Deep Moat Grange

I wasn't frightened, of course. Only I just thought what a fool I was to be there. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to think the same thing – when, like me, they are doing something dreadful noble and heroic.

There were curious side passages, as I say, on each side of the tunnel along which I was crawling – oh, so slowly. Some of these were narrow and smooth, where a brick had fallen out, and smelled "rat" yards off. I did not meddle with these. But there were bigger offshoots, too, properly bricked round and as tight as ninepence – no rats there.

Well, it was in one of these that I came on my first treasure-trove. I felt a lot of things all tied together in a rough bag or cloth – heavy, too, and of course all clammy with moisture or mould or something like that. No wonder – I felt all green-mouldy myself, after only a minute or two.

I tugged at the rope, and, almost before I knew it, I was out again in the dancing speckle of the sunshine sifted through the leaves. Blinded by the sudden glare which sent blobs of colour dancing across my eyeballs, as if I had looked at the sun, I did not realize for a moment that I had brought anything with me.

"Let go!" I heard Mr. Ablethorpe say, and I was quite unconscious what I was holding on to. Yet what I had found was little enough to the eye – a piece of rough sacking, roughly sewn about a quantity of metallic objects which jingled as Mr. Ablethorpe cut the outer covering open with his big "gully" knife.

"Money!" the thought came natural to a boy; "have I disinterred a treasure?"

And for the moment I was all ready to go back again to look for more.

But the blade went on cutting, and presently the contents tinkled out upon the bank – about a dozen and a half of copper rings, rather thick, and each made with a hook at the bottom. I could not imagine what they were for.

But Mr. Ablethorpe bounded upon them, examining each one before putting it in his pocket. Lastly he looked at the piece of canvas in which they had been wrapped, long and carefully.

"Ah!" he said, "that, I think, will do!"

And he closed the iron sliding door carefully, as it had been before, and thrusting his fingers into the shallow pool, he lifted up double handfuls of oozy mud and plastered it all over the entrance.

"When that is dry," he said, "it will take a clever man to tell where you have poked your nose this afternoon, Joseph!"

This seemed likely enough and satisfactory, from his point of view. But, as for me, I wanted very much to be told what it was all about.

So I asked him what it was I had found, and why he wanted me to crawl up there, at any rate.

"You found some copper rings and a piece of dirty canvas," he said, "neither more nor less. And I asked you to go up there because I was too fat to go myself. Were you nearly at the end, think you?"

I told him no – that the passage seemed to widen as it went farther on. I think that at these words he was nearly replacing the rope, which he had begun to coil, round my waist again.

But he looked at his watch, and shook his head.

"We have not the time to do it safely," he said; "but – let us see – if it widens as you say, Joseph, it is very likely that it has another opening."

He took a small plan out of his pocket, a tiny little measuring scale, nodded once or twice, and then began slowly to pace through the wood at right angles to the course of the Backwater.

All at once he dropped to the ground as if shot. I judged it best to efface myself, too, and that promptly. So I crawled behind a big pine tree, about whose roots the male ferns were growing tall, and, putting their thick scaly stems aside with my hand, I lay watching the heels of the boots which Mr. Ablethorpe wore.

He kept quite still, apparently intent upon something I could not see. Now, of course (you will not have noticed it), but I am very curious about things that don't concern me in the least – not to talk about, you understand, but just to know. So, as the ferns grew pretty continuously, and the pines held close together, shooting their indigo-blue umbrellas into the sky, I wriggled along till I could lay my hand on one of the minister's boot heels.

It was a foolish thing to do, for it nearly made him cry out. I saw him set his teeth to shut in the sound. He had a nerve, the Hayfork Minister, but I could see from his look that he would give it to me after for coming on him like that. However, it was some fun to see him in a funk.

And, indeed, with reason! For not more than a dozen yards down the slope, between us and the wall of the old orchard, I saw Mad Jeremy, on his knees, digging with his fingers, eager as a terrier at a rat hole.

Then I called to mind the mysterious crime of which Miss Aphra had found him guilty, and her stern accusation, "You've been digging again!" the day Elsie and I were at the Grange. Last of all, his repeated denial, his attempts to rub off the earth pellets, his sentence, tears, and punishment. Yes, I saw him digging with his fingers just as his sister had said.

Jiminy, how I wished I was at home!

I might wish, indeed, but there we were stuck and had to wait – Mr. Ablethorpe and I – till Mad Jeremy, having finished his task, stamped down the sods he had edged up at either side, and set with care a great square flagstone in its place.

Then he stood rubbing his hands together and grinning for some minutes, evidently well pleased with himself. A voice far away called:

"Jeremy! Jeremy!"

At the sound the smile was stricken from his face. The madman looked guiltily at his hands, and seeing the condition in which they were, he made straight for the Backwater, passing us within (I declare) four yards. But the bracken was thick and tall, and we lay close, so that Jeremy failed to see us. Besides, his mind was evidently ill at ease.

The voice from the direction of Deep Moat Grange continued to call: "Jeremy! Jeremy!" He did not reply, and we could hear him mutter, "What shall I say? What shall I say if she finds out?"

Then, having pulled round the long tails of his coat, one after the other, he dried his hands carefully, held them up to see that they were clean, and took his way up the side of the Backwater toward the drawbridge, whistling as he went.

For me, I was scared out of a year's growth. But the Hayfork Minister, lifting himself out of the ferns, and dusting lightly the knees of his black cord trousers, pointed to the great flagstone on which the turf showed ragged edges, and said gravely: "The secret is there. That is the other end of the tunnel!"

He meant, I felt sure, to send me in again, in spite of all that we had seen.

As for me, however, I resolved to keep very clear of the Hayfork Minister. He was a nice man, Mr. Ablethorpe, and a pleasure to know. But to be in a drain pipe for his sake, with the fear of Mad Jeremy meeting one face to face half-way up, put too high a price on his friendship. I resolved, therefore, in future to cut Mr. Ablethorpe's acquaintance.

CHAPTER XIII

MEYSIE'S BAIRNS

At the time I had no idea how difficult this would be. But at any rate I wanted to find out for certain what it was that I had found. He could give me no other answer than that I would know in good time, and that in the meantime we were going to old Caleb Fergusson's for tea.

Now I make no objections to tea at any time – that is, a proper sit-down, spread-table, country tea – not one of those agonies at which you do tricks with a cup of tea, a plate, the edge of a chair, and a snippet of bread. I knew that at the Fergusson's I would find plenty to eat and drink.

We slid back through the woods, rising higher all the time as the land trended toward the moor. Then out and away across the road I could see far away to the right the roofs of Breckonside, shining like silver after a shower which must have passed over them, the winding Brom Water, the threaded roads, pale pink in colour, the dry stone dykes dividing the fields. Never had my native village seemed so small to me. Perhaps because I had just been in some considerable danger, a thing which enlarges the mental horizon. I looked for Elsie's house down there. But though I could see the silver glint of the water, I could not make out the cottage at the Bridge End. There was a mist, however, creeping up from the sea, so that in a little while, even as I looked, the whole valley became a pearl-grey lake, with only the tall ash trees and the solitary church spire standing up out of the smother.

We found old Caleb, an infrequent smile on his face, leaning over the bars of his yard gate.

"Them that hasna their hay weel covered," he chuckled, "runs a chance o' gettin' it sprinkled a wee!"

"Then," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "you owe me something for the afternoon's work I gave you!"

"Yon!" cried the old man, ungratefully, "caa ye that half a day's wark? But I'm far frae denyin' that, sic as it was, it helped. Ow, ay, it was aye a help! And at ony rate the hay's under cover – some thack-and-rape, and some in the new-fangled shed. But what's your wull? Ye are no seekin' wages, I'm thinkin'. Maybe ye want me to turn my coat and come doon to your bit tabernacle? Aweel, ye may want."

"Oh, no," said Mr. Ablethorpe, smiling. "I was just hoping that perhaps your good wife would brew us a cup of tea. I think both Joe and I would be the better of it."

You should have seen how the old farmer's face lit up. Hospitality was a beautiful thing to him. He rejoiced in that, at least. And if, as some folk say – not Mr. Ablethorpe – an elder is the same as a bishop, then the old Free Kirker had at least one of the necessary qualities. He was "given to hospitality." Whether he was, as is also required, "no striker," I would not just like to say, or to try.

But Caleb took us indoors out of the slight oncoming drizzle, which was beginning to spray down from the clouds, or creep up from the valleys – I am not sure which. At any rate, it was there, close-serried, wetting.

Now heretofore I had only seen Mrs. Caleb when she was ordered down from the long stack under the zinc-roofed shed, which her husband was never tired of declaiming against as "new-fangled," yet to which he owed that night the safety of his crop.

Mrs. Caleb was a good twenty years younger than her lord, still, indeed, bearing traces of that special kind of good looks which the Scots call "sonsiness." Susan Fergusson at five-and-forty was sonsy to the last degree. Her husband, twenty years older, was sun-dried and wind-dried and frost-bitten till he had become sapless as a leaf blown along the highway on a bask March day, when the fields are full of sowers, and the roads cloudy with "stoor."

"Come ben! This way, sir – and you, too, Joe," she cried, opening a door into an inner room, "ye will no hae seen Meysie's bairns?"

As I had never even heard of Meysie, I certainly had not.