CHAPTER VIII.

DIRTY JACK.

There was one thing that puzzled both General St. George and Lionel Dering, and that was the persistent way in which Kester St. George stayed on at Park Newton. It had, in the first place, been a matter of some difficulty to get him to Park Newton at all, and for some time after his arrival it had been evident to all concerned that he had made up his mind that his stay there should be as brief as possible. But after that never-to-be-forgotten night when the noise of ghostly footsteps was heard in the nailed-up room—a circumstance which both his uncle and his cousin had made up their minds would drive him from the house for ever—he ceased to talk much about going away. Week passed after week and still he stayed on. Nor could his uncle, had he been desirous of doing so, which he certainly was not, have hinted to him, even in the most delicate possible way, that his room would be more welcome than his company, after the pressure which he had put upon him only a short time previously to induce him to remain.

Nothing could have suited Lionel’s plans better than that his cousin should continue to live on at Park Newton, but he was certainly puzzled to know what his reason could be for so doing; and, in such a case, to be puzzled was, to a certain extent, to be disquieted.

But much as he would have liked to do so, Kester had a very good reason for not leaving Park Newton at present. He was, in fact, afraid to do so. After the affair of the footsteps he had decided that it would not be advisable to go away for a little while. It would never do for people to say that he had been driven away by the ghost of Percy Osmond. It was while thus lingering on from day to day that he had ridden over to see Mother Mim. One result of his interview was that he felt how utterly unsafe it would be for him to quit the neighbourhood till she was safely dead and buried. She might send for him at any moment, she might have other things to speak to him about which it behoved him to hear. She might change her mind at the last moment, and decide to tell to some other person what she had already told him; and when she should die, it would doubtless be to him that application would be made to bury her. All things considered, it was certainly unadvisable that he should leave Park Newton yet awhile.

Day after day he waited with smothered impatience for some further tidings of Mother Mim. But day after day he waited in vain. Most men, under such circumstances, would have gone to the place and have made personal inquiries for themselves. This was precisely what Kester St. George told himself that he ought to do, but for all that he did not do it. He shrank, with a repugnance which he could not overcome, from the thought of any further contact with either Mother Mim or her surroundings. His tastes, if not refined, were fastidious, and a shudder of disgust ran through him as often as he remembered that if what Mother Mim had said were true—and there was something that rang terribly like truth in her words—then was she—that wretched creature—his mother, and the filthy hut in which she lay dying his sole home and heritage. He knew that for the sake of his own interest—of his own safety—he ought to go and see again this woman who called herself his mother, but three weeks had come and gone before he could screw his courage up to the pitch requisite to induce him to do so.

But before this came about, Kester St. George had been left for the time being, with the exception of certain servants, the sole occupant of Park Newton. Lionel Dering had gone down to Bath to seek an interview with Pierre Janvard, with what result has been already seen. Two days after Lionel’s departure, General St. George was called away by the sudden illness of an old Indian friend to whom he was most warmly attached. He left home expecting to be back in four or five days at the latest; whereas, as it fell out, he did not reach home again for several weeks.

It was one day when thus left alone, and when the solitude was becoming utterly intolerable to him, that Kester made up his mind that he would no longer be a coward, but would go that very afternoon and see for himself whether Mother Mim were alive or dead. But even after he had thus determined that there should be no more delay on his part, he played fast and loose with himself as to whether he should go or not. Had there come to him any important letter or telegram demanding his presence fifty miles away, he would have caught at it as a drowning man catches at a straw. The veriest excuse would have sufficed for the putting off of his journey for at least one day. But the dull hours wore themselves away without relief or change of any kind for him, and when three o’clock came, having first dosed himself heavily with brandy, he rang the bell and ordered his horse to be brought round.

What might not the next few hours bring to him? he asked himself as he rode down the avenue. They might perchance be pregnant with doom. Or death might already have lifted this last bitter burden from his life by sealing with his bony fingers the only lips that had power to do him harm.

For nearly a fortnight past the weather had been remarkably mild, balmy, and open for the time of year. Everybody said how easily old winter was dying. But during the previous night there had come a bitter change. The wind had suddenly veered round to the north-east, and was still blowing steadily from that quarter. Steadily and bitterly it blew, chilling the hearts of man and beast with its icy breath, stopping the growth of grass and flowers, killing every faintest gleam of sunshine, and bringing back the reign of winter in its cruellest form.

Heavy and lowering looked the sky, shrilly through the still bare branches whistled the ice-cold wind, as Kester St. George, deep in thought, rode slowly through the park. He buttoned his coat more closely around him, and pulled his hat more firmly over his brows as he turned out of the lodge gates, and setting his face full to the wind, urged his horse into a gallop, and was quickly lost to view down the winding road.

It would not have taken him long to reach the edge of Burley Moor had not his horse suddenly fallen lame. For the last two miles of the distance his pace was reduced to a slow walk. This so annoyed Kester that he decided to leave his horse at a roadside tavern in the last hamlet he had to pass through, and to traverse the remainder of the distance on foot. A short three miles across the moor would take him to Mother Mim’s cottage.

To a man such as Kester a three miles’ walk was a rather formidable undertaking—or, at least, it was an uncommon one. But there was no avoiding it on the present occasion, unless he gave up the object of his journey and went back home. But he could by no means bear the thought of doing that. In proportion with the hesitation and reluctance which he had previously shown, to ascertain either the best or the worst of the affair, was the anxiety which now possessed him to reach his journey’s end. His imagination pictured all kinds of possible and impossible evils as likely to accrue to him, and he cursed himself again and again for his negligence in not making the journey long ago.

Very bleak and cold was that walk across the desolate, lonely moor, but Kester St. George, buried in his own thoughts, hardly felt or heeded anything of it. All the sky was clouded and overcast, but far away to the north a still darker bank of cloud was creeping slowly up from the horizon.

The wind blew in hollow fitful gusts. Any one learned in such lore would have said that a change of weather was imminent.

When about half-way across the moor he halted for a moment to gather breath. On every side of him spread the dull treeless expanse. Nowhere was there another human being to be seen. He was utterly alone. “If a man crossing here were suddenly stricken with death,” he muttered to himself, “what a place this would be to die in! His body might lie here for days—for weeks even—before it was found.”

At length Mother Mim’s cottage was reached. Everything about it looked precisely the same as when he had seen it last. It seemed only like a few hours since he had left it. There, too, crouched on the low wall outside, with her skirt drawn over her head, was Mother Mim’s grand-daughter, the girl with the black glittering eyes, looking as if she had never stirred from the spot since he was last there. She made no movement or sign of recognition when he walked up to her, but her eyes were full of a cold keen criticism of him, far beyond her age and appearance.

“How is your grandmother?” said Kester, abruptly. He did not like being stared at as she stared at him.

“She’s dead.”

“Dead!” It was no more than he expected to hear, and yet he could not hear it altogether unmoved.

“Ay, as dead as a door nail. And a good job too. It was time she went.”

“How long has she been dead?” asked Kester, ignoring the latter part of the girl’s speech.

“Just half an hour.”

Another surprise for Kester. He had expected to hear that she had been dead several days—a week perhaps. But only half an hour!

“Who was with her when she died?” he asked, after a minute’s pause.

“Me and Dirty Jack.”

“Dirty Jack! who is he?”

“Why Dirty Jack. Everybody knows him. He lives in Duxley, and has a wooden leg, and does writings for folk.”

“Does writings for folk!” A shiver ran through Kester. “And has he been doing anything for your grandmother?”

“That he has. A lot.”

“A lot—about what?”

“About you.”

“About me? Why about me?”

“Oh, you never came near. Nobody never came near. Granny got tired of it. ‘I’ll have my revenge,’ said she. So she sent for Dirty Jack, and he took it all down in writing.”

“Took it all down in writing about me?” She nodded her head in the affirmative. “If you know so much, no doubt you know what it was that he took down—eh?”

“Oh, I know right enough.”

“Why not tell me?”

“I know all about it, but I ain’t a-going to split.”

Further persuasion on Kester’s part had no other effect than to induce the girl to assert in still more emphatic terms that “she wasn’t a-going to split.”

Evidently nothing more was to be got from her. But she had said enough already to confirm his worst fears. Mother Mim, out of spite for the neglect with which he had treated her, had made a confession at the last moment, similar in purport to what she had told him when last there. Such a confession—if not absolutely dangerous to him—she having assured him that none of the witnesses were now living—might be made a source of infinite annoyance to him. Such a story, once made public, might bring forth witnesses and evidence from twenty hitherto unsuspected quarters, and fetter him round, link by link, with a chain of evidence from which he might find it impossible to extricate himself. At every sacrifice, Mother Mim’s confession must be destroyed or suppressed. Such were some of the thoughts that passed through Kester’s mind as he stood there biting his nails. Again and again he cursed himself in that he had allowed any such confession to emanate from the dead woman, whose silence a little extra kindness on his part would have effectually secured.

“And where is this Dirty Jack, as you call him?” he said, at last.

“He’s in there”—indicating the hut with a jerk of her head—“fast asleep.”

“Fast asleep in the same room with your grandmother?”

“Why not? He had a bottle of whiskey with him which he kept sucking at. At last he got half screwy, and when all was over he said he would have a snooze by the fire and pull himself together a bit before going home.”

Kester said no more, but going up to the hut, opened the door and went in. On the pallet at the farther end lay the dead woman, her body faintly outlined through the sheet that had been drawn over her. A clear fire was burning in the broken grate, and close to it, on the only chair in the place, sat a man fast asleep. His hands were grimy, his linen was yellow, his hair was frowsy. He was a big bulky man, with a coarse, hard face, and was dressed in faded threadbare black. He had a wooden leg, which just now was thrust out towards the fire, and seemed as if it were basking in the comfortable blaze.

On the chimney-piece was an empty spirit-bottle, and in a corner near at hand were deposited a broad-brimmed hat, greasy and much the worse for wear, and a formidable looking walking-stick.

Such was the vision of loveliness that met the gaze of Kester St. George as he paused for a moment or two just inside the cottage door. Then he coughed and advanced a step or two. As he did so the man suddenly opened his eyes, got up quickly but awkwardly out of his chair, and laid his hand on something that was hidden in an inner pocket of his coat. “No, you don’t!” he cried, with a wave of his hand. “No, you don’t! None of your hanky-panky tricks here. They won’t go down with Jack Skeggs, so you needn’t try ’em on!”

Kester stared at him in unconcealed disgust. It was evident that he was still under the partial influence of what he had been drinking.

“Who are you, sir, and what are you doing here?” asked Kester, sternly.

“I am John Skeggs, Esquire, attorney-at-law, at your service. And who may you be, when you’re at home? But there—I know who you are well enough. You are Mr. Kester St. George, of Park Newton. I have seen you before. I saw you on the day of the murder trial. You were one of the witnesses, and white enough you looked. Anybody who had a good look at you in the box that day would never be likely to forget your face again.”

Kester turned aside for a moment to hide the sudden nervous twitching of his lips.

“I’m sorry the whiskey is done,” said Mr. Skeggs with a regretful look at the empty bottle. “I should like you and I to have had a drain together. I suppose you don’t do anything in this line?” From one pocket he produced an old clasp knife, and from the other a cake of leaf tobacco. Then he cut himself a plug and put it into his mouth. “When one friend fails me, then I fall back upon another,” he said. “When I can’t get whiskey I must have tobacco.”

There was no better known character in Duxley than Mr. Skeggs. “Dirty Jack,” or “Drunken Jack,” were the sobriquets by which he was generally known, and neither of those terms was applied to him without good and sufficient reason. There could be no doubt as to the man’s shrewdness, ability, and knowledge of common law. He was a great favourite among the lower and the very lowest classes of Duxley society, who in their legal difficulties never thought of employing any other lawyer than Skeggs, the universal belief being that if anybody could pull them through, either by hook or crook, Dirty Jack was that man. And it is quite possible that Mr. Skeggs’s clients were not far wrong in their belief.

“No good stopping here any longer,” said Skeggs, when he had put back his knife and tobacco into his pocket.

“No, I suppose not,” said Kester.

“I suppose you will see that everything is done right and proper by our poor dear departed?”

“Yes, I suppose there is no one to look to but me. She was my foster-mother, and very kind to me when I was a lad.”

“His foster-mother! Listen to that! His foster-mother! ha! ha!” sniggered Dirty Jack. Then laying a finger on one side his nose, and leering up at Kester with horrible familiarity, he added: “We know all about that little affair, Mr. St. George, and a very pretty romance it is.”

“Look you here, Mr. Skeggs, or whatever your dirty name may be,” said Kester, sternly, “I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head or it may be worse for you. I’ve thrashed bigger men than you in my time. Be careful, or I shall thrash you.”

“I like your pluck, on my soul I do!” said Skeggs, heartily. “If you’re not genuine silver—and you know you ain’t—you’re a deuced good imitation of the real thing. Thoroughly well plated, that’s what you are. Any one would take you to be a born gentleman, they would really. Which way are you going back?”

Kester hesitated a moment. Should he quarrel with this man and set him at defiance, or should he not? Could he afford to quarrel with him? that was the question. Perhaps it would be as well to keep from doing so as long as possible.

“I’m going to walk back across the moor as far as Sedgeley,” said Kester.

“Then I’ll walk with you—though three miles is rather a big stretch to do with my game leg. I can get a gig from there that will take me home.”

Kester shrugged his shoulders, but made no comment. Skeggs took up his hat and stick, and proceeded to polish the former article with his sleeve.

“Queer woman that,” he said, with a jerk of his thumb towards the bed—“very queer. Hard as nails. With something heroic about her, to my mind—something that, under different circumstances, might have developed her into a remarkable woman. Well, that’s the way with heaps of us. Circumstances are dead against us, and we are not strong enough to overmaster them; else should we smite the world with surprise, and genius would not be so scarce an article in the market as it is now.”

Kester stared. Was this the half-drunken blackguard who had been jeering at him but two minutes ago? “And yet, drunk he must be,” added Kester to himself. “No fellow in his senses would talk such precious rot.”

“Your obedient servant, sir,” said Skeggs, with a purposely exaggerated bow as he held open the door for Mr. St. George to pass out.

The girl was still sitting on the wall with her skirt drawn over her head. Kester went up to her. “I will send some one along first thing to-morrow morning to see to the funeral and other matters,” he said, “if you can manage till then.”

“Oh, I can manage right enough. Why not?” said the girl.

“I thought that perhaps you might not care to be in the house by yourself all night.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that.”

“Then you are not afraid?”

“What’s there to be frittened of? She’s quiet enough now. I shall make up a jolly fire, and have a jolly supper, and then a jolly long sleep. And that’s what I’ve not had for weeks. And I shall read the Dream Book. She can’t keep that from me now. I know where it is. It’s in the bed right under her. But I’ll have it.” She laughed and nodded her head, then putting a nut into her mouth she cracked it and began to pick out the kernel. Kester turned away.

“Nell, my good girl,” said Mr. Skeggs, insinuatingly, “just see whether there isn’t such a thing as a drop of whiskey somewhere about the house. I’ve an awful pain in my chest.”

“There’s no whiskey—not a drop—but I know where there’s half a bottle of gin. Give me five shillings and I’ll fetch it.”

“Five shillings for half a bottle of gin! Why, Nell, what a greedy young pig you must be!”

“Don’t have it then. Nobody axed you. I can drink it myself.”

“I’ll give you three shillings for it. Come now.”

“Not a meg less than five will I take,” said Nell, emphatically, as she cracked another nut.

“Why, you young viper, have you no conscience at all?” he cried savagely. Then seeing that Nell took no further notice of him, he turned to Kester. “I find that I have no loose silver about me,” he said. “Oblige me with the loan of a couple of half-crowns till we get to Sedgeley.” Whenever Mr. Skeggs made a new acquaintance he always requested the loan of a couple of half-crowns before parting from him. But the half-crowns were never paid back until asked for, and asked for more than once.

A few premonitory flakes of snow were darkening the air as Kester St. George and Mr. Skeggs started on their way back across Burley Moor, the latter with a thick comforter round his neck and the bottle of gin stowed carefully away in the tail pocket of his coat. The cold seemed more intense than ever, but the wind had fallen altogether.

“We are going to have a rough night,” said Skeggs as he stepped sturdily out. “We must contrive to get across the moor before the snow comes down very thick, or we shall stand a good chance of losing our way. Only the winter before last a pedlar and his wife were lost in the snow within a mile of here, and their bodies not found for a fortnight. This sudden change will play the devil with the young crops.”

Kester did not answer. Far different matters occupied his thoughts. In silence they walked on for a little while.

“I suppose you could give a pretty good guess,” said Skeggs at length, “at my reasons for asking you which way you were going to walk this afternoon?”

“Indeed, no,” said Kester with a shrug. “I have not the remotest idea, nor do I care to know. It was you who chose to accompany me. I did not thrust my company upon you.”

Skeggs laughed a little maliciously. “I don’t think there’s much good, Mr. Kester St. George, in you and I beating about the bush. I’m a plain man of business, and that reminds me,”—interrupting himself with a chuckle—“that when I once used those very words to a client of mine, he retorted by saying, ‘You are more than a plain man of business, Mr. Skeggs, you are an ugly one.’ I did my very utmost for that man, but he was hanged. Mais revenons. I am a plain man of business, and I intend to deal with this question in a business-like way. The simple point is: What is it worth your while to give me for the document I have buttoned up here?” tapping his chest with his left hand as he spoke.

“I am at a loss to know to what document you refer,” said Mr. St. George, coldly.

“A very few words will tell you the contents of it, though, if I am rightly informed, you can give a pretty good guess already as to what they are likely to be. In this document it is asserted that you, sir, have no right to the name by which the world has known you for so long a time—that you have no right to the position you occupy, to the property you claim as yours. That you are, in fact, none other than the son of Mother Mim herself—of the woman who lies dead in yonder hut.”

Kester drew in his breath with something like a sigh. It was as he had feared. Mother Mim had told everything, and, of all people in the world, to the wretch now walking by his side. He braced his nerves for the coming encounter. “I have heard something before to-day of the rigmarole of which you speak,” he said, haughtily; “but I need hardly tell you that the affair is nothing but a tissue of vilest lies from beginning to end.”

“I dare say it is,” said Skeggs, good humouredly. “But it may be rather difficult for you to prove that it is so.”

“It will be still more difficult for you to prove that it is not so.”

“Oh! I am quite aware of all the difficulties both for and against—no man more so. You have got possession, and a hundred other points in your favour. Still, with what evidence I have already, and with what evidence I can get elsewhere, I shall be able to make out a strong case—a very strong case against you in a court of justice.”

“Evidence elsewhere!” said Kester, disdainfully. “There is no such thing, unless you are clever enough to make the dead speak.”

“Even that has been done before now,” said Skeggs quietly. “But in this case we have no need to go to the churchyard to collect our evidence. I have a living, breathing witness whom I can lay my hands on at a day’s notice.”

“You lie,” said Kester, emphatically.

“I’ll wash that down,” said Skeggs, halting for a moment and proceeding to take a good pull at his bottle of gin. “If you so far forget yourself again, I shall begin to feel sure that you are not a St. George. What I told you was not a lie. There were four witnesses who had all a personal knowledge of a certain fact. Three of those witnesses are dead: the fourth still lives. Of the existence of this fourth witness Mother Mim never even hinted to you. It was her trump card, and she was far too cunning to let you see it.”

Kester walked on in silence. He felt that just then he had hardly a word to say. Was all that he had sacrificed so much for in other ways, all that he had run such tremendous risks for, to be torn from him by the machinations of a vile old hag, and the drunken, ribald scoundrel by his side? Through what strange ambushes, through what dusky by-paths, doth Fate oft-times overtake us! We look back along the broad highway we have been traversing, and seeing no black shadow dogging our footsteps, we go rejoicing on our way; when suddenly, from some near-at-hand shrub, is shot a poisoned arrow, and the sunlight fades from our eyes for ever.

“And now, after this little skirmish,” said Skeggs, “we come back to my first question: What can you afford to give me for the document in my pocket?”

“Suppose I say that I will give you nothing—what then?” said Kester, sullenly.

“Then I shall get my evidence together, work out my case on paper, and submit it to the heir-at-law.”

“And supposing the heir-at-law, acting under advice, were to decline having anything to do with your case, as you call it?”

“He would be a fool to do that, because my case is anything but a weak one. I tell you this in confidence. But supposing he were to decline, then I should say to him: ‘I am willing to conduct this case on my own account. If I fail, it shall not cost you a penny. If I succeed, you shall pay all expenses, and give me five thousand pounds.’ That would fetch him, I think.”

“You have been assuming all along,” said Kester, “that your case is based on fact. I assure you again that it is not—that it is nothing but a devilish lie from beginning to end.”

“Really, my dear sir, that has little or nothing to do with the matter. I dare say it is a lie. But it is my place to believe it to be the truth, and to make other people believe the same as I do. Here’s your very good health, sir.” Again Mr. Skeggs took a long pull and a strong pull at his bottle of gin.

“Knowing what you know,” said Kester, “and believing what you believe, are you yet willing to sell the document now in your possession?”

“Of course I am. What else is all this jaw for?”

“And don’t you think you are a pretty sort of scoundrel to make me any such offer? Don’t you think——”

“Now look you here, Mr. St. George—if that is your name, which I very much doubt—don’t let you and me begin to fling mud at one another, because that is a game at which I could lick you into fits. I have made you a fair offer. If we can’t come to terms, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t part friendly.”

Once again Kester walked on in silence. The snow had been coming down more thickly for some time past, and already the dull gray moor began to look strange and unfamiliar, but neither of the two men gave more than a passing thought to the weather.

“If you feel and know your case to be such a strong one,” said Kester, at last, “why do you come to me at all? Why send a white flag into your enemy’s camp? Why not fight him à l’outrance at once?”

“Because I’m neither so young nor so pugnacious as I once was,” answered Skeggs. “I go in for peace and quiet nowadays. I don’t want the bother and annoyance of a law-suit. I have no ill-feeling towards you, and if you will only make me a fair offer, I shall be the last man in the world to disturb you in any way. Gemini! how the snow comes down! We are only about half way yet. We shall have some difficulty in picking our road across.”

“I myself am as anxious as you can be, Mr. Skeggs, to be saved the trouble and annoyance of a law-suit, however sure I may feel that the result would be in my favour. But you must give me a little time to think this matter over. It is far too important to be decided at a moment’s notice.”

“Time? To be sure. You can make up your mind in about a couple of days, I suppose. Shall I call upon you, or will you call upon me?”

Hardly were the words out of Mr. Skeggs’s mouth when his wooden leg sunk suddenly into a hidden hole in the pathway. Thrown forward by the shock, the lawyer came heavily to the ground, and at the same moment his leg snapped short off just below the knee.

Kester took him by the shoulders and assisted him to assume a sitting posture on the footpath.

Mr. Skeggs’s first action was to pick up his broken limb and look at it with a sort of comical despair. “There goes a friend that has done me good service,” he said; “but he might have lasted till he got me home, for all that. How the deuce am I to get home?” he asked, turning abruptly to Kester.

Kester paused for a minute and looked round before answering. The snow was coming down faster than ever. The moor was being gradually turned into a huge white carpet. Already its zig-zag paths and winding footways were barely distinguishable from the treacherous bog which lay on every side of them. In an hour and a half it would be dark with a darkness that would be unrelieved by either moon or stars. If it kept on snowing all night at this rate the drift would be a couple of feet deep by morning. Skeggs’s casual remark about the pedlar and his wife, unheeded at the time, now flashed vividly across Kester’s mind.

“You will have to wait here till I can get assistance,” he said, in answer to his companion’s question. “There is no help for it.”

“I suppose not,” growled Skeggs. “Was ever anything so cursedly unfortunate?”

“Sedgeley is the nearest place to this,” said Kester. “There are plenty of men there who know the moor thoroughly. I will send half a dozen of them to your help.”

“How soon may I expect them here?”

“In about three-quarters of an hour from now.”

“Ugh! I’m half frozen already. What shall I be in another hour?”

“Oh, you’ll pull through that easily enough. Your bottle is not empty yet.”

“Jove! I’d forgotten the bottle,” said Skeggs, with animation.

He took it out of his pocket, and held it up to the light. “Not more than a quartern left. Well, that’s better than none at all.”

“Goodbye,” said Kester, as he shook some of the snow off his hat. “You may look for help in less than an hour.”

“Goodbye, Mr. St. George,” said Skeggs, looking very earnestly at him as he did so.

“You won’t forget to send the help, will you? because if you do forget, it will be nothing more nor less than wilful murder.”

Kester laughed a short grating laugh. “Fear nothing, Skeggs,” he said. “I won’t forget. About that other trifle, I will write you in two or three days. Again goodbye.”

Skeggs’s face had turned very white. He could not speak. He took off his hat and waved it. Kester responded by a wave of his hand. Then turning on his heel he strode away through the snowy twilight. In three minutes he was lost to sight. Skeggs could no longer see him. Tears came into his eyes. “He’ll send no help, not he. I shall die here like a dog. The snow will be my winding-sheet. If ever there was mischief in a man’s eye, there was in his, as he bade me goodbye.”

Onward strode Kester St. George through the blinding snow. Altogether heedless of the weather was he just now. He had other things to think about. As instinctively as an Indian or a backwoodsman tracks his way across prairie or forest did he track his way across the moor, all hidden though the paths now were. He was a child of the moor. He had learned its secrets when a boy, and in his present emergency, reason and intellect must perforce give way to that blind instinct which was left him as a legacy of his youth.

At length the last patch of moorland was crossed, and a few minutes later he found himself close by a well-remembered finger-post, where three roads met. One of these roads led to Sedgeley, which was but a short quarter of a mile away; another of them led to Duxley and Park Newton. At Sedgeley his horse was waiting for him. There, too, was to be had the help which he had so faithfully promised Skeggs that he would send. Leaning against the finger-post, he took a minute’s rest before going any farther. Which road should he take? That was the question which at present he was turning over and over in his mind. Not long did he hesitate. Taking out his pocket-handkerchief, he made a wisp of it, and tied it round his throat. Then he turned up the collar of his coat. Then once again he shook the snow off his hat. Then plunging his hands deep in his pockets, and turning his back on the finger-post, he set out resolutely along the road that led towards Park Newton. Once, and once only did he pause, even for a moment, before reaching home. It was when he fancied that he heard, away in the far distance, a low, wild, melancholy cry—whether the cry of an animal or a man he could not tell—but none the less a cry for help. Whatever it was, it did not come again, and after that Kester pursued his way homeward steadily and without pause. It was quite dark long before he reached his own room.

He changed his clothes and went down to dinner. Both his uncle and Richard Dering were away, and he dined alone, for which he was by no means sorry. Every half-hour or so he inquired as to the weather. They had nothing to tell him except that it was still snowing hard. The evening was one of slow torture, but at length it wore itself away. He went to bed about midnight. Dobbs’s last report to him was that the weather was still unchanged. But several times during the night Dobbs heard his master pacing up and down his room, and had he been there he might, ever and again, have seen a haggard face peering out with eager eyes into the darkness.

“Twelve inches of snow, sir, on the drive,” was Dobbs’s first news next morning. “They say there has not been a fall like it in these parts for a dozen years.”

The snow had ceased to fall hours before. By-and-by there came a few gleams of sunshine to brighten the scene, but the wind was still in the north, and all that day the weather kept bitterly cold. Soon after sunset, however, there was a change. Little by little the wind got round to the south-west. At ten o’clock Dobbs reported: “Snow going fast, sir. Regular thaw. Not be a bit left by breakfast-time.”

“Call me at four,” said his master, “and have some coffee ready, and a horse brought round by four thirty.”

He was quite tired out by this time, and when he went to bed he felt sure that he should have four or five hours’ sound sleep. But his sleep was several times disturbed by a strange dream: always the same thing repeated over and over again. He dreamt that he was standing under the finger-post on the edge of the moor. But the finger-post was neither more nor less than a gigantic skeleton, of which the outstretched arms formed the direction boards. On the bony palm of one outstretched arm, in letters of blood, was written the words: “To Sedgeley.” Then as he read the words in his dream, again would sound in his ears the low, weird, melancholy cry which had arrested his steps for a moment as he walked home through the snow, and hearing the cry he would start up in bed and stare round him, and wonder for a moment where he was.

Dobbs duly called his master at four, and at four thirty he mounted his horse and rode away. The roads were heavy and sloppy with the melting snow. The morning was intensely dark, but Kester knew the country thoroughly, and was never at a loss as to which turn he ought to take. Not one human being did he meet during the whole of his ride. But, indeed, his nearest friend would have passed him by in the dark without recognition. He wore an old shooting suit, with a Glengarry bonnet and a macintosh, and had a thick shawl wrapped round his throat and the lower part of his face.

Day was just breaking as he reached the edge of the moor. He tethered his horse to the stump of an old tree behind a hedge. He had brought a powerful field-glass in his pocket. He scanned the moor carefully through it before proceeding farther on his quest. No living being was in sight anywhere. Satisfied of this, he set out without further delay, leaving his horse by itself to await his return. Not without a tremor—not without a faster beating of the heart—did he again set foot on the moor. A drizzling rain now began to fall, but Kester was not sorry for this. The worse the weather, the fewer the people who would be abroad in it. Onward he strode, keeping a wary eye about him as he went.

At length he reached a curve in the path from whence he ought to be able to discern the bulky form of John Skeggs, Esq., if that gentleman was still where he had last seen him. He looked, but the morning was still heavy and dark: he could see nothing. Then he adjusted his glass, and looking through that he could just make out a heap—a bundle—a shapeless something. It required a powerful effort on his part to brace his nerves to the pitch requisite to carry him through the task he had still before him. He had filled a small flask with brandy, and he now drank some of it. Then he started again. A few minutes more and the end of his journey was reached.

There lay Skeggs, on the very spot where he had left him, resting on his side, with one hand under his head, as if asleep. His hat had fallen off. On the ground near him were the empty bottle, his walking-stick, and his broken wooden leg. Numbed by the intense cold, he had fallen asleep while waiting for the help which was never to come, and had so died, frozen to death. Doubtless his death had been a painless one, but none the less, as he himself would have said, was Kester St. George his murderer.

Gloved though he was, it was not without a feeling of indescribable loathing that Kester could bring himself to touch the body. But it was absolutely necessary to do so. The paper he had come in quest of was in the breast pocket of the dead man’s coat. It did not take him long to find it. Having made sure that he had got the right document, he fastened it up in the breast pocket of his own coat. “Now I am safe!” he said to himself. Then he took off his gloves and buried them carefully under a large stone. Then with one last glance at the body, he slunk hurriedly away, cursing in his heart the daylight that was now creeping up so rapidly from the east. In the clear light of dawn the foul deed he had done looked a thousand times fouler than it had looked before.