CAPTAIN STAPLE was not destined to leave Easterby at an early hour on the following morning. Thanks to the nocturnal habits of Lord Melksham, it was daylight before he went to bed. That amiable but erratic peer, dissuaded from opening a faro bank, had challenged the company to a quiet game of loo; and since the elders of the party, who included besides the Archdeacon, his brother-in-law, Mr. Yatton, and Mr. Merridge the Earl’s chaplain, had retired soon after the ladies, and the Earl was plainly unable to keep the situation within bounds, Captain Staple had not the heart to desert him. The Earl was grateful, but he would not permit him to break up the party, which he was perfectly willing to do. He said: “No, no! If Melksham is determined——He is my guest, you know, and, besides—Well, you will understand how it is!”
“No, I don’t,” said John bluntly. “And if I were you, old fellow, I would order things as I liked in my own house!”
No one, after as much as one glance at the Captain’s good-humored but determined countenance, could doubt this. The Earl said fretfully: “Yes, but you don’t understand! It’s all very well for you—However, that don’t signify! The thing is, you know what Lucius is, and that stupid brother-in-law of mine! And here’s my Uncle Yatton taken himself off, and left young Geoffrey to do as he pleases! I wish you will stay, and help me to see that they keep the line!”
So Captain Staple, no gamester, stayed; and if he failed to keep the stakes as low as his noble cousin would have wished he did contrive to prevent the quiet game of loo from becoming an extremely noisy game of loo. By the time Lord Melksham had wearied of this sport, and inaugurated a game of brag, young Mr. Yatton had succumbed to his potations, which, as the Captain cheerfully informed the Earl, was a very happy circumstance, since it cut his losses short.
Having carried Geoffrey up to bed, he presently held his own brother-in-law’s head under the pump in the scullery, guided his cousin Arthur’s wavering steps up the stairs, and gently but firmly convinced Lord Melksham that it would be better to retire to bed than to try the power of a hunting-horn discovered in the Great Hall.
After so strenuous a night it was not surprising that the Captain should have slept far into the morning. He did not leave Easterby until past noon, and had he attended to the representations made to him by his host and his sister he would not have left it at all that day. It was pointed out to him that the sky threatened bad weather, that he could not hope to achieve more than a few miles of his journey, and that he would do well to abandon the whole project of riding to Leicestershire. But the probability of rain did not much trouble any man who was accustomed to bivouacking under the worst of conditions in the Peninsula and the Pyrenees; and the possibility of having to rack up for the night at some wayside inn seemed to him infinitely preferable to another of Lord Melksham’s convivial evenings. So at noon, Cocking, the private servant who had been with him through all his campaigns, brought his big, Roman-nosed bay horse up to the house, and strapped to the saddle a heavy frieze cloak, and the bag which contained all that the Captain considered to be necessary for his journey. The rest of the Captain’s luggage consisted of a couple of portmanteaux, and these he instructed Cocking to despatch by carrier to Edenhope, Mr. Babbacombe’s hunting-box in Leicestershire. The sight of two such modest pieces caused Lord Melksham’s man, a very superior person, to wonder that any gentleman should care to travel about the country so meagrely provided for. His own master, he said, never stirred from home without several trunks, a dressing-case, and himself: a highly talented valet. However, the bubble of his conceit was swiftly pricked, Cocking replying without hesitation that there was nothing for him to hold his nose up at in that. “If the Captain was a tallow-faced twiddle-poop, mounted on a pair o’ cat-sticks, I dessay he’d need a snirp like you to pad his calves out, and finify him,” he said. “Only he ain’t! Would there be anything more you was wishful to say about the Captain?”
Lord Melksham’s man prudently decided that there was nothing more he wished to say, explaining this forbearance later to his colleagues as being due to his reluctance to bandy words with a vulgar make-bait. Cocking, left in possession of the field, carefully loaded the Captain’s pistols, placed them in the saddle-holsters, and led the bay up to the house. The Captain, attired in buckskin breeches and topboots, and a coat of slightly military cut, gave him a few last instructions, and mounted the big horse. Keeping a hand on the bridle, Cocking looked up at him, and asked if he was to join him at Edenhope, when he had escorted the mistress safely home.
“No, you might not find me there. Besides, I shan’t need you.”
“Well, sir, that’s as maybe, but what I should like to know is who’s going to clean them leathers?” demanded his henchman.
“I don’t know. Mr. Babbacombe’s man, I daresay.”
“Ho!” said Cocking. “That’ll put Mr. Babbacombe’s man in prime twig, that will! Howsoever, it’s just as you wish, sir, out of course!”
He then watched his master ride off down the avenue, slowly shaking his head. A sparrow, hopping about within a few yards of him, was the recipient of his next cryptic confidence. “Resty, very resty!” he said, staring very hard at the bird. “If you was to ask me, I should say we shall have him up to some kind of bobbery in just a brace o’ snaps!”
The Captain, although he had not the smallest intention of getting up to bobbery, was heartily glad to escape from Easterby. There was nothing but Lord Melksham’s mild excesses to break the tedium; and he did not find these amusing. His cousin’s life was hedged about by all the proprieties which had driven the Captain, eight years earlier, to persuade his father to buy him a pair of colours. He had had a strong notion that the Army in time of war would suit him, and events had proved him to be right. Life in the Peninsula had been uncertain, uncomfortable, and often haphazard, but it had offered almost every kind of adventure, and John had refused none of these. He had enjoyed himself enormously, and never so intensely as when engaged upon some dangerous enterprise.
But when the war ended, in 1814, although he rejoiced as much as any man in the downfall of Bonaparte, he knew that the life he liked had ended too. Not for John Staple, the boredom of military life in peace-time! He yielded at last to his mother’s solicitations, and sold out. She thought that he would find plenty to occupy him in the management of his estate, his father having died a year previously. The elder John Staple had been an indolent man, and for some months his son was busy enough. Then had come the news of Bonaparte’s escape from Elba, and a brief period of exciting activity for John. But Bonaparte had been a prisoner on St. Helena for two years now, and everyone seemed to feel that it was time John settled down to a life of civilian respectability. He felt it himself, and tried to be content, but every now and then a fit of restlessness would seize him. When that happened his subsequent actions would be unpredictable, though, as his brother-in-law gloomily said, it was safe to assume that they would be freakish, and possibly outrageous. Lord Lichfield had every reason to believe that he had once wandered for a couple of weeks with a party of gypsies; and not readily would he forget John’s sudden arrival at his house in Lincolnshire, at midnight, by way of an open window, and clad in strange and disreputable garments.
“Good God, what have you been doing?” he had exclaimed.
“Free trading!” had replied John, grinning at him. “I’m glad I’ve found you at home: I want a bath, and some clean clothes.”
Lord Lichfield had been too much shocked to do more than goggle at him for a full minute. It wasn’t, of course, as bad as John made it sound: the whole affair had been the result of an accident.
“But what I say is this, Fanny!” had complained his lordship later. “If I go sailing, and run into a squall, and have to swim for it, do I get picked up by a smuggling-vessel? Of course I don’t! No one but John would be! What’s more, no one but John would finish the voyage with a set of cut-throat rascals, or help them to land their kegs! And if it had happened to me, I shouldn’t be alive to tell the tale: they’d have knocked me on the head, and dropped me overboard.”
“I cannot conceive how it comes about that he was spared.’” Fanny had said. “Oh, I wish he would not do such things!”
“Yes,” agreed her lord. “Though, mind you, he’s very well able to take care of himself.”
“But in the power of a whole crew of smugglers!”
“I expect they liked him.”
“Liked him?”
“Well, you can’t help liking him!” pointed out his lordship. “He’s a very charming fellow—and I wish to God he’d settle down, and stop kicking up these larks!”
“Mama is right!” declared Fanny. “We must find him an eligible wife!”
Candidate after candidate for this post did Fanny and her mama find, and cunningly throw in John’s way. Apparently he liked them—all of them. This one was a most conversible girl, that one seemed to him a very lively girl, another a remarkably pretty girl. But he asked none of them to marry him. When his sister ventured to ask him once if he had ever been in love, he had replied quite seriously, Yes: he rather thought he had been desperately in love with the lodgekeeper’s wife, who used to regale him with brandy-snaps, and allowed him to keep in a hutch outside her kitchen-door the ferrets Mama had so much disliked.
Was that all? had demanded an exasperated sister. No, there had been a girl in Lisbon, when he first joined. Juanita, or was it Conchita? He couldn’t remember, but at all events she was the loveliest creature you ever saw. Dark, of course, and with the biggest eyes, and such a well-turned ankle! Had he been in love with her? “Lord, yes!” replied John. “We all were!”
He admitted that it was time he was thinking of getting married: not, of course, to Fanny, but to Mama. “Well, I know, Mama,” he said apologetically. “But the thing is I’ve got no fancy for one of these dashed suitable marriages, where you don’t really care a fig for the girl, or she for you. I don’t mean to offer marriage to any girl who don’t give me a leveller. So I daresay I shall remain a bachelor, for they don’t—any of ’em! And if one did,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s Lombard Street to a China orange you wouldn’t take to her!”
“Dearest boy, I should take to any girl whom you loved!” declared Mrs. Staple.
He grinned his appreciation of this mendacity, and gave her shoulders a hug, saying: “That was a whisker!”
She boxed his ears. “Odious boy! The fact of the matter is that it is a thousand pities we are not living in archaic times. What you would have liked, my son, is to have rescued some female from a dragon, or an ogre!”
“Famous good sport to have had a turn-up with a dragon,” he agreed. “As long as you didn’t find yourself with the girl left on your hands afterwards, which I’ve a strong notion those fellows did.”
“Such girls,” his mother reminded him, “were always very beautiful.”
“To be sure they were! Dead bores to, depend upon it! In fact, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the dragons were very glad to be rid of ’em,” said John.
Not very promising, this. But Fanny had discovered Elizabeth Kelfield, and Mrs. Staple had acknowledged, after careful and critical study of Miss Kelfield, that here was a lady who might well take John’s fancy. She was dark; she was decidedly handsome; her fortune was respectable; and although she was not quite twenty years of age she seemed older, the circumstance of her having taken from an invalid mother’s shoulders the burden of household cares having given her an assurance beyond her years. Mrs. Staple thought she had quality, and began to cultivate the ailing Mrs. Kelfield.
And now, when mother and daughter had been coaxed to Mildenhurst, off went John into Leicestershire, so that all the scheming so painstakingly undertaken on his behalf seemed likely to be wasted.
In happy ignorance of this, Captain Staple, climbing the slopes of the Pennines, found himself in a wild, moorland country, and liked it. Having a good sense of direction, he had left the pike road at the earliest opportunity, and with it, in a very short space of time, all signs of civilization. This exactly suited his mood, and he rode over the moors, at an easy pace and in a south-easterly direction. He had meant originally to have spent the night in Derby, but his late start made this impossible. Chesterfield became his objective. That was before the bay cast a shoe. When this happened, the Captain had ample time in which to regret having left the pike road, for he appeared to be in the centre of a vast desert. The only habitations to be seen for miles were an occasional cottage, and a few rough sheds dotted about the moors for the protection of shepherds.
It was dusk when the Captain, leading Beau, dropped off the moor into a small village, which boasted not only a forge, but an alehouse as well. The smith had gone home, and by the time he had been fetched from his cottage, and the fire had been blown up again, not only had the last of the daylight vanished, but the rain, which had held off all day, had begun to fall. There was no possibility of racking up for the night at the alehouse, but bait was forthcoming for man and beast. Captain Staple ate a hearty meal of ham and eggs, lit one of his Spanish cigarillos, and went out to see what hope there might be of the weather’s clearing. There was plainly none. The rain was falling with persistent steadiness, and not a star was to be seen.
The Captain resigned himself to a wet ride, and sought counsel of the landlord. This was his undoing. The worthy man not only knew of a comfortable inn a few miles distant, but, anxious to be helpful, directed the Captain to it by what he assured him was the shortest route. He said that the Captain could not miss it, and no doubt the Captain would not have missed it if the landlord had not omitted to tell him that when he bade him take the first lane on the right he did not mean the track which, as every native of those parts knew, led winding upwards to the moor, and ended at a small farmstead. It was an hour later when the Captain, trusting his instinct, and riding steadily southward, found a lane which, rough though it was, seemed likely to lead to some village, or pike road. He followed this, noting with satisfaction that it ran slightly downhill, and within a short space of time knew that his guess had been correct. The lane ran into a broader road, which crossed it at right angles. Captain Staple had no very certain idea where he was, but he was reasonably sure that Sheffield lay to the east, probably at no great distance, so he turned left-handed into the larger road. The rain dripped from the brim of his hat, and mud generously splashed his topboots, but the heavy frieze cloak had so far kept him fairly dry. He leaned forward to pat Beau’s streaming neck, saying encouragingly: “Not much farther now, old chap!”
A bend in the road brought into view an encouraging sight. A small light glowed ahead, which, from its position, the Captain judged to be the lantern hung upon a tollgate. “Come, now, Beau!” he said, in heartening accents. “We’re on the right track, at all events! If this is a pike road, it must lead to some town!”
He rode on, and soon saw that he had indeed reached a pike. The light, though very dim, enabled him to see that it was shut, and guarded, on the northern side of the road, by a gatehouse. No light was visible in the house, and the door was shut. “Cross-country road, not much used,” the Captain informed Beau. He raised his voice, shouting imperatively: “Gate!”
Nothing happened. “Do I dismount, and open it for myself?” enquired the Captain. “No, I’ll be damned if I do! Gate, I say! Gate! Turn out, there, and be quick about it!”
The door in the centre of the gatehouse opened a little way, and a feeble glimmer of lantern light was cast across the road. “Well, come along!” said the Captain impatiently. “Open up, man!”
After a moment’s hesitation, this summons was obeyed. The gatekeeper came out into the road, and revealed himself, in the light of the lantern he carried, to be of diminutive stature. The Captain, looking down at him in some surprise, as he stood fumbling with the gate-tickets, discovered him to be a skinny urchin, certainly not more than thirteen years old, and probably less. The lantern’s glow revealed a scared young face, freckled, and slightly tear-stained.
He said: “Hallo, what’s this? Are you the gatekeeper?”
“N-no, sir. Me dad is,” responded the youth, with a gulp.
“Well, where is your dad?”
Another gulp. “I dunno.” A ticket was held up. “Frippence, please, your honour, an’ it opens the next two gates.”
But the Captain’s besetting sin, a strong predilection for exploring the unusual, had taken possession of him. He disregarded the ticket, and said: “Did your dad leave you to mind the gate for him?”
“Yes sir,” acknowledged the youth, with a somewhat watery sniff. “Please, sir, it’s frippence, and——”
“Opens the next two gates,” supplied the Captain. “What’s your name?”
“Ben,” replied the youth.
“Where does this road lead to? Sheffield?”
After consideration, Ben said that it did.
“How far?” asked the Captain.
“I dunno. Ten miles, I dessay. Please, sir——”
“As much as that! The devil!”
“It might be twelve, p’raps. I dunno. But the ticket’s frippence, please, sir.”
The Captain looked down into the not very prepossessing countenance raised anxiously to his. The boy looked frightened and overwatched. He said: “When did your dad go off?” He waited, and added, after a moment: “Don’t be afraid! I shan’t hurt you. Have you been minding the gate for long?”
“Yes—no! Dad went off yesterday. He said he’d be back, but he ain’t, and please, sir, don’t go telling no one, else Dad’ll give me a proper melting!” begged the youth, on a note of urgent entreaty.
The Captain’s curiosity was now thoroughly roused. Gatekeepers might have their faults, but they did not commonly leave their posts unattended except by small boys for twenty-four hours at a stretch. Moreover, Ben was badly scared; and to judge by the furtive glances he cast round he was scared by something besides the darkness and his loneliness.
The Captain swung himself to the ground, and pulled the bridle over Beaus head. “Seems to me I’d better stay and keep you company for the night,” he said cheerfully. “Now, where am I going to stable my horse?”
Ben was so much astonished that he could only stand staring up at the Captain with his mouth open and his eyes popping. The Captain knew that the generality of country gatehouses had small gardens attached to them with, often enough, rough sheds erected for the storage of hoes, swap-hooks, and wood. “Have you got a shed?” he demanded.
“Ay,” uttered Ben, still gazing, fascinated, at this enormous and fantastic traveller.
“What’s in it?”
“Cackling-cheats.”
The Captain recognized the language. His troop had contained several of the rogues of whom his Grace of Wellington, in querulous humour, had more than once asserted that his gallant army was for the most part composed. “Hens?” he said. “Oh, well, no matter! Take me to it! Is it big enough for my horse?”
“Ay,” said Ben doubtfully.
“Lead the way, then!”
Apparently Ben felt that it would be unwise to demur, which he seemed much inclined to do, for after giving another gulp he picked up his lantern, and guided the Captain to a wicket-gate behind the tollhouse.
The shed proved to be surprisingly large, and when the lantern was hung up on a protruding nail its light revealed not only a collection of fowls, perched on a roost, but also some straw, and a truss of hay in one corner. There were unmistakable signs that Beau was not the first horse to be stabled there, a circumstance which John found interesting, but which he thought it wisest not to comment upon. Ben was regarding him with a mixture of awe and suspicion, so he smiled down at the boy, and said: “You needn’t be afraid: I shan’t hurt you. Now, my cloak’s too wet to put over Beau here: have you got a blanket to spare?”
“Ay. But if Mr. Chirk was to come—But I dessay he won’t!” said Ben. “Coo, he is a big prancer!”
He then took the saddle-bag which John had unstrapped, and went off with it. When he returned it was with a pail of water, and a horse-blanket. He found that the Captain, having shed his coat, was rubbing Beau down, and he at once collected a wisp of straw, and set to work on the big horse’s legs. He seemed to have decided that his uninvited guest, though alarmingly large, really did mean him no harm, for he looked much more cheerful, and volunteered the information that he had set the kettle on to boil. “There’s some rum left,” he said.
“There won’t be presently,” replied John, watching the boy’s fearless handling of his horse. The mild jest was well-received, a friendly grin being cast up at him. He said casually: “Do you work in a stable?”
“Some days I does. Others it’s all sorts,” replied Ben. “Mr. Sopworthy hires me mostly.”
“Who is he?”
“Buffer, at Crowford. Blue Boar,” said Ben, beginning to wipe the stirrups with a piece of sacking.
“Innkeeper?” hazarded John.
“Ay.”
“Does your dad keep a horse?”
The wary look came back into Ben’s face. “No.” He eyed John sideways. “That horse-cloth ain’t me dad’s. It—it belongs to a friend. He comes here sometimes. Maybe he wouldn’t like you using of it, so—so you don’t want to go saying anything about it, please, sir! Nor about him, acos he don’t like meeting no strangers!”
“Shy, is he? I won’t say anything,” promised John, wondering if this were perhaps the man of whom Ben was afraid. He was by this time convinced that some mystery hung about the toll-house, with which, no doubt, the disappearance of its custodian was connected; but he was wise enough to keep this reflection to himself, since it was plain that Ben, in the manner of a colt, was uncertain of him, ready to shy off in a panic.
When Beau had been covered with the blanket, and left to lip over an armful of hay, Ben led the Captain up the garden to the back of the toll-house, where a central door opened into a small kitchen. The house, as John quickly saw, was of the usual pattern. It consisted of two tolerable rooms with another between them, which had been divided into two by a wooden partition. The rear half was the kitchen, and the front the toll-office. The kitchen was small, over-warm, and extremely untidy. Since it was lit by a couple of dip-candles in tin holders, an unpleasant aroma of hot tallow hung about it. But the Captain knew from past experiences in the more primitive parts of Portugal that the human nose could rapidly accustom itself to even worse smells, and he entered the room without misgiving. Ben shut and bolted the door, set down the lantern, and produced from the cupboard a black bottle, and a thick tumbler. “I’ll mix you a bumper,” he offered.
The Captain, who had seated himself in the Windsor chair by the fire, grinned, but said: “Much obliged to you, but I think I’ll mix it myself. If you want to make yourself useful, see if you can pull off these boots of mine!”
This operation, which took time, and all Ben’s strength, did much to break the ice. It seemed to Ben exquisitely humorous that he should tumble nearly heels over head, clasping a muddied topboot to his chest. He began to giggle, forgetting his awe, and looked all at once much younger than John had at first supposed him to be. He disclosed, upon enquiry, that he was going on for eleven.
Having found a pair of pumps in his saddle-bag, John mixed himself a glass of hot rum and water, and sat down again with his legs stretched out before him, and his boots standing beside the hearth to dry. “That’s better,” he said, leaning his fair head against the high-back of the chair, and smiling sleepily across at his host. “Tell me, are we likely to be called out very often to open that gate?”
Ben shook his head. “No one don’t come this way after dark much,” he said. “ ’Sides, it’s raining fit to bust itself.”
“Good!” said John. “Where am I going to sleep?”
“You could have me dad’s bed,” suggested Ben doubtfully.
“Thank you, I will. Where do you think your dad may have gone to?”
“I dunno,” said Ben simply.
“Does he often go away like this?”
“No. He never done it afore—not like this. And he ain’t gone on the mop, because he ain’t no fuddlecap, not me dad. And if he don’t come back, they’ll put me on the Parish.”
“I expect he’ll come back,” said John soothingly. “Have you got any other relations? Brothers? Uncles?”
“I got a brother. Leastways, unless he’s been drownded, I have. He was pressed. I shouldn’t wonder if I was never to see him no more.”
“Lord, yes, of course you will!”
“Well, I don’t want to,” said Ben frankly. “He’s a proper jobbernoll, that’s what he is. Else they wouldn’t never have snabbled him. Me dad says so.”
If Ben possessed other relatives, he did not know of them. His mother seemed to have died some years before; and it soon became apparent that he clung to his father less from affection than from a lively dread of being thrown on the Parish. He was convinced that if this should befall him he would be sent to work at one of the foundries in Sheffield. He lived near enough to Sheffield to know what miseries were endured by the swarms of stunted children who were employed from the age of seven in the big manufacturing towns; and it was not surprising that this fate should seem so terrible to him. There was only one worse fate known to him, and this, before long, he was to confide to John.
While he talked, and John sat sipping his rum, the wind had risen a little, bringing with it other sounds than the steady dripping of the rain. The wicket-gate for the use of travellers on foot creaked and banged gently once or twice, and when this happened Ben’s face seemed to sharpen, and he broke off what he was saying to listen intently. John noticed that his eyes wandered continually towards the backdoor, and that the noises coming from the rear of the house seemed to worry him more than the creak of the gate. A gust of wind blew something over with a clatter. It sounded to John as though a broom, or a rake, had fallen, but it brought Ben to his feet in a flash, and drove him instinctively to John’s side.
“What is it?” John said quietly.
“Him!” breathed Ben, his gaze riveted to the door.
John got up, and trod over to the door, ignoring a whimper of protest. He shot back the bolts, and opened it, stepping out into the garden. “There’s no one here,” he said, over his shoulder. “You left a broom propped against the wall, and the wind blew it over, that’s all. Come and see for yourself!” He waited for a moment, and then repeated, on a note of authority: “Come!”
Ben approached reluctantly.
“Weather’s fairing up,” remarked John, leaning his shoulders against the door-frame, and looking up at the sky. “Getting lighter. We shall have a fine day tomorrow. Well? Can you see anyone?”
“N-no,” Ben acknowledged, with a little shiver. He looked up at John, and added hopefully: “He couldn’t get me, could he? Not with a big cove like you here.”
“Of course not. No one could get you,” John replied, shutting the door again, and going back to the fire. “You may bolt it if you choose, but there’s no need.”
“Yes, ’cos he might come to see me dad, and I mustn’t see him, nor him me,” explained Ben.
“Lord, is he as shy as all that? What’s the matter with him? Is he so ugly?”
“I dunno. I never seen him. Only his shadder—onct!”
“But you’ve rubbed his horse down for him, haven’t you?”
“No!” Ben said, staring.
“Wasn’t that his blanket that you brought me for Beau?”
“No.’ That’s Mr. Chirk’s!” said Ben. “He’s a—” He stopped, gave a gasp, and added quickly: “He’s as good as ever twanged, he is! You don’t want to go telling nobody about him! Please, sir—”
“Oh, I won’t breathe a word about him! Are all your friends so shy?”
“He ain’t shy. He just don’t like strangers.”
“I see. And does this other man—the one you’re afraid of—dislike strangers too?”
“I dunno. He can’t abide boys. Me dad says if he was to catch me looking at him he’d have me took off to work in the pits.” His voice sank on the word, and he gave so convulsive a shudder that it was easy to see that coal-pits were to him a worse horror than foundries.
John laughed. “That’s a fine Banbury story! Your dad’s been hoaxing you, my son!”
Ben looked incredulous. “He could have me took off. He’d put a sack over me head, and—”
“Oh, would he? And what do you suppose I should do if anyone walked in and tried to put a sack over your head?”
“What?” asked Ben, round-eyed.
“Put a sack over his head, of course, and hand him to the nearest constable.”
“You would!” Ben drew an audible breath.
“Certainly I would. Does he come here often?”
“N-no. Leastways, I dunno. After it’s dark, he comes. I dunno how many times. Onct, there was two on ’em. I woke up, and heard them, talking to me dad.”
“What were they talking about?”
Ben shook his head. “I didn’t hear nothing but just voices. I got right under me blanket, ’cos I knew it was Kirn.”
By this time it seemed fairly certain to John that the gatekeeper’s disappearance was connected in some way with Ben’s mysterious bugbear; and it seemed still more certain that he was engaged upon nefarious business. What this might be John had not the remotest conjecture, and it was plainly useless to question Ben further. He got up, saying: “Well, it’s high time you were under your blanket again. If anyone shouts gate, I’ll attend to it, so you show me where your dad’s bed is, and then be off to your own.”
“You can’t open the gate!” said Ben, shocked. “You’re a flash cove!”
“Never mind what I am! You do what I tell you!”
Thus adjured, Ben escorted him into the toll-office, from which access to the two other rooms was obtained. One of these, where Ben slept on a truckle-bed, contained stores, but the other was furnished with some degree of comfort, the bed even being provided with cotton sheets, and a faded patchwork quilt. The Captain, having no fancy for the gatekeeper’s sheets, coolly stripped them off the bed, rolled them into a bundle, and tossed them into a corner of the room. He then stretched himself out on top of the blankets, pulled the quilt over himself, and blew out the candle. For a few minutes, before falling asleep, he wondered what he was going to do if the gatekeeper did not return that night. The proper course, which would be to report the man’s absence, would seem unpleasantly like a betrayal of Ben; yet no other presented itself to him. But the Captain was never one to meet troubles halfway, and he very soon stopped frowning over this problem. After all, it was probable that before morning the gatekeeper would be back at his post. Stale-drunk, too, thought John, setting little store by Ben’s assurance that his dad was not one to go on the mop.