CHAPTER XXI

AN OFFER

Kate rose to a sitting posture, and drew her feet under her, rested one hand on the rock, and with the other screened her eyes from the glare of the sun, to observe the intruder on her solitude.

Then she recognised Roger Redmore. He was without his coat, an axe over one shoulder. In his right hand he held a tuft of cotton grass dug up by the roots.

“I knowed as you wor here,” said he, “but I dursn’t speak before others, lest they should find me out who I wor.”

“Are you living here, Roger?”

“I be working here at the felling Brimpts oaks. You see, your fayther, he’s so little at Coombe that he don’t know me, and I thought I might get money by working here. And I want you to do a little job for me.”

“What is it, Roger?”

“There’s two jobs. First, do y’ see this here root o’ white shiny grass? Well, I want y’ to take it to Coombe and to set it on my little maid’s grave. Stick the roots in. It may grow and it mayn’t. Hereabouts it groweth mostly in wet land. But anyhows by it I shall know where the little maid lies when I come back to Coombe.”

“You are returning, Roger?”

“Not by day. I reckon some night I shall be back just for an hour or so, and I want, when I does come, to go to the churchyard and find out at once where my darlin’ lieth. If it be moonlight, or dimmets (twilight), and I see the little silver tuft glitter above her head, then I shall know where her be. I can’t go wi’ my wife; that would be tellin’ folks I wor home agin. I mun go by myself. Whereabouts now have they put her?”

“By the wall where the cedar is, on the east side.”

“There’ll niver be no headstone there,” observed Redmore, “but what o’ that? When once I know where her lieth, sure but I’ll put a fresh new tuft of silver tassels as oft as the old ones die, and I reckon they’ll die, not being in a wet place. My little maid’s grave won’t be wet save wi’ her father and mother’s tears, and her fayther he can’t be there but on the sly, and now and then.”

“I will do it for you gladly,” said Kate. “When do you think you will be home?”

“Home!” repeated Roger; “I’ve no home—not like to have. My wife and my little ones, wherever they be, that’s all the world to me, and I cannot see them but at night, and very chancy, when I don’t think nobody’s about. And t’other thing be this.”

Roger put his hand into his pocket and drew forth some coin, and gave it to the girl.

“Take this to my old woman. I’ve earned wi’ my work a bit o’ money, and here is what I can send her. Tell her to leave the door ajar. I may come any night; but,” he paused, “I reckon they’ve turned her out o’ house and home now.”

“Not yet, Roger,” answered Kate. “Mr. Pooke has not insisted on her leaving at quarter-day, but I believe he has a fresh workman coming to him in a week, and then she will have to leave.”

“And where will she go? Will they drive her into the street?”

“I really do not know; but”—she considered and said timidly, “I have had it on my heart, but have been afraid to speak of it as yet to my father. There is his cottage, never or hardly ever occupied. Now I will take courage, and beg him to let your wife go into it till something can be settled; but you must keep out of danger, and you are not safe here.”

“I cannot go far till my wife and little ones are secure and have a home. Here no one know’th me, the other woodcutters are all men from the moor. There was but your father, and he did not recognise me when I axed him to take me on at felling the timber.”

“I will entreat him to allow your wife and children to go into his house till something can be done for them. You will have to escape into another part of the country.”

“Ay, I will go. If I were took, it would go bad with us all, and there’d be the shame on my little ones—that their father wor hanged. They’d never shake it off.” Then he touched Kate on the head. “My hand be but a wicked un. It hev set fire to a rick, but it be the hand o’ a hunted man, as be nigh crushed with sorrows, as was druv to wickedness thro’ his sufferin’s, and hev bitter repented it since, and swears he’ll niver do it agin, so help me God!” He raised his hand solemnly to heaven. “That’s one thing I ha’ larned, as doin’ wrong niver brings matters right. There wor just that gettin’ drunk. Then there wor the cheek to Farmer Pooke. Then my heart were all wormwood; and when my little maid died, I thought it wor his doin’; and so in a way it wor, for I’d no work and no wage, and us was just about starvin’, and I did that deed o’ fire. It’s kindled a fire in here”—he touched his heart—"that nothink can quench. The Lord ha’ pity on me. I don’t know as I’d ha’ come to this mind but for you, little Kitty Alone, as was pitiful to me when I were bound and like to be given over to gaol, and you let me go, and fed me wi’ crumbs out o’ your hand; and now you will find a house for my dear ones." He laid his hand on her head again. “Mebbe the Lord’ll hear a sinful thief o’ a man, and I ax His blessin’ on thee; an’ if I can iver do anything to show you I’m thankful, I will. Amen.”

“Hah!”

Roger. Redmore started. He was caught by a hand in his collar-band.

Kate sprang to her feet. Her uncle, Pasco Pepperill, was there. He had come up from behind unobserved, and had laid hold of the incendiary.

“I have you, you burning vagabond!” shouted he; “and by heaven! I’ll hand you over to the constables, and see you hanged, as you deserve. Kate, run away—away at once!”

“Oh, uncle, do not be cruel! Let him go.”

“You mind your business,” answered Pasco sharply. “It’s my belief you let him escape after Jan Pooke had bound him in the boat. Jan left you in charge, and Roger slipped away then.”

“But think, uncle, of his poor wife and children.”

With a sudden wrench Roger freed himself, and then, standing back with brandished axe, he said—

“Touch me, and I’ll split your head.”

“Get away from here,” ordered Pasco, turning to his niece; “and as for you, Redmore, I want a word. You know very well that if I give the hue and cry you will be caught, even though now you have slipped from me. Lower your hatchet; I’m not going to hurt you if you be reasonable; but wait till that girl is out of earshot.”

Pepperill put his hands into his pockets and watched Kate as she withdrew. Roger assumed an attitude of wariness. He was ready at a moment’s notice to defend himself with his axe, or to take to flight.

“Look here,” said Pasco, satisfied that he could not be overheard, “it seems to me that you, with your head almost in the noose, have done a wonderful silly thing to stay so near the scene of your crime.”

“I’d my reasons as is not for you to know,” answered Redmore surlily. “I’m sure you don’t consarn yourself for me and mine so as to care.”

“There you are mistaken,” said Pasco. “I don’t mean to say that I am deeply interested in you, but I don’t intend, unless driven to it, to take any steps to get you acquainted with Jack Ketch.”

“I can defend myself pretty well, suppose you do.”

“I’m not the fool to risk my head in another man’s quarrel.”

“And I can take to my heels and find a hiding-place anywhere on these moors.”

“Ay, and a starving-place where your bones will rot.”

“What have you to say to me?”

Redmore spoke surlily. Now that his whereabouts was discovered, it would be needful for him to shift his place of refuge.

“I suppose you don’t deny setting fire to Farmer Pooke’s rick?” said Pasco.

Roger shrugged his shoulders and jerked his head.

“How did you do it? smoking a pipe under the tree when drunk?”

“No, it warn’t.”

“How was it, then?”

“I warn’t drunk, niver but that once, and that wor just because o’ Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum.’ I’ve a bit of a orgin in zingin’, and the innkeeper he wor terrible longing to have me in the choir. So he got me in, and they tried to teach me the tenor part o’ Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum,’ and I cu’dn’t maister it noways; and they stood me liquor, and I tried, and I cu’d do naught wi’ it. You see t’other parts went curling up and about, and bothered me. If they’d a’ stopped and let me zing alone, I cu’d ha’ done it. Then I went out into the open air, and it wor cold and frosty, and somehow I got mazed wi’ the drink and the ‘Tee-dum’ together, and I rinned agin my maister, Farmer Pooke, and I reckon I zed what I ort not, and he turned me off. That wor it. I niver did it avor, and I’ll niver do it agin. Save and presarve me from liquor and Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum’!”

“Never mind about that. So you didn’t fire the rick with your pipe?”

“No, I didn’t. If it had niver been for Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum,’ I’d not now be in risk of bein’ hanged.”

“Of course it was Jackson did it all,” sneered Pasco.

“I don’t mean to say that. It wor the beginning on it. I were throwed out o’ work, and were starvin’, and my little maid, her died, and then I wor like a mazed chap, and I ran out wi’ the cann’l, and so I did it.”

“Oh, with the candle?”

“It wor a rushlight.”

“I’ve heard of barns and storehouses being set fire to by men going into them to sleep, and lighting their pipes. There was the landlord of the Crown and Anchor at Newton. He had a miserable sort of a house, but a tramp got in one night”—

“What, into his house?”

“No, into a linhay over the pigstye, and slept there, or went there to sleep, and there was straw in the loft, and in smoking his pipe he managed to set fire to the straw, and then the whole public-house was in a blaze and burnt down.”

“I’ve heard of that. Nobody knows what became o’ the tramp. There wor roast pig found in the ashes, and whether roast tramp nobody cared to inquire.”

“The inn has been rebuilt. They call it a hotel now.”

“I daresay they does.”

“The insurance money did that.”

“I s’pose so. Lucky the house wor insured. I wish Varmer Pooke ’ad been.”

“You do?”

“I reckon I does. I’m sorry for what I did when I wor in a b’ilin’ blue rage. Now I can’t get over it noways, and you may tell’n so.”

“Why, that fire was the making of the landlord. He feels no ill-will against the tramp. What are you going to do with yourself now?”

“I don’t know.”

“I suppose you will want to see your wife again?”

“I s’pose I shall.”

“For that you will return to Coombe?”

“In coorse I must.”

“At night—lest you should be seen?”

“Ay—to be sure.”

“You will lurk about—be in hiding. I’ll tell you what, I’m your good friend. I will do you no harm. I’ll just leave the door of my stores open—unhasped; and if you want to creep in, there’s a lot of wool and other things there, you can be warm there, Roger, warm in the wool.”

“Thanky’, sir. You’ll not peach?”

“And if—if you like a pipe—well”—

“No, Mr. Pepperill, I won’t do you that ill turn if you’re so good to me—and the little maid, Kitty, too.”

“Oh, I did not mean that. I can’t say but if a spark chanced to fall among the wool, and the whole was to blaze away, I should be sorry. I can’t say that I should be troubled, any more than was the landlord at Newton when the tramp set fire to his linhay over the pigs.”

Redmore said nothing. Pepperill spoke slowly, and did not look the man in the face as he spoke.

“If that chance was to happen to me as happened to the man at Newton, it might, there’s no saying, be a saving of me from a great misfortune, and—I shouldn’t mind being a liberal friend, and helping you out of the country.”

“That is what you mean, is it?”

“It might be a convenience to both of us.”

“’Tis a wonderful world,” exclaimed Redmore, “when the biggest rascals go free, and one of them be you! A little rascal like me, who’s sorry that ever he done wrong, is chivied like a mad dog.”

“Well—what do you say?”

“You’re a rascal and I despise you,” cried Roger, and turned to go.

“Will you have me as your friend or your enemy?”

“Your enemy rather than friend on them terms.”

“Then I’ll hang you!” exclaimed Pasco, and set off running in the direction of Brimpts.