CHAPTER XIV.

Varley's Cottage, which place George Crofton and his confederates had fixed upon as their rendezvous, was a spot of ill repute for miles around, and one which no inhabitant of the district would willingly go near by day, much less after dark. A grim tragedy centred round the spot. Some quarter of a century previously the cottage had been the home of a certain gamekeeper, Varley by name, who had made himself specially obnoxious to the poachers of the district. One night he was shot dead on his own threshold and his cottage fired in two places. The crime was never brought home to any one, neither was the cottage ever rebuilt. But of all this neither Clara Brooke nor Margery, being newcomers in the neighbourhood, knew anything.

The elder woman hurried feverishly onward, the younger leading the way. Scarcely a word passed between them. Presently they reached the stile through which Margery had followed the two men, and crossing it, took a winding footway through the fields. They went swiftly and silently, walking not on the path itself but on the soft grass which bordered it. Not a creature did they see or hear, and before long the path began to dip to a hollow, then came some straggling patches of brushwood, and presently they were in the spinney itself, with trees and a thick undergrowth on both sides of them. Margery led the way as by a sort of instinct, only pausing for a second now and again to listen. To Clara, the adventure, with its darkness, its silence, and its mystery, had all the complexion of a nightmare. Again and again she had to ask herself whether it were indeed a reality.

"We are nearly there now, mum," said Margery presently in a whisper. "Do you wait here among the trees, while I creep forward and try and find out what they be about." So saying, the girl stole forward, and was at once lost to view.

The young wife waited with a heart that beat high and anxiously. The moments seemed terribly long till Margery returned, although in reality she was not more than three or four minutes away. Clara trembled so much that she could not speak.

"There's four of 'em now, mum," said the girl. "I could see them quite plain through the crack in the shutter, and from what I could make out, there's more to come. O mistress, I wouldn't go near 'em if I was you; they're a desperate bad lot, and if they found you there, nobody can tell what might happen."

Of a truth, Clara might well hesitate, and it was only the thought that some new and unforeseen danger might possibly at that very moment be closing like a net round the husband she loved so devotedly that nerved her to the task she had set herself to do. "Margery," she said after a brief silence, "where you can go with safety I can surely go. I must see and listen to these men for myself.--Now, attend to this. Should I be discovered by them, or should anything happen to me, you will fly as for your life and warn your master."

"I understands, mum, never fear," was the girl's earnest response.

Then the two crept together through the trees, almost as silent as the shadows of which they seemed to form a part, and presently Clara found herself under the walls of the ruined cottage. Margery guided her to where a rickety shutter still guarded a small square window, from which, however, the glass had long since disappeared. Through a chink in this, the interior of the room, such as it was, was plainly discernible. Two old-fashioned lanterns threw a dim weird light over the scene. Clara's eyes sought instinctively for the face of Crofton before taking any note of the others; it may be that some faint hope had all along lingered in her breast that Margery had been mistaken. But if that were so, the hope at once died out. George Crofton himself was before her. He was the only one of the party that was seated, and his seat consisted of nothing more than a pile of loose bricks, with part of the stone shelf of the mantel-piece laid across them. He was smoking, as were also two of the others, and seemed deep in thought. The rest of the party were utter strangers to Clara; they talked in low tones among themselves, and, much to her surprise, she saw that one of them was in the garb of a clergyman.

Scarcely had Mrs. Brooke noted these things, when a low whistle sounded from somewhere outside. Crofton sprang to his feet, and all were instantly on the alert. The whistle was answered by another from within, and then one of the men left the cottage carrying a lantern. Clara and Margery sank noiselessly back into the undergrowth of bush and bramble by which the cottage on three sides was surrounded.

When, two or three minutes later, Clara ventured to resume her post of observation at the window, she found that the party inside had been augmented by two fresh arrivals. The men had now grouped themselves round Crofton in various attitudes of attention, listening to the instructions he was evidently impressing upon them. Whatever the objects of this strange company might be, there could be little doubt that George Crofton was the leader of it. One man, who bent forward a little, had made an ear-trumpet of his hand, and it might be for his benefit that Crofton now pitched his voice in a higher key than he had previously done. Clara hardly breathed as she strained her senses to catch the words that fell from his lips.

What she heard, gradually piecing the plot together in her own mind as Crofton issued his final orders to the men, was enough to blanch the heart of any woman with terror and dismay. The train to Cummerhays was to be attacked and robbed; some great treasure--Clara could not make out of what nature--was to travel by it to-night, which these desperadoes had determined on making their own. As a preliminary step, the signalman at Cinder Pit Junction was to be seized, bound, and gagged, his box taken possession of, and the telegraph wires cut. A member of the gang who answered to the name of Slinkey, and who understood the manipulation of points and signals, would install himself in the box. Then, when the train came up on its way to Cummerhays, passing the box at a speed of about twenty miles an hour, by a reversal of the points it was to be turned by Slinkey on to the branch leading to the collieries. As a matter of course, the driver would bring his train to a stand as speedily as possible, and then would come the opportunity of the gang. It was well known that, except at holiday times, passengers and officials together by this train rarely numbered half a score people. It would be strange if half-a-dozen desperate men, armed with revolvers, could not so far intimidate the driver, the guard, and a few sleepy passengers as to have the whole train at their mercy. Five minutes would suffice to successfully achieve the object they had in view, after which the train might go on its way again as if nothing had happened.

Such were the chief features of this audacious scheme, as gathered by Clara from Crofton's instructions to the others. Of course, each man had known beforehand what he was expected to do, and what passed at the cottage was merely a sort of final rehearsal of the scene that was to follow.

Crofton now looked at his watch and announced that it was time to start. The lanterns were extinguished, and the men filed silently out of the cottage, half of them taking one road and half another. Clara and Margery had but just time to draw their shawls over their heads and crouch on their knees amid the brushwood, when three of the men passed within as many yards of them. When all was silent again, they stood up. Never on any previous occasion when danger threatened her husband had Clara felt so utterly helpless as she did now. What could she, one weak woman, do to confound the machinations of six armed and desperate men?

"O Margery," she cried, seizing both the girl's hands in the extremity of her distress, "there seems no help either in heaven or on earth. We are lost--lost!"

The faithful girl could only kiss with a sob the hands that held her own. "What be they going to do, mistress?" she asked a moment or two later. She had not been able to see and hear what had passed in the cottage, as Clara had done.

"They are going to seize and bind your master, and then they are going to stop and rob the train. O Margery, if there was but some way by which the train could be warned in time! Think, think; is there nothing we can do?"

"Why, o' course there is, mum," answered the girl with one of her uncanny chuckles. "You just let me run home as fast as my legs'll carry me and get three or four singles--them things, you know, that Muster Geril used to fasten on the rails when the fog was bad in winter. I know how to fasten them, 'cos I watched Muster Geril do it one day when I took him some to the box. Then I'll take the short cut across the fields to where the line turns sharp round more'n half a mile away from the box, and I'll fix the singles there.--But what am I to tell the driver, mum, when he stops the train?"

"Tell him there are half-a-dozen men with revolvers who are going to stop and rob the train, just beyond your master's box. After that, he will know what it will be best to do." She could have flung her arms round Margery's neck and kissed her, such a weight had the girl's words lifted off her heart.

"But what about pore Muster Geril, mum?" urged Margery.

Ah, what indeed! Clara shivered as though an icy wind had struck her. She had not failed to notice that her husband had never been mentioned by name by Crofton, who had spoken of him to the others as though he were an utter stranger. Could it be possible he was unaware that Gerald filled the position of signalman at Cinder Pit Junction. It was possible, but by no means probable; but in that faint chance lay her only hope of her husband's safety. In that case, should he and Crofton not encounter each other, the rest of the gang would merely regard Gerald in the light of an ordinary railway servant; and although he might chance to be assailed and maltreated by them, that would be but a minor evil in comparison with the other, and one which an hour or two at the most would set right. These thoughts passed through her mind far more rapidly than she could have given them utterance in words. The only question now was, had she time to warn her husband before the attack took place? The gang were on their way already: could she overtake them, pass them unseen, and reach the signal-box before they did? The chance was a desperate one, but she must attempt it--no other course was open to her.

"Come!" she said, grasping Margery by the hand. "Let us hurry--let us hasten! While you go and fix the signals, I will go and warn your master, only pray heaven I may not be too late!"

With scarcely a word more they sped swiftly back along the starlit fields; but when they reached the stile, Clara said: "Is there no nearer way to the signal-box than going round to it by the high-road?"

"There's a way through the fields, that cuts off a big corner. I've walked it onst; but I dunno, mum, as you could find it in the dark."

"I must try," answered Clara desperately. Every second was precious.

The near cut in question was through a second stile somewhat farther on. At this point, after a few last words, the two parted, each going a separate way.

Clara's way led her through more fields; but the track was so faint that she was utterly unable to distinguish it, and had to trust to her vague local knowledge that she was going in the right direction. In a little while she surmounted a rising ground, and then, to her utter dismay, she saw, from the position of the signal lamps in the valley below, that she had wandered a full quarter of a mile too far to the right of them. It was a thousand chances to one now that Crofton and his crew would be there before her.

Anguish lent wings to her feet, and she flew down the slope like a creature pursued by the Furies. She could see the lighted window of the signal-box shining in the distance, a faint yellow disc. The next thing she knew was that she had reached the boundary of the line, but at a point still some distance from the box. It now became needful to exercise more caution than she had hitherto done, lest she should be seen by any of the gang, who were doubtless somewhere near at hand. The line at this point was bounded by a wooden fencing put up to prevent the straying of cattle, close to which, on the field-side, grew a thin straggling hedge. Under the shelter of this hedge Clara now stole softly and cautiously forward, with eyes and ears preternaturally on the alert. Step by step she drew nearer without being disturbed by a sight or a sound, till at length she faced the box with its lighted window where it stood on the opposite side of the line. Then with a heart, the pulsing of which sounded like a low drumming in her ears, she parted the bushes and peered through.

For a moment or two a mist dimmed her eyes, and all she could discern was that there was some one inside the box. Then the mist cleared away, and she saw that the man standing there with one hand resting on a lever was not her husband, but the man Slinkey, whose sinister face she had seen through the broken shutter. Gerald was nowhere to be seen. She had come too late!