both were in the full flush of
youth, and when nature clamours for love and love's fulfilling, loved,
and loved none the less ardently that we must conceal our passion.
Though my mother for me ever a tender and thoughtful parent, her
indulgence I knew to have its limits. She was proud of her kith and
kin--the middle classes have their family pride, Abel, not less than
and perhaps with as good a reason as the upper. Moreover she had long
laid her plans for my alliance. I was to mate with the daughter of an
old friend of my father's, a manufacturer like himself, a girl fair
enough to look upon and well dowered to boot, and whom 'tis like enough
I should have learned to love had not my heart been engrossed by
Esmeralda's image. I knew that to thwart my mother in her long-cherished
design would be to court my ruin, for gentle though she was she could
ill bear crossing.
"Have I told you that the man who had been my tutor as a boy and youth,
who had accompanied me on my foreign travels, had remained all these
years an inmate of my mother's house, partly to guide the studies of the
maid, Esmeralda, whom my mother intended for a companion, and perchance
a nurse, and partly as my mother's secretary and business manager--for
my mother's estate, so frugally did she live, and so jealously did she
guard her store, had grown to no mean dimensions? This man, this viper I
should rather call him, had wormed himself into my confidence. I
regarded him as a friend. It was not so much that I confided to him my
love for Esmeralda as that he divined it--the wonder is that my mother
had not herself divined it. When I spoke to him of my fixed resolve to
make Esmeralda my wife he professed the utmost alarm if my mother should
become aware of my infatuation, as he termed it. He affected to dissuade
me from my purpose, and when he found that I laughed his warnings to the
wind he counselled me to a secret marriage--anything rather than tell
my mother, though I am persuaded that had I but been frank and firm my
mother's love would in the end have proved stronger than her pride and
she would have blessed our union. But, I yielded to the insidious advice
of the tempter the more readily, doubtless, that I saw therein the means
of gratifying my love and avoiding a rupture with a parent who, by a
stroke of the pen, could leave me penniless save for the meagre pittance
of a curate.
"Let me hasten to the end. My tutor secured a charming cottage in the
neighbourhood of Grasmere. My mother had gone to Matlock for a three
months' cure. Esmeralda and I journeyed by coach to Gretna Green, and
there were made man and wife. Look in that box, and you will find a copy
of the certificate of our marriage."
I found the document--I found other things as well that made me catch
my breath, but of these anon. It was a certificate of what used to be
called a "red-hot wedding," welded on the anvil for an altar. It ran:
"KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND.
"PARISH OF GRETNA.
"THESE ARE TO CERTIFY TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN that James Garside,
of the City of Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, Clerk in Holy
Orders, and Esmeralda Atkinson, of the same city, Spinster, being now
both here present, and having declared to me that they are single
persons, have now been married after the manner of the laws of
Scotland.
As witness our hands at Gretna the 13th day of April, 1812.
"Witnesses: CALEB OSMALSTONE.
DOUGLAS FEATHERSTONE."
"Atkinson," I repeated, inquiringly.
"Yes, 'twas the name of my mother's old servant. She stood sponsor for
the child when it was baptised. We spent some months of such bliss as it
is given to few to know in the cottage at Grasmere, and there I left my
bride, and returned to my mother's house framing to my parent what
excuse I could for my unwanted and protracted absence. But before I tore
myself from my dear one's arms I knew that she bore beneath her bosom
the pledge of our mutual love, and I thrilled to think that when next I
saw her--for my visits must needs be few--I might clasp our offspring to
my breast.
"Several months elapsed before I was able to contrive a plausible
pretext for absenting myself from home, and during that time my mother
never ceased to press upon me the desirability of paying my court to the
lady of her choice. She threw us constantly together, and so fearful was
I of arousing suspicion in my mother's mind that I affected to share her
views, and paid, with what heart I could, my somewhat halting addresses
to the not unwilling damsel. But at length the glad day came when, under
cover of visiting a college friend in the North, I could take coach for
Westmoreland, and you may judge with what eager ardour I made my way to
the cottage where I had left my wife--for wife she was in the sight of
God, and, I believe, of man. I sped up the garden path as one speeds on
the wings of love; the door was locked, the shutters closed, no smoke
rose from the chimney, sign of life about the place there was none. Half
frantic with fears of I knew not what calamity, I sought the farmer from
whom I had rented the house. He told me my wife had sent the key, along
with a note to be delivered to me if and when I returned to Grasmere.
You will find it there."
Again I sought among the contents of the box, and found a letter written
in a trembling hand, and blotted with many a tear:
"Your tutor has told me all. He says our marriage is no marriage--that
you have tricked me by a farce. He tells me, too, that you are to marry
Miss ----, and that our continued connection will be your ruin. You have
ruined me and broken my poor heart, but I will not stand in the light of
your future. May God forgive you. I go to my own people, if they will
have me. 'T were better I had known no other.--ESMERALDA."
"How I got back to Manchester I cannot tell. I broke in like one bereft
of reason upon my mother and that false villain I had so blindly
trusted. He sheltered himself behind my mother. She pleaded that all had
been done for my best, and that I should live to thank her. In my wrath
I cursed her, and swore she should never more be mother of mine, and
spurning her from me I fled the house.
"I had some slight store of money of my own. I spent it wandering the
country, seeking trace of my lost one. But she had vanished as
completely as if the earth had swallowed her. I left England, and
travelled abroad. One day, I saw in the _Times_ the announcement of
my mother's death. I hastened home. She had made a will leaving me a
small annuity for my life--the bulk of her fortune to that accursed
tutor.
"My first impulse was to reject the legacy. But other counsels
prevailed. I found in time this wild and lone retreat, and here I have
waited for death, for I have neither lived nor cared to live. That box
contains my horde. Take it to your father's keeping. I charge you to
find my wife and child, if child there be. The money is for them. If you
cannot find them in three years from now take it for yourself, Abel, and
may God's blessing be with it and you."
The old man, old not in years but old from privation, neglect, and
mental suffering, sank back upon his pillow, and seemed to swoon away. I
felt in a sore quandary. Here was I, alone in this remote cottage, with
a man to all seeming at death's door, little or no food in the house, no
medicines or restoratives, and, to complicate matters, a box containing
as my hasty rummage in it had disclosed, notes and gold of considerable
value. Like most young people I had practically no knowledge of the
treatment of the sick and I had an unreasoning terror of death. I knew
enough, however, to feel sure that food and warmth and physic must be
had and had at once. I made up a peat fire in the rusty range--the
chimney smoked atrociously at first, but anon the damp was drawn out,
and the fire glowed red and warm. I found some milk in a tin below
stairs, which I judged had been left by some neighbouring farmer's lass.
I warmed it in a pan, and succeeded in getting my patient to swallow a
few spoonfuls. I piled on to the bed all the covering I could find. I
took from the store a spade guinea, carefully locked and stowed away
beneath the bed that precious kist, and then, assuring, or trying to
assure, the half-conscious sufferer that I wouldn't be long gone, I hied
me away across the moors to the "Floating Light." There I purchased a
bottle of brandy and such provisions as I thought most likely to be
useful, and bribed a man I found drinking in the kitchen to make what
speed he could down to Slaithwaite and bring back with him, at any cost,
old William Dean, the doctor who had brought me and our Ruth into the
world, and who cared the bodies of all the Colne Valley from Marsden to
Milnsbridge Then, pretty heavily laden, or rather cumbered than laden, I
set off once more for the hermit's cottage.
Now, by this time the shades of night had begun to fall. There was no
moon and few stars, and the track across the moor was none too plain,
and I had to guide myself some extent by those turf covers those
shooters put up when they are beating the grouse--landmarks I knew well
from frequently passing that way. I was about midway to my destination
when I heard a couple of gunshots in quick succession.
"Strange," I thought. "It's late hours for the shooters to be about.
Happen it's poachers, and if any of those gentry are about yon kist of
gold's none too safe, with no one but a dying man to guard it."
It is curious that at this moment the thought of the Burnplatters
crossed my mind--but they had an unenviable reputation, though, like
enough, like a certain other personage, they were not as black as they
were painted. Anyhow, I increased my pace almost to a run, but had
hardly gone a score of yards when I was brought to a sudden stop by a
sound that lifted the hair on my head. It was a deep moan, as of one in
pain, followed by a petulant curse, and there was the heavy rustling as
of a body dragging through the bracken and heather; another moan, and
many another oath, and then silence.
Now, to be sure I'd enough on my hands with the sick parson, but I could
not find it in my heart to leave a man, or maybe a woman, to perish on
the moor, as wayfarers from Lancashire to Yorkshire, or t'other way
about, often did in dark or fog. I had bought a pound of tallow dips at
the "Floating Light," for I'd no mind to sit out the night with my
patient and ne'er the gleam of a light to company me withal. I put down
my pack, and with much ado struck a light on my tinder box, and not a
dozen yards ahead of me, near the track, sprawled, face downwards, the
body of a man. I turned him over, dipped my kerchief in a pool of
stagnant water, and mopped his forehead, forced some of that precious
brandy down his throat, and had the satisfaction of hearing a deep sigh
and a quick stream of profanity, which, however, I'm fain to confess was
as tuneful to my ears as choicer language for when a man's swearing he's
not like to die.
"Wheer am I, an' who are ta?" And the man, raising himself with a grunt
on to his elbow, peered into my face by the flickering light of the dip.
"If it isn't little Abe." Now I was by no means little, but I suppose
Ephraim--for Ephraim it was, sure enough as I had seen when I turned him
over--still thought of me as the urchin he had companied with as a lad.
"You're on Stanedge Moor, and how you got here and what you're doing in
this coil you known best--up to no good I reckon," I said testily, for
no man of my inches likes calling little. "Seems to me the question is,
being here, how to get away. Are you hurt? You made noise enough."
"Hurt! Aw sud think I am. Howd that silly light to my fooit--th' reight
'un. Poo' mi clog off if yo' can, it's swelled an' all th' daggers i'
hell's shooitin' through it. Tak' this knife an' cut th' clog off, an'
don't be feart of a drop o' blood."
I did as I was bid. "Gi' me th' clog, man--it'll n'er do to leave it on
th' moor for a tell-tale. Not but what th' varmint knew weel enough who
they were shooitin' at."
"Th' varmint?" I queried.
"Aye, them keepers at Bill's o' Jack's. Aw seed 'em, an' they seed me,
worse luck. But aw'm all swimmin'. Gi' us another swig o' that liquor
yo' han i' th' bottle--tho' what yo' done here wi a quart o' brandy to
your own cheek passes me. Ugh!" he cried, as he put his foot to the
ground, "aw'st n'er make o'er to th' Burnplatts at this noit, There's
th' hermit' hut a bit forrard yonder. Aw've teed mony a rabbit to his
door sneck unbeknown to him. Happen he'll ta' mi in for th' neet till
aw rest my foot. Onny port i' a storm, tho' aw'st none relish his
company o'er mich."
There was no help for it, so I picked up my traps and, marvelling
greatly at what was to be the end of it all, led the way to the not
distant cottage, Ephraim leaning heavily on my shoulder and limping
lamely over the sheep track, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter,"
though certainly not against "the disciples of the Lord."
"Them Bradbury's 'st pay for this, or my name's not Eph. o' th'
Burnplatts," he muttered; and I thought it probable they would.
Now if I hadn't a handful I should like to know what man ever had. It
was with the utmost difficulty, with many a groan and many a halt for
breathing space, that I got Ephraim safe landed at the cottage. I made
him as comfortable as I could on some sacking in front of the fire in
the lower room. He clamoured for more brandy, and wanted to finish the
bottle and "be damned to his fooit," as he put it. But I had to have
sense for both--I that was never reckoned to have overmuch for one--and
cut off discussion by carrying the bottle upstairs whither I knew
Ephraim could not clamber. I found Mr. Garside much as I had left him,
whether sleeping or half-conscious I could scarce determine--comatose
Dr. Dean called it when at length--about daybreak--he rode up to the
cottage and had painfully climbed the steep ladder-like staircase,
puffing and blowing like a porpoise, as Ephraim said--for the doctor was
fat and scant of breath.
"I'd hardly have turned out of my warm bed to come to this God-forsaken
place for anyone but your father's son," he growled. "Why didn't you
send to Garstang at Saddleworth; he's nearer. But no! it's Bill Dean
here, and Bill Dean there, till I'm worn to skin and bone."
This as he bent over his elder patient--"that young gallows-lad can
wait," he had remarked--and felt his pulse and turned up his eyelids.
"Clemmed to death, that's what's the matter with him, and it's too far
gone to be stopped I'm feared."
"Don't be frightened to order anything that'll do him good," I said.
"There's money for anything."
"And how may that be?" he asked.
I told him of Mr Garside's secret store, and then by a happy
afterthought, I told him that the old man fancied he had a wife and
child living somewhere, and that he had left it in charge to me to
ferret them out, and if I didn't find them in three years the money was
to be mine.
"Is there much?"
"I haven't counted it--but there's a sight more than ever I saw in my
life before."
"This wants thinking on," said Dr. Dean. "You bide here while I go down
and see to that roving blade. 'Tis only a gunshot in his foot. I'll have
him on his leg's in a day or two. Best have him carted off to th'
Burnplatts. Does he know about this money of the old man's?"
"No, no one knows but you and me, that I'm aware of."
"And best he shouldn't. I wouldn't trust a Burnplatter as far as I can
throw a bull by the tail. But you must have a woman in the place
there'll be one wanted ere many hours be gone; he'll scarce last the day
out, or I'll be cheated. Do you know of any decent body hereabouts?"
I mentioned Mary at Wrigley Mill.
"Couldn't be better. I'll ride on to th' "Floating Light" and have my
breakfast, and sore I need it; and I'll send someone down for her. She
must bring some sheets too. They'll be needed to lay him out. And I'll
draw up some make of a Will about that money. It will never do to have
only your word for it."
Now that very thought had more than once crossed my mind. I suppose I
must have dropped into the deep dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion in
the chair I had drawn to Mr. Garside's bedside. I was roused by a
familiar voice below, plain enough to be heard.
"Weel, if ever aw saw a pig-hoil i' my life, this is it"--'twas Mary
soliloquising--"an' aw reckon this'll be th' pig, he snores enough for a
styeful, choose how. Eigh! Waken up. Who's to do th' house up, an' thee
sprawling on th' hearthstone. Well, of all th' messes! Blood all ovver
th' floor. Th' doctor said nowt about a shambles or he'd no ha' got me
ovver th' moor."
"Mary," I called softly. "It's here you're wanted. I'll see to Ephraim."
And so, to my great relief, I got Mary installed as nurse. I made some
breakfast for Ephraim and myself, to which, despite his wound, which the
doctor had dressed and of which Ephraim made very light, that worthy did
ample justice. Then I curled myself up before the fire and slept like a
log.