CHAPTER LVIII

HORNS AND HOOFS

“There is nothing but the Declaration to be provided for now,” observed Malletort, after a pause. “You had better give it me back, Florian, even without Sir George’s name subscribed. He is a man of mettle, and will be in the saddle as soon as he hears steel and stirrup ring.”

Although the Abbé did not fail to observe how strange an alteration had to-day come over his young friend’s manner, he simply attributed it to the qualms of conscience which are often so embarrassing to beginners in the science of deception, but which, as far as his own experience served him, he had found invariably disappeared with a little practice. He never doubted that Florian was equally interested with himself in the success of their undertaking, though for different reasons. He attributed it to nervousness, anxiety, and a foolish hankering after Lady Hamilton, the wildness of the young priest’s dark eye—the fixed spot of colour in his cheek, lately so pale and wan—the resolute expression of his feminine mouth, denoting some desperate intention—and the general air of abstraction that showed as well unconsciousness of the present as recklessness of the future into which he seemed to project his whole being. The Abbé simply expected that Florian would place his hand in his bosom and bring out the roll of paper required. He was surprised, therefore, to receive no answer; and repeated, hastily, for he had still a press of business to get through—

“The manifesto, my friend—quick! It must be retained in my care till it is printed!”

Florian woke up from a brown study, and looked vacantly around.

“It is still in Sir George’s hands,” said he. “I believe I have asked him for it more than once, but I could not get it back.”

“In Sir George’s hands!” repeated the Abbé, almost losing patience, “and without Sir George’s signature! Do you know what you are saying? Florian, listen, man, and look up. Are you awake?”

The other passed his hand wearily across his brow.

“I have slept little of late,” was all he answered. “It is as I tell you.”

Even Captain Bold could not but admire the Abbé’s self-control, that kept down the impatience naturally resulting from such a confession, so composedly announced. He mused for a moment with his peculiar smile, and observed, quietly—

“You travel to London to-night, I believe, and you travel together?”

Florian only bowed his head in reply.

“I wish you a pleasant journey,” continued the Abbé. “Had you not better go now and make the necessary preparations?”

Then, as soon as the door closed on Florian, who walked out dejectedly, without another word, he grasped Captain Bold’s arm, and laughed a low, mocking laugh.

“Business increases, captain,” said he. “Yours is a trade sure to thrive, for its occasions come up fresh every day. Did you hear that Sir George Hamilton possesses a paper I require? and that he proceeds to London to-night?”

“I heard it,” answered the captain, doggedly.

He, too, knew something of Sir George, and did not much relish the job which he began to suspect was provided for him.

“That paper must be in my hands before daybreak,” continued the Abbé, speaking in such low, distinct accents, as his emissary had already learned admitted of no appeal. “You will name your own price, Captain Bold, and you will bring me what I require—as little blood on it as possible—at least two hours before dawn.”

The captain pondered, and his face fell.

“Do you know how Sir George travels?” said he, in his high, quavering voice, more tremulous than its wont. “There has been such a press of work lately that I am rather short both of men and horses. If he takes anything like a following with him it might come to a coil; and such jobs won’t bear patching. They must be done clean or let alone. That’s my principle! He’s a cock of the game, this, you see,” added the captain, apologetically; “and you’ll not cut his comb without a thick pair of gloves on, I’ll warrant him!”

“Permit me to observe, my friend,” replied Malletort, coolly, “that this is a mere matter of detail with which I can have no concern. It is not the least in my line, but exclusively in yours. Must I repeat? You name your own price, and work in your own way.”

“It cannot be done without cutting his throat,” said Bold, despondingly, regretting the while, not so much a necessity for bloodshed, as his own sorry chance of carrying out the adventure with a whole skin.

“Of course not,” assented the Abbé. “Why, he was in the Grey Musketeers of the King!”

“To-night, you say,” continued the captain, in the same mournful tone. “I wonder if he rides that bay with the white heels. I’ve seen him turn the horse on a sixpence, and he’s twice as heavy as my mare.”

Again Malletort laughed his low, mocking laugh.

“Fear not,” said he; “there need be no personal collision on foot or on horseback. Sir George travels by the heavy post-coach, like any fat grazier or cattle-dealer, whom you may bid ‘Stand and deliver’ without a qualm.”

“By the coach!” repeated Bold, his face brightening. “That’s a different job altogether. That makes the thing much more like business, especially if there’s many passengers. You see, they frighten and hamper one another. Why, if there’s a stoutish old woman or two anyways near him, it’s as likely as not they’ll pinion Sir George by both arms, and hold on till we’ve finished, screaming awful, of course! But you won’t make any difference in the price on account of the coach, now, will you? Even chancing the old women, you see, we’re very short-handed to do it clean.”

“I have said more than once, name your own price,” answered the Abbé. “I deduct nothing for a friend whom I will myself place by Sir George’s side, and who will do the pinioning you speak of more effectually, if with less noise, than a ton of old women. How many hands can you muster?”

“Mounted, of course?” replied the captain. “There’s myself, and Blood Humphrey, and Black George. I don’t think I can count on any others, but we ought to have one more to do it handsome.”

“I will come with you myself,” said the Abbé. “I have a horse here in the stable, and better arms than any of you.”

The captain stared aghast, but so great was the respect with which Malletort inspired his subordinates, that he never dreamed for an instant of dissuading the Abbé from an adventure which he might have thought completely out of a churchman’s line. On the contrary, satisfied that whatever the chief of the plot undertook would be well accomplished, he looked admiringly in his principal’s face, and observed—

“We’ll stop them at the old thorns, half-way up Borrodaile Rise. The coach will back off the road, and likely enough upset in the soft moor. I’ll cover Sir George, and pull the moment he’s off his seat to get down. The others will rob the passengers, and—and I suppose there is nothing more to arrange?”

The Abbé, folding up his papers to leave the room, nodded carelessly and replied:—

“We mount in half an hour. Through the heart, I think, Bold. The head is easily missed at a dozen paces from the saddle.”

“Through the heart,” answered the captain, but Malletort had already quitted the room and closed the door.

“Half an hour,” mused Bold, now left to himself in the cold and dimly-lighted apartment. “In half an hour a good deal may be done both in love and war. And Alice promised to be here by now. I thought the gentleman never _would_ go away. What a time they were, to be sure! We make quicker work of it in our trade. How cold it is! I wish I’d a glass of brandy; but I dursn’t, no, I dursn’t, though I’m all of a shake like. I’ll have one ‘steadier’ just before I get on the mare. If I’m over-primed I shall miss him, and he’s not the sort to give a chap a second chance. I wish this job was over. I never half-liked it from the first. Hush! I think that’s Alice’s cough. Poor little girl! She loves the very boots I wear. I wish she’d come, though. This room is cursed lonesome, and I don’t like my own company unless I can have it really to myself. I always fancy there’s somebody else I can’t see. How my teeth chatter. It’s the cold. It _must_ be the cold! Well, there’s no harm in lighting the fire, at any rate.”

So speaking, or rather muttering, the captain, on whose nerves repeated glasses of brandy at all hours of the day and night had not failed to make an impression, proceeded to collect with trembling hands certain covers of despatches and other coarse scraps of paper left on the floor and table, which litter he placed carefully on the hearth, building the damp sticks over them skilfully enough, and applying his solitary candle to the whole.

His paper flared brightly, but with no other effect than to produce thick, stifling clouds of smoke from the saturated fuel and divers oaths spoken out loud from the disgusted captain.

“May the devil fly away with them!” said he, in a towering rage, “to a place where they’ll burn fast enough without lighting. And me, too!” he added yet more wrathfully, “for wasting my time like a fool waiting for a jilt who can’t even lay a fire properly in an inn chimney.”

The words had scarce left his lips when a discordant roar resounded, as it seemed, from the very wall of the house, and a hideous monster, that he never doubted was the Arch Fiend whom he had invoked, came sprawling on all-fours down the chimney which the smoke had refused to ascend, and made straight for the terrified occupant of the apartment, whose hair stood on end, and whose whole senses were for a moment paralysed with horror and dismay.

In a single glance the captain beheld the black shaggy hide, the wide-spreading horns, the cloven hoofs, the long and tufted tail! That glance turned him for one instant to a man of stone. The next, with an irrepressible shout that denoted the very anguish of fear, he sprang through the door, upsetting and extinguishing the candle in his flight, and hurried downstairs, closely, though silently followed by the monster, who thus escaped from the room before Malletort, alarmed at the disturbance, could re-enter it with a light.

“He’s not heart of oak, isn’t that chap!” said Slap-Jack, as he turned noiselessly into the stable, where he proceeded to divest himself of the bullock’s hide he had worn for his masquerade, and so much of the filth it had left as could be effaced by scraping his garments and washing face and hands with soap and water. But the jest which had been compiled so merrily with his friend and sweetheart seemed to have lost all its mirth in the execution, for the seaman looked exceedingly grave and thoughtful, stealing quietly into the bar in search of his shipmate, with whom he presently disappeared to hold mysterious conference outside the house, secure from all eavesdroppers.

Captain Bold, though for a short space well-nigh frightened out of his wits, was not so inexperienced in the maladies of those who, like himself, applied freely and continuously to the brandy bottle, to be ignorant that such jovial spirits are peculiarly subject to hallucinations, and often visited by phantoms which only exist in their own diseased imaginations. He had scarcely reached the bar, therefore—a refuge he sought unconsciously and by instinct—ere he recovered himself enough to remember that alcohol was the only specific for the horrors, and he proceeded accordingly to swallow glass after glass till his usual composure of mind should return. He was nothing loth to use the remedy, yet each succeeding draught, while it strung his nerves, seemed to increase his depression, and for the first time in his life, he felt unable to shake off an uncomfortable conviction, that whether the phantom was really in the chimney or only in his own brain, he had that night received a warning, and was doomed.

There was little leisure, however, either for apprehension or remorse. Malletort, booted and well armed beneath his cassock, was already descending the stairs, and calling for his horse. To judge by his open brow and jaunty manner, his final interview with Florian, whom he had again summoned for a few last words, must have been satisfactory in the extreme. The latter, too, carried his head erect, and there was a proud glance in his eye, as of one who marches to victory.

“You will not fail at the last moment?” said the Abbé, pressing St. Croix’s hand while they descended the wooden staircase in company, and Florian’s reply, “Trust me, I will not fail!” carried conviction even to the cold heart of the astute and suspicious churchman.

So Captain Bold tossed off his last glass of brandy, examined the priming of his pistols, and swung himself into the saddle. His staunch comrades were at his side. The Abbé, of whose administrative powers he entertained the highest opinion, was there to superintend the expedition. It was easy, it was safe. Once accomplished, his fortune was made for life. As they emerged upon the snow, just deep enough to afford their horses a sure foothold, the bay mare shook her bit and laid her ears back cheerfully. Even Black George, usually a saturnine personage, acknowledged the bracing influence of the keen night air and the exhilarating prospect of action. He exchanged a professional jest with Blood Humphrey, and slapped his commander encouragingly on the shoulder; but, for all this, a black shadow seemed to hover between Captain Bold and the frosty stars—something seemed to warn him that the hour he had so often jested of was coming on him fast, and that to-night he must look the death he had so lightly laughed at in the face.