Deep Moat Grange

I asked Mr. Ablethorpe what we were to do there, and warned him that I had no wish to go nearer to the house of Deep Moat. So that if he counted on visiting his penitent Miss Aphra Orrin he would have to go alone.

"I am perturbed in my mind, and that's the truth," he said. "There is something strange along the branch of the river which flows into the Moat. I walked home that way yesterday, and I wish for your presence and assistance. Two can do so much more than one. Also, you know the locality, as well I know. I look to you to help me to solve the mystery which, to my mind at least, hangs over Brom Water."

CHAPTER XI

THE IRON TRAPDOOR

The Hayfork Minister, who had laboured with equal determination to save the crop of a true-blue Presbyterian and to make me a good Churchman, evidently knew his way about the precincts of the Grange. He stepped through a gap in the hedge, jumped a half-dry ditch, and wound his way through the scattering brambles and underbrush as if he had been in his own garden plot.

No coward, the Hayfork! It took me all my time to keep up with him, and I am a good jumper, too – nearly as good as Elsie.

We went down the side of the Moat Backwater. It is a curious place. It is not, you understand, the Brom Water itself. That comes down from the hills and wimples away across the plain, full of good fish, both trout and salmon, according to their season. But the Moat Backwater connects the pond or little loch which lies in front of the windows of the Grange with the Brom. Whether the connection is absolutely natural, or whether it was originally made by the hand of man, I cannot tell. Neither, so far as I know, can anybody else. But in some places it certainly looks like the latter.

At any rate, whenever the Brom is in flood, it "backs up," as it were, into the Backwater, and so runs into the pond. It fills the Moat itself like a tide, and I believe on a few occasions it has even been known to overflow the greensward where the clumps of lilies are, right up to the steps of the front door!

There is, of course, always some water in the Lane, which trenches the meadows and runs canalwise through the fringing woods. But at ordinary times the water in the Lane, as much of it as there is, finds its way toward the Brom, owing to the feeding of the Grange Pond by local streamlets. But in times of rain the current runs the other way. Then the Backwater runs brown and turgid into the pond till the lilies tug at their green anchor chains and the Moat itself is lipping full of black, peaty water from the hills.

To-day as we plunged into the shadow of the woods along the side of the Backwater, it held no more water than a burn in the summer heats – little and still clear, the minnows and troutlets balancing and darting, joggling each other rudely from beneath favourite stones, or shouldering into well-situated holes in the bank, like people scrambling for seats at a play. Then a few yards farther on would come a deep brown pool with a curious greenish opal sheen lying like a scum on the surface, for all the world like two-coloured silk. This was the reflection of the leaves above. Very dense they were, so that the light could hardly filter through between. Along the burnside it was generally lighter. But the trees clustered deep and thick about the pools, as I suppose they do all the world over, whenever they get the chance.

"The water is lower than I have ever seen it!" I said, as it might be, just for something to say. But Mr. Ablethorpe did not answer a word. I could see him looking eagerly about him, evidently searching for something he had seen before, but for the moment could not find again.

I could not for the life of me imagine what it could be, nor yet why he had been so keen to have me with him. It was not that he was afraid. That was plain enough. For he had been this way before, and that quite recently. I knew by his spying this way and that for landmarks. And I knew quite certain that it was not just that I might give him a hand with old Caleb Fergusson's harvest that he had asked me off from my home work, or home play, whichever it might be.

All at once he stopped, sat down on a log, pulled out his knife and began to whittle at a branch of oak. Whatever it was he was looking for, he had either found it, or decided to give up the search.

We were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, close to the edge of the Backwater, and the pool beneath us was almost dry. The Lane ran out of sight, getting smaller and smaller in what I have heard called "perspective" – that is, straight as if ruled on paper with a straight edge.

Then the Hayfork Minister asked me if I saw anything particular about the water. I told him what I have just written, but I could not for the life of me remember the word "perspective." He understood all right, though.

"Good," he said, "and does that suggest nothing else to the bold and inquiring mind of my friend Joseph?"

After looking awhile I answered that it seemed to me as if somebody had cut the canal with spades just as Tim O'Hara and Mike Whelan did the ditching and draining on my father's forage parks the winter before last.

"Right again, Joe!" he said, pleasedlike, and rumpled up my hair in a way I don't let anybody do – except Elsie, who does as she likes, whether I like it or no. I pulled away my head angrily. But the Hayfork Minister never minded.

"I can't tell you whether this has been dug out with a spade or not," he said, putting a point on the oaken cudgel with his big "gully" knife (think of a minister with a knife like that!), "but this I can tell you, that the hand of man has been here or hereabouts!"

And with that he leaned over the edge right among the weeds and began scraping away at the bank. It was coated over pretty regularly with a greyish mud which had come down with the last emptying of the pond. This was done periodically, with the avowed purpose of clearing out the Moat and Backwater. Mr. Ball saw to it, under the personal superintendence of Mr. Stennis. And all that day the mad people at the Grange were kept within doors, and the policies were strictly guarded. For the scour of the water escaping down the channel brought with it multitudes of fish – not very large, it is true, but sufficient to be a temptation to every boy within miles. Such, however, was the terror inspired by the inhabitants of Deep Moat Grange, and especially by Daft Jeremy, that those who were bold enough to come at all, rather braved the dangers of the Duke's keepers at the infall of the Backwater into the Brom, than dared to set a foot within those woodland shadows where they knew not what terrors might lurk.

The Hayfork Minister went on knocking off big flakes of dried mud with the point of his stick. Then, whistling softly, he started to polish something with vigour. At first I could not in the least see what he was after, but soon a good big square of reddish metal was laid bare. It was not upright in the bank, but leaned a little back, was very deep set, and I could see that it had been intended to slide in grooves. At the time I had no idea as to why it had been put there. But now I know that it must have been constructed for purposes of irrigation.

There was, in fact, an old vegetable garden and orchard, still partly enclosed with crumbling walls, not two hundred yards off through the woods. And there is little doubt that it had been the intention of some former travelled master of the Grange to cultivate his table vegetables and fruits on the system of Southern Europe.

All, however, was now desolate.

Yet the iron plate in the bank, though mud-covered and rusty, had not stuck altogether. Indeed, looking at it closely, it was not difficult to see that it had recently been used. With the Hayfork Minister at one end of the oak branch, and myself at the other, we soon made it budge with a smothered heave-ho! and revealed a regularly bricked tunnel leading apparently into the bowels of the earth.

"That is where you are to go, my son!" said Mr. Ablethorpe.

"Me!"

Mr. Ablethorpe nodded, and scraping away some leaves behind the fallen tree on which we had been sitting together, he disinterred a coil of stout cord, not thick, but very strong, with a red thread running through it. "This has served," he said, "for heavier weights in more dangerous places!"

And without more ado he proceeded to knot it about my waist, as if he had been accustomed to nothing else all his life. But I objected. Indeed, I had reason. For suppose Mad Jeremy, or Aphra Orrin, or Mr. Stennis himself were to come while I was up there – what then?

"You leave that to me, Joe," said the Hayfork Minister; "there is not one of them that would dare to touch me – no, nor you – while you are in my company."

This was good enough to hear, and, in its way, comforting. But, somehow, at such a time the mind craves for proofs more absolute. Or to be somewhere else. Particularly the latter.

I think Mr. Ablethorpe saw something of my dismay on my face, for immediately he stopped what he was doing, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Joe, would I send you into any danger I would not be ready to share myself?"

"No, I believe not, sir!" said I. For though he worried me like fun about being the right sort of Churchman, he was a rare good sort himself, man and Churchman, too. At least I know about the first, and as for the Churchman, I am willing to take that on trust.

"Well, now," said he, "that's settled. In you go!"

"But what am I to do when I get in there?" I asked. For I had thought that he was going to give me a proper explanation of everything – the whys and the wherefores, and all about it.

"You are to crawl, Joe," he said, "because you can get in and I cannot, Joseph! That's the worst of going in for athletics at school, Joe – it makes you grow such a whopping size afterwards when you stop them. So you are to crawl up there for me, and as soon as you find anything, you are to give the rope a tug, and I will pull you out! For it isn't so easy as it looks to crawl backward down a hole of that size."

"But suppose," I faltered, my imagination rampant, and my voice failing me at the same moment, "suppose – that I should come on – on poor Harry Foster – with – with his throat cut – oh, what should I do?"

"You won't – more's the pity," he answered, quite coolly. "If Harry had been in there, and you and I sitting here, we should have known it long ere this. No such luck! Still, what you may find, is quite worth the trial. We shall at least learn something!"

Now I don't think that, since the visit Elsie and I paid to Deep Moat Grange, I was quite so eager to "learn something" as I had been. But it was no use being a coward with the Hayfork Minister.

"In you go, Joe," he said, lowering me by the rope to the black mouth of the passage, "in with you, eel! And if you find anything portable, gave a tug, and if you want to come out very suddenly, give two tugs."

I was halfway in as he said these words, and I instantly gave two tugs, but he only said, "Now, no monkey tricks, Joe. This is serious. Up with you. Remember I am here!"

I was not at all likely to forget it. But I had much rather he had been head foremost up that narrow tunnel, and I out in the green aisles of the forest waiting for him with a rope in my hands.

CHAPTER XII

THE BRICKED PASSAGE

Now I don't know whether you have ever been up a drain pipe which just takes you, and no more. I suppose you have – in nightmares, after supping on cold boiled pork and greens, or some nice little digestible morsel like that. But really awake, and with the birds singing on the trees, the winds lightly scented with bog myrtle and pine and bracken breathing all about you – to be told to shove yourself up a built rabbit hole, not knowing what you may come on the next time you put out your hand! – Well, Hayfork Minister or no Hayfork – I had the hardest row to hoe that time! I don't think any fellow, even if he has climbed all the mountains that are, has any right to let a boy in for a thing like that without telling him beforehand. And smiling about it all the time, as if he were merely sending you into Miss Payne's to buy butter-scotch!

I felt as if I could have killed him the first half-dozen "creeps" I took. And what was the worst of his cheek, he shoved me behind with the oak branch, which he had sharpened, and said, "Go on!"

If I could have got him then – up a drain – me with that same oak goad, I would have given it to him – cheerful, I would. Cheerful is no name for it!

Inside the tunnel the bricks were not all of the same size. Some had dropped a little and pinched my shoulders. Some were wanting altogether. And that fiend of a Hayfork, at the mouth, all safe outside with the rope's-end in his hand kept singing up to me, "A-a-all right – a-a-right – it will get wider as you get farther in!"

Much he knew! Had he been up, I'd like to know?

However, he was right as it happened – right without knowing anything about it. The passage did widen a bit. I found offshoots – smaller passages leading I don't know where. And I didn't put in my hand to feel, having a dislike to be bitten by water rats – or any other kind of rats. And it was an awful "ratty" place that, by the smell of it.

Also, for all that Mr. Ablethorpe said, I was in mortal fear of coming across poor Harry's leg, or of Mad Jeremy arriving and "settling" Mr. Ablethorpe, without my knowing anything about it. And when I came out – I should find myself face to face with the oily curls, the sneering lip, and – specially, with the knife I had seen gleaming in his teeth when he swam the Moat to make an end of Elsie and me.