Chapter 33

The Fire in the Dusk

It was Jerry who gave the alarm ten minutes later. He had been busy at his garden in the Sloperies when he saw the smoke rise from the shelter on the hill, and rushed into the yard to say the shed was ablaze.

Boy and Silver, after their leisurely walk home, had just entered the yard and surrendered their horses to two of the lads. The girl was releasing Billy Bluff from his chain, to Maudie's open annoyance, when Jerry panted in with his news.

Silver ran to the gate.

"By Jove, so it is!" he cried.

He was in the saddle in a moment, but not so quickly as was the girl.

She led him through the gate.

Together they galloped across the Paddock Close and made for the hill, Billy Bluff racing at their side.

The lads ran heavily behind.

The shed was belching smoke, and from the heather-thatch the flames were leaping in red flicker.

"Jolly blaze!" cried Silver as he galloped.

A sound of banging came from the heart of that cloud of smoke, and then the loud neigh of a frightened horse.

The young man's face changed.

"Four Pound's inside!" he cried.

He stormed up the hill, and for the first time in his life Banjo tasted steel.

Boy, too, had heard that muffled cry, and came shooting by the heavy-weight up the hill, Lollypop well extended.

"Keep clear!" cried Silver. "Hold my horse!"

He was off in a trice, and wading through the bellying smoke.

The girl could see him dimly as he kicked at the door of the shed.

It burst open.

A vast shadow came hurtling through the fog.

Silver was sent hurling backward and sprawled on the hillside.

He was on his feet in a moment.

"That's all right," he panted, as he watched the colt career whinnying away, wreaths of smoke still clinging to his woolly coat. "He's not taken much harm."

"I suppose he went in after we left," mused Boy. "And then the wind banged the door."

"I don't think the wind dropped that bar," said the young man. "And I doubt if it set the shelter alight."

The shed was blazing merrily, the flames devouring the tarred wood with greed.

Jerry had seen a man leave the public path, cross the Paddock, and enter the shed half an hour before.

"What kind of a man?" asked Silver.

"Trampy, sir," replied the lad.

"He got smokin' in it out of the wind," said Stanley, "and set it ablaze, and did a bolt."

"After shutting the door behind him with the colt inside," commented Silver.

He searched the grass on the outskirts of the shed for footmarks. Something glimmering in the dusk caught his eye. It was a wooden-handled sheath-knife.

Silver picked it up and showed it to the girl.

She said nothing.

"Billy Bluff!" called the young man. He shoved the knife under the dog's nose. "Sik him out!" he called. "Good dorg!"

Billy Bluff skirmished round and went off up the hill at score.

Silver mounted and followed.

The trail carried the dog up on to the Downs.

He pursued it at speed and unfaltering in the dusk.

Against the pale west, on the brow, the figure of a man soon came into view. Billy Bluff raced up and greeted the pedestrian effusively.

Silver, pounding up behind, found himself face to face with the vicar.

The dog, his task completed to his own entire satisfaction, sought applause and sympathy from the horseman.

"Is that you, Mr. Haggard?" called the young man in the dusk.

"Yes; I came up to have a look at the sunset."

"You haven't seen that man Joses about?"

"Our lurid friend," said the vicar absently. "No; and I don't want to see him just now. It's all so quiet."

Boy, who had stayed behind to examine the colt, came cantering up.

The dusk was drawing down apace, the earth dark about them, and seaward that window in the west pale and lovely.

"Wonderful!" said Mr. Haggard, dreamily, and repeated slowly and to himself--

_Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you. You will understand._

The riders turned away.

Neither spoke for a while.

"Mr. Haggard's like mother," said the girl at last. "He's got _that_." She added: "I'm glad we met him. I was very angry."

"Aren't you now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "but in a different way. It's white now. It was red then."

They rode slowly off the crest amid the gorse, the lights of Putnam's burning far beneath them in the dusk.

"Give me that knife, please," she said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I want it."

"What for?"

He didn't answer.

"I know," she said. "To get him put away."

"He deserves it," replied the young man doggedly. "If it had only been the shed now!--but--"

"Four Pound," she said. "I know." Her little hand came reaching toward him in the dusk. "Give me that knife, please."

He fenced with her.

"Don't you believe in punishment?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Not even for cruelty?"

"I don't think you can stop cruelty by being cruel yourself."

"Wouldn't you give him in charge?"

"Yes," she said, "if I was sure they'd kill him. But they wouldn't. They'd only cage him. And I can't believe in the cage for anyone." She was breathing deeply.

"Here you are," said the young man.

She laid her hand on his a moment.

He grasped it, and drew toward her silently.

The horses moved side by side down the hill, a few pale stars sprinkling the dull heavens, and somewhere behind, the glimmer of a young moon.

They passed into the Paddock Close, stealing softly over the turf, the wood moving gently on their right in the darkness.

He came looming up beside her.

"Boy," he said deeply.

It was the first time he had dared.

"Yes," she answered, and her voice trembled ever so little.

"Will you share something besides Four-Pound-the-Second?"

"What?"

"Everything."

The moon caught her.

She turned full face to him; and her eyes were tender and brilliant as he had never known them.

"D'you care for me?" she asked.

"I love you," said Silver.

She squeezed his hand, but answered nothing.

"D'you care for _me_?" he asked in his turn.

She did not answer for some time.

"I'm not going to marry you," she said at last.

"Why not?"

He thought she gulped.

"I'm not going to marry a gentleman."

"Why not?"

Again she paused.

"It doesn't do."

He lifted her little hand in his great gloved one and kissed it.

"Bless you, dear Boy," was all he said.