|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
BROTHER OWEN'S STORY
OF
THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK COTTAGE.
To begin at the beginning, I must take you back to the time after
my mother's death, when my only brother had gone to sea, when my
sister was out at service, and when I lived alone with my father
in the midst of a moor in the west of England.
The moor was covered with great limestone rocks, and intersected
here and there by streamlets. The nearest habitation to ours was
situated about a mile and a half off, where a strip of the
fertile land stretched out into the waste like a tongue. Here the
outbuildings of the great Moor Farm, then in the possession of my
husband's father, began. The farm-lands stretched down gently
into a beautiful rich valley, lying nicely sheltered by the high
platform of the moor. When the ground began to rise again, miles
and miles away, it led up to a country house called Holme Manor,
belonging to a gentleman named Knifton. Mr. Knifton had lately
married a young lady whom my mother had nursed, and whose
kindness and friendship for me, her foster-sister, I shall
remember gratefully to the last day of my life. These and other
slight particulars it is necessary to my story that I should tell
you, and it is also necessary that you should be especially
careful to bear them well in mind.
My father was by trade a stone-mason. His cottage stood a mile
and a half from the nearest habitation. In all other directions
we were four or five times that distance from neighbors. Being
very poor people, this lonely situation had one great attraction
for us--we lived rent free on it. In addition to that advantage,
the stones, by shaping which my father gained his livelihood, lay
all about him at his very door, so that he thought his position,
solitary as it was, quite an enviable one. I can hardly say that
I agreed with him, though I never complained. I was very fond of
my father, and managed to make the best of my loneliness with the
thought of being useful to him. Mrs. Knifton wished to take me
into her service when she married, but I declined, unwillingly
enough, for my father's sake. If I had gone away, he would have
had nobody to live with him; and my mother made me promise on her
death-bed that he should never be left to pine away alone in the
midst of the bleak moor.
Our cottage, small as it was, was stoutly and snugly built, with
stone from the moor as a matter of course. The walls were lined
inside and fenced outside with wood, the gift of Mr. Knifton's
father to my father. This double covering of cracks and crevices,
which would have been superfluous in a sheltered position, was
absolutely necessary, in our exposed situation, to keep out the
cold winds which, excepting just the summer months, swept over us
continually all the year round. The outside boards, covering our
roughly-built stone walls, my father protected against the wet
with pitch and tar. This gave to our little abode a curiously
dark, dingy look, especially when it was seen from a distance;
and so it had come to be called in the neighborhood, even before
I was born, The Black Cottage.
I have now related the preliminary particulars which it is
desirable that you should know, and may proceed at once to the
pleasanter task of telling you my story.
One cloudy autumn day, when I was rather more than eighteen years
old, a herdsman walked over from Moor Farm with a letter which
had been left there for my father. It came from a builder living
at our county town, half a day's journey off, and it invited my
father to come to him and give his judgment about an estimate for
some stonework on a very large scale. My father's expenses for
loss of time were to be paid, and he was to have his share of
employment afterwards in preparing the stone. He was only too
glad, therefore, to obey the directions which the letter
contained, and to prepare at once for his long walk to the county
town.
Considering the time at which he received the letter, and the
necessity of resting before he attempted to return, it was
impossible for him to avoid being away from home for one night,
at least. He proposed to me, in case I disliked being left alone
in the Black Cottage, to lock the door and to take me to Moor
Farm to sleep with any one of the milkmaids who would give me a
share of her bed. I by no means liked the notion of sleeping with
a girl whom I did not know, and I saw no reason to feel afraid of
being left alone for only one night; so I declined. No thieves
had ever come near us; our poverty was sufficient protection
against them; and of other dangers there were none that even the
most timid person could apprehend. Accordingly, I got my father's
dinner, laughing at the notion of my taking refuge under the
protection of a milkmaid at Moor Farm. He started for his walk as
soon as he had done, saying he should try and be back by
dinner-time the next day, and leaving me and my cat Polly to take
care of the house.
I had cleared the table and brightened up the fire, and had sat
down to my work with the cat dozing at my feet, when I heard the
trampling of horses, and, running to the door, saw Mr. and Mrs.
Knifton, with their groom behind them, riding up to the Black
Cottage. It was part of the young lady's kindness never to
neglect an opportunity of coming to pay me a friendly visit, and
her husband was generally willing to accompany her for his wife's
sake. I made my best courtesy, therefore, with a great deal of
pleasure, but with no particular surprise at seeing them. They
dismounted and entered the cottage, laughing and talking in great
spirits. I soon heard that they were riding to the same county
town for which my father was bound and that they intended to stay
with some friends there for a few days, and to return home on
horseback, as they went out.
I heard this, and I also discovered that they had been having an
argument, in jest, about money-matters, as they rode along to our
cottage. Mrs. Knifton had accused her husband of inveterate
extravagance, and of never being able to go out with money in his
pocket without spending it all, if he possibly could, before he
got home again. Mr. Knifton had laughingly defended himself by
declaring that all his pocket-money went in presents for his
wife, and that, if he spent it lavishly, it was under her sole
influence and superintendence.
"We are going to Cliverton now," he said to Mrs. Knifton, naming
the county town, and warming himself at our poor fire just as
pleasantly as if he had been standing on his own grand hearth.
"You will stop to admire every pretty thing in every one of the
Cliverton shop-windows; I shall hand you the purse, and you will
go in and buy. When we have reached home again, and you have h ad
time to get tired of your purchases, you will clasp your hands in
amazement, and declare that you are quite shocked at my habits of
inveterate extravagance. I am only the banker who keeps the
money; you, my love, are the spendthrift who throws it all away!"
"Am I, sir?" said Mrs. Knifton, with a look of mock indignation.
"We will see if I am to be misrepresented in this way with
impunity. Bessie, my dear" (turning to me), "you shall judge how
far I deserve the character which that unscrupulous man has just
given to me. I am the spendthrift, am I? And you are only the
banker? Very well. Banker, give me my money at once, if you
please!"
Mr. Knifton laughed, and took some gold and silver from his
waistcoat pocket.
"No, no," said Mrs. Knifton, "you may want what you have got
there for necessary expenses. Is that all the money you have
about you? What do I feel here?" and she tapped her husband on
the chest, just over the breast-pocket of his coat.
Mr. Knifton laughed again, and produced his pocketbook. His wife
snatched it out of his hand, opened it, and drew out some
bank-notes, put them back again immediately, and, closing the
pocketbook, stepped across the room to my poor mother's little
walnut-wood book-case, the only bit of valuable furniture we had
in the house.
"What are you going to do there?" asked Mr. Knifton, following
his wife.
Mrs. Knifton opened the glass door of the book-case, put the
pocketbook in a vacant place on one of the lower shelves, closed
and locked the door again, and gave me the key.
"You called me a spendthrift just now," she said. "There is my
answer. Not one farthing of that money shall you spend at
Cliverton on me. Keep the key in your pocket, Bessie, and,
whatever Mr. Knifton may say, on no account let him have it until
we call again on our way back. No, sir, I won't trust you with
that money in your pocket in the town of Cliverton. I will make
sure of your taking it all home again, by leaving it here in more
trustworthy hands than yours until we ride back. Bessie, my dear,
what do you say to that as a lesson in economy inflicted on a
prudent husband by a spendthrift wife?"
She took Mr. Knifton's arm while she spoke, and drew him away to
the door. He protested and made some resistance, but she easily
carried her point, for he was far too fond of her to have a will
of his own in any trifling matter between them. Whatever the men
might say, Mr. Knifton was a model husband in the estimation of
all the women who knew him.
"You will see us as we come back, Bessie. Till then, you are our
banker, and the pocketbook is yours," cried Mrs. Knifton, gayly,
at the door. Her husband lifted her into the saddle, mounted
himself, and away they both galloped over the moor as wild and
happy as a couple of children.
Although my being trusted with money by Mrs. Knifton was no
novelty (in her maiden days she always employed me to pay her
dress-maker's bills), I did not feel quite easy at having a
pocketbook full of bank-notes left by her in my charge. I had no
positive apprehensions about the safety of the deposit placed in
my hands, but it was one of the odd points in my character then
(and I think it is still) to feel an unreasonably strong
objection to charging myself with money responsibilities of any
kind, even to suit the convenience of my dearest friends. As soon
as I was left alone, the very sight of the pocketbook behind the
glass door of the book-case began to worry me, and instead of
returning to my work, I puzzled my brains about finding a place
to lock it up in, where it would not be exposed to the view of
any chance passers-by who might stray into the Black Cottage.
This was not an easy matter to compass in a poor house like ours,
where we had nothing valuable to put under lock and key. After
running over various hiding-places in my mind, I thought of my
tea-caddy, a present from Mrs. Knifton, which I always kept out
of harm's way in my own bedroom. Most unluckily--as it afterward
turned out--instead of taking the pocketbook to the tea-caddy, I
went into my room first to take the tea-caddy to the pocketbook.
I only acted in this roundabout way from sheer thoughtlessness,
and severely enough I was punished for it, as you will
acknowledge yourself when you have read a page or two more of my
story.
I was just getting the unlucky tea-caddy out of my cupboard, when
I heard footsteps in the passage, and, running out immediately,
saw two men walk into the kitchen--the room in which I had
received Mr. and Mrs. Knifton. I inquired what they wanted
sharply enough, and one of them answered immediately that they
wanted my father. He turned toward me, of course, as he spoke,
and I recognized him as a stone-mason, going among his comrades
by the name of Shifty Dick. He bore a very bad character for
everything but wrestling, a sport for which the working men of
our parts were famous all through the county. Shifty Dick was
champion, and he had got his name from some tricks of wrestling,
for which he was celebrated. He was a tall, heavy man, with a
lowering, scarred face, and huge hairy hands--the last visitor in
the whole world that I should have been glad to see under any
circumstances. His companion was a stranger, whom he addressed by
the name of Jerry--a quick, dapper, wicked-looking man, who took
off his cap to me with mock politeness, and showed, in so doing,
a very bald head, with some very ugly-looking knobs on it. I
distrusted him worse than I did Shifty Dick, and managed to get
between his leering eyes and the book-case, as I told the two
that my father was gone out, and that I did not expect him back
till the next day.
The words were hardly out of my mouth before I repented that my
anxiety to get rid of my unwelcome visitors had made me
incautious enough to acknowledge that my father would be away
from home for the whole night.
Shifty Dick and his companion looked at each other when I
unwisely let out the truth, but made no remark except to ask me
if I would give them a drop of cider. I answered sharply that I
had no cider in the house, having no fear of the consequences of
refusing them drink, because I knew that plenty of men were at
work within hail, in a neighboring quarry. The two looked at each
other again when I denied having any cider to give them; and
Jerry (as I am obliged to call him, knowing no other name by
which to distinguish the fellow) took off his cap to me once
more, and, with a kind of blackguard gentility upon him, said
they would have the pleasure of calling the next day, when my
father was at home. I said good-afternoon as ungraciously as
possible, and, to my great relief, they both left the cottage
immediately afterward.
As soon as they were well away, I watched them from the door.
They trudged off in the direction of Moor Farm; and, as it was
beginning to get dusk, I soon lost sight of them.
Half an hour afterward I looked out again.
The wind had lulled with the sunset, but the mist was rising, and
a heavy rain was beginning to fall. Never did the lonely prospect
of the moor look so dreary as it looked to my eyes that evening.
Never did I regret any slight thing more sincerely than I then
regretted the leaving of Mr. Knifton's pocketbook in my charge. I
cannot say that I suffered under any actual alarm, for I felt
next to certain that neither Shifty Dick nor Jerry had got a
chance of setting eyes on so small a thing as the pocketbook
while they were in the kitchen; but there was a kind of vague
distrust troubling me--a suspicion of the night--a dislike of
being left by myself, which I never remember having experienced
before. This feeling so increased after I had closed the door and
gone back to the kitchen, that, when I heard the voices of the
quarrymen as they passed our cottage on their way home to the
village in the valley below Moor Farm, I stepped out into the
passage with a momentary notion of telling them how I was
situated, and asking them for advice and protection.
I had hardly formed this idea, however, before I dismissed it.
None of the quarrymen were intimate friends of mine. I had a
nodding acquaintance with them, and believed them to be honest
men, as times went. But my own common sense told me that what little knowledge
of their characters I had was by no means sufficient to warrant
me in admitting them into my confidence in the matter of the
pocketbook. I had seen enough of poverty and poor men to know
what a terrible temptation a large sum of money is to those whose
whole lives are passed in scraping up sixpences by weary hard
work. It is one thing to write fine sentiments in books about
incorruptible honesty, and another thing to put those sentiments
in practice when one day's work is all that a man has to set up
in the way of an obstacle between starvation and his own
fireside.
The only resource that remained was to carry the pocketbook with
me to Moor Farm, and ask permission to pass the night there. But
I could not persuade myself that there was any real necessity for
taking such a course as this; and, if the truth must be told, my
pride revolted at the idea of presenting myself in the character
of a coward before the people at the farm. Timidity is thought
rather a graceful attraction among ladies, but among poor women
it is something to be laughed at. A woman with less spirit of her
own than I had, and always shall have, would have considered
twice in my situation before she made up her mind to encounter
the jokes of plowmen and the jeers of milkmaids. As for me, I had
hardly considered about going to the farm before I despised
myself for entertaining any such notion. "No, no," thought I, "I
am not the woman to walk a mile and a half through rain, and
mist, and darkness to tell a whole kitchenful of people that I am
afraid. Come what may, here I stop till father gets back."
Having arrived at that valiant resolution, the first thing I did
was to lock and bolt the back and front doors, and see to the
security of every shutter in the house.
That duty performed, I made a blazing fire, lighted my candle,
and sat down to tea, as snug and comfortable as possible. I could
hardly believe now, with the light in the room, and the sense of
security inspired by the closed doors and shutters, that I had
ever felt even the slightest apprehension earlier in the day. I
sang as I washed up the tea-things; and even the cat seemed to
catch the infection of my good spirits. I never knew the pretty
creature so playful as she was that evening.
The tea-things put by, I took up my knitting, and worked away at
it so long that I began at last to get drowsy. The fire was so
bright and comforting that I could not muster resolution enough
to leave it and go to bed. I sat staring lazily into the blaze,
with my knitting on my lap--sat till the splashing of the rain
outside and the fitful, sullen sobbing of the wind grew fainter
and fainter on my ear. The last sounds I heard before I fairly
dozed off to sleep were the cheerful crackling of the fire and
the steady purring of the cat, as she basked luxuriously in the
warm light on the hearth. Those were the last sounds before I
fell asleep. The sound that woke me was one loud bang at the
front door.
I started up, with my heart (as the saying is) in my mouth, with
a frightful momentary shuddering at the roots of my hair--I
started up breathless, cold and motionless, waiting in the
silence I hardly knew for what, doubtful at first whether I had
dreamed about the bang at the door, or whether the blow had
really been struck on it.
In a minute or less there came a second bang, louder than the
first. I ran out into the passage.
"Who's there?"
"Let us in," answered a voice, which I recognised immediately as
the voice of Shifty Dick.
"Wait a bit, my dear, and let me explain," said a second voice,
in the low, oily, jeering tones of Dick's companion--the wickedly
clever little man whom he called Jerry. "You are alone in the
house, my pretty little dear. You may crack your sweet voice with
screeching, and there's nobody near to hear you. Listen to
reason, my love, and let us in. We don't want cider this time--we
only want a very neat-looking pocketbook which you happen to
have, and your late excellent mother's four silver teaspoons,
which you keep so nice and clean on the chimney-piece. If you let
us in we won't hurt a hair of your head, my cherub, and we
promise to go away the moment we have got what we want, unless
you particularly wish us to stop to tea. If you keep us out, we
shall be obliged to break into the house and then--"
"And then," burst in Shifty Dick, "we'll mash you!"
"Yes," said Jerry, "we'll mash you, my beauty. But you won't
drive us to doing that, will you? You will let us in?"
This long parley gave me time to recover from the effect which
the first bang at the door had produced on my nerves. The threats
of the two villains would have terrified some women out of their
senses, but the only result they produced on me was violent
indignation. I had, thank God, a strong spirit of my own, and the
cool, contemptuous insolence of the man Jerry effectually roused
it.
"You cowardly villains!" I screamed at them through the door.
"You think you can frighten me because I am only a poor girl left
alone in the house. You ragamuffin thieves, I defy you both! Our
bolts are strong, our shutters are thick. I am here to keep my
father's house safe, and keep it I will against an army of you!"
You may imagine what a passion I was in when I vapored and
blustered in that way. I heard Jerry laugh and Shifty Dick swear
a whole mouthful of oaths. Then there was a dead silence for a
minute or two, and then the two ruffians attacked the door.
I rushed into the kitchen and seized the poker, and then heaped
wood on the fire, and lighted all the candles I could find; for I
felt as though I could keep up my courage better if I had plenty
of light. Strange and improbable as it may appear, the next thing
that attracted my attention was my poor pussy, crouched up,
panic-stricken, in a corner. I was so fond of the little creature
that I took her up in my arms and carried her into my bedroom and
put her inside my bed. A comical thing to do in a situation of
deadly peril, was it not? But it seemed quite natural and proper
at the time.
All this while the blows were falling faster and faster on the
door. They were dealt, as I conjectured, with heavy stones picked
up from the ground outside. Jerry sang at his wicked work, and
Shifty Dick swore. As I left the bedroom after putting the cat
under cover, I heard the lower panel of the door begin to crack.
I ran into the kitchen and huddled our four silver spoons into my
pocket; then took the unlucky book with the bank-notes and put it
in the bosom of my dress. I was determined to defend the property
confided to my care with my life. Just as I had secured the
pocketbook I heard the door splintering, and rushed into the
passage again with my heavy kitchen poker lifted in both hands.
I was in time to see the bald head of Jerry, with the
ugly-looking knobs on it, pushed into the passage through a great
rent in one of the lower panels of the door.
"Get out, you villain, or I'll brain you on the spot!" I
screeched, threatening him with the poker.
Mr. Jerry took his head out again much faster than he put it in.
The next thing that came through the rent was a long pitchfork,
which they darted at me from the outside, to move me from the
door. I struck at it with all my might, and the blow must have
jarred the hand of Shifty Dick up to his very shoulder, for I
heard him give a roar of rage and pain. Before he could catch at
the fork with his other hand I had drawn it inside. By this time
even Jerry lost his temper and swore more awfully than Dick
himself.
Then there came another minute of respite. I suspected they had
gone to get bigger stones, and I dreaded the giving way of the
whole door.
Running into the bedroom as this fear beset me, I laid hold of my
chest of drawers, dragged it into the passage, and threw it down
against the door. On the top of that I heaped my father's big
tool chest, three chairs, and a scuttleful of coals; and last, I
dragged out the kitchen table and rammed it as hard as I could
against the whole barricade. They heard me as they were coming up
to the door with fresh stones. Jerry said: "Stop a bit!" and t
hen the two consulted together in whispers. I listened eagerly,
and just caught these words:
"Let's try it the other way."
Nothing more was said, but I heard their footsteps retreating
from the door.
Were they going to besiege the back door now?
I had hardly asked myself that question when I heard their voices
at the other side of the house. The back door was smaller than
the front, but it had this advantage in the way of strength--it
was made of two solid oak boards joined lengthwise, and
strengthened inside by heavy cross pieces. It had no bolts like
the front door, but was fastened by a bar of iron running across
it in a slanting direction, and fitting at either end into the
wall.
"They must have the whole cottage down before they can break in
at that door!" I thought to myself. And they soon found out as
much for themselves. After five minutes of banging at the back
door they gave up any further attack in that direction and cast
their heavy stones down with curses of fury awful to hear.
I went into the kitchen and dropped on the window-seat to rest
for a moment. Suspense and excitement together were beginning to
tell upon me. The perspiration broke out thick on my forehead,
and I began to feel the bruises I had inflicted on my hands in
making the barricade against the front door. I had not lost a
particle of my resolution, but I was beginning to lose strength.
There was a bottle of rum in the cupboard, which my brother the
sailor had left with us the last time he was ashore. I drank a
drop of it. Never before or since have I put anything down my
throat that did me half so much good as that precious mouthful of
rum!
I was still sitting in the window-seat drying my face, when I
suddenly heard their voices close behind me.
They were feeling the outside of the window against which I was
sitting. It was protected, like all the other windows in the
cottage, by iron bars. I listened in dreadful suspense for the
sound of filing, but nothing of the sort was audible. They had
evidently reckoned on frightening me easily into letting them in,
and had come unprovided with house-breaking tools of any kind. A
fresh burst of oaths informed me that they had recognized the
obstacle of the iron bars. I listened breathlessly for some
warning of what they were going to do next, but their voices
seemed to die away in the distance. They were retreating from the
window. Were they also retreating from the house altogether? Had
they given up the idea of effecting an entrance in despair?
A long silence followed--a silence which tried my courage even
more severely than the tumult of their first attack on the
cottage.
Dreadful suspicions now beset me of their being able to
accomplish by treachery what they had failed to effect by force.
Well as I knew the cottage, I began to doubt whether there might
not be ways of cunningly and silently entering it against which I
was not provided. The ticking of the clock annoyed me; the
crackling of the fire startled me. I looked out twenty times in a
minute into the dark corners of the passage, straining my eyes,
holding my breath, anticipating the most unlikely events, the
most impossible dangers. Had they really gone, or were they still
prowling about the house? Oh, what a sum of money I would have
given only to have known what they were about in that interval of
silence!
I was startled at last out of my suspense in the most awful
manner. A shout from one of them reached my ears on a sudden down
the kitchen chimney. It was so unexpected and so horrible in the
stillness that I screamed for the first time since the attack on
the house. My worst forebodings had never suggested to me that
the two villains might mount upon the roof.
"Let us in, you she-devil!" roared a voice down the chimney.
There was another pause. The smoke from the wood fire, thin and
light as it was in the red state of the embers at that moment,
had evidently obliged the man to take his face from the mouth of
the chimney. I counted the seconds while he was, as I
conjectured, getting his breath again. In less than half a minute
there came another shout:
"Let us in, or we'll burn the place down over your head!"
Burn it? Burn what? There was nothing easily combustible but the
thatch on the roof; and that had been well soaked by the heavy
rain which had now fallen incessantly for more than six hours.
Burn the place over my head? How?
While I was still casting about wildly in my mind to discover
what possible danger there could be of fire, one of the heavy
stones placed on the thatch to keep it from being torn up by high
winds came thundering down the chimney. It scattered the live
embers on the hearth all over the room. A richly-furnished place,
with knickknacks and fine muslin about it, would have been set on
fire immediately. Even our bare floor and rough furniture gave
out a smell of burning at the first shower of embers which the
first stone scattered.
For an instant I stood quite horror-struck before this new proof
of the devilish ingenuity of the villains outside. But the
dreadful danger I was now in recalled me to my senses
immediately. There was a large canful of water in my bedroom, and
I ran in at once to fetch it. Before I could get back to the
kitchen a second stone had been thrown down the chimney, and the
floor was smoldering in several places.
I had wit enough to let the smoldering go on for a moment or two
more, and to pour the whole of my canful of water over the fire
before the third stone came down the chimney. The live embers on
the floor I easily disposed of after that. The man on the roof
must have heard the hissing of the fire as I put it out, and have
felt the change produced in the air at the mouth of the chimney,
for after the third stone had descended no more followed it. As
for either of the ruffians themselves dropping down by the same
road along which the stones had come, that was not to be dreaded.
The chimney, as I well knew by our experience in cleaning it, was
too narrow to give passage to any one above the size of a small
boy.
I looked upward as that comforting reflection crossed my mind--I
looked up, and saw, as plainly as I see the paper I am now
writing on, the point of a knife coming through the inside of the
roof just over my head. Our cottage had no upper story, and our
rooms had no ceilings. Slowly and wickedly the knife wriggled its
way through the dry inside thatch between the rafters. It stopped
for a while, and there came a sound of tearing. That, in its
turn, stopped too; there was a great fall of dry thatch on the
floor; and I saw the heavy, hairy hand of Shifty Dick, armed with
the knife, come through after the fallen fragments. He tapped at
the rafters with the back of the knife, as if to test their
strength. Thank God, they were substantial and close together!
Nothing lighter than a hatchet would have sufficed to remove any
part of them.
The murderous hand was still tapping with the knife when I heard
a shout from the man Jerry, coming from the neighborhood of my
father's stone-shed in the back yard. The hand and knife
disappeared instantly. I went to the back door and put my ear to
it, and listened.
Both men were now in the shed. I made the most desperate efforts
to call to mind what tools and other things were left in it which
might be used against me. But my agitation confused me. I could
remember nothing except my father's big stone-saw, which was far
too heavy and unwieldy to be used on the roof of the cottage. I
was still puzzling my brains, and making my head swim to no
purpose, when I heard the men dragging something out of the shed.
At the same instant that the noise caught my ear, the remembrance
flashed across me like lightning of some beams of wood which had
lain in the shed for years past. I had hardly time to feel
certain that they were removing one of these beams before I heard
Shifty Dick say to Jerry.
"Which door?"
"The front," was the answer. "We've cracked it already; we'll
have it down now in no time."
Senses less sharpened by danger than mine would have understood
but too easily, from these words, that they were about to use the
beam as a battering-ram against the door. When that conviction
overcame me, I lost courage at last. I felt that the door must
come down. No such barricade as I had constructed could support
it for more than a few minutes against such shocks as it was now
to receive.
"I can do no more to keep the house against them," I said to
myself, with my knees knocking together, and the tears at last
beginning to wet my cheeks. "I must trust to the night and the
thick darkness, and save my life by running for it while there is
yet time."
I huddled on my cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the
back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the
existence of poor Pussy. I ran in, and huddled the creature up in
my apron. Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock
from the beam fell on the door.
The upper hinge gave way. The chairs and coal-scuttle, forming
the top of my barricade, were hurled, rattling, on to the floor,
but the lower hinge of the door, and the chest of drawers and the
tool-chest still kept their places.
"One more!" I heard the villains cry--"one more run with the
beam, and down it comes!"
Just as they must have been starting for that "one more run," I
opened the back door and fled into the night, with the bookful of
banknotes in my bosom, the silver spoons in my pocket, and the
cat in my arms. I threaded my way easily enough through the
familiar obstacles in the backyard, and was out in the pitch
darkness of the moor before I heard the second shock, and the
crash which told me that the whole door had given way.
In a few minutes they must have discovered the fact of my flight
with the pocketbook, for I heard shouts in the distance as if
they were running out to pursue me. I kept on at the top of my
speed, and the noise soon died away. It was so dark that twenty
thieves instead of two would have found it useless to follow me.
How long it was before I reached the farmhouse--the nearest place
to which I could fly for refuge--I cannot tell you. I remember
that I had just sense enough to keep the wind at my back (having
observed in the beginning of the evening that it blew toward Moor
Farm), and to go on resolutely through the darkness. In all other
respects I was by this time half crazed by what I had gone
through. If it had so happened that the wind had changed after I
had observed its direction early in the evening, I should have
gone astray, and have probably perished of fatigue and exposure
on the moor. Providentially, it still blew steadily as it had
blown for hours past, and I reached the farmhouse with my clothes
wet through, and my brain in a high fever. When I made my alarm
at the door, they had all gone to bed but the farmer's eldest
son, who was sitting up late over his pipe and newspaper. I just
mustered strength enough to gasp out a few words, telling him
what was the matter, and then fell down at his feet, for the
first time in my life in a dead swoon.
That swoon was followed by a severe illness. When I got strong
enough to look about me again, I found myself in one of the
farmhouse beds--my father, Mrs. Knifton, and the doctor were all
in the room--my cat was asleep at my feet, and the pocketbook
that I had saved lay on the table by my side.
There was plenty of news for me to hear as soon as I was fit to
listen to it. Shifty Dick and the other rascal had been caught,
and were in prison, waiting their trial at the next assizes. Mr.
and Mrs. Knifton had been so shocked at the danger I had run--for
which they blamed their own want of thoughtfulness in leaving the
pocketbook in my care--that they had insisted on my father's
removing from our lonely home to a cottage on their land, which
we were to inhabit rent free. The bank-notes that I had saved
were given to me to buy furniture with, in place of the things
that the thieves had broken. These pleasant tidings assisted so
greatly in promoting my recovery, that I was soon able to relate
to my friends at the farmhouse the particulars that I have
written here. They were all surprised and interested, but no one,
as I thought, listened to me with such breathless attention as
the farmer's eldest son. Mrs. Knifton noticed this too, and began
to make jokes about it, in her light-hearted way, as soon as we
were alone. I thought little of her jesting at the time; but when
I got well, and we went to live at our new home, "the young
farmer," as he was called in our parts, constantly came to see
us, and constantly managed to meet me out of doors. I had my
share of vanity, like other young women, and I began to think of
Mrs. Knifton's jokes with some attention. To be brief, the young
farmer managed one Sunday--I never could tell how--to lose his
way with me in returning from church, and before we found out the
right road home again he had asked me to be his wife.
His relations did all they could to keep us asunder and break off
the match, thinking a poor stonemason's daughter no fit wife for
a prosperous yeoman. But the farmer was too obstinate for them.
He had one form of answer to all their objections. "A man, if he
is worth the name, marries according to his own notions, and to
please himself," he used to say. "My notion is, that when I take
a wife I am placing my character and my happiness--the most
precious things I have to trust--in one woman's care. The woman I
mean to marry had a small charge confided to her care, and showed
herself worthy of it at the risk of her life. That is proof
enough for me that she is worthy of the greatest charge I can put
into her hands. Rank and riches are fine things, but the
certainty of getting a good wife is something better still. I'm
of age, I know my own mind, and I mean to marry the stone-mason's
daughter."
And he did marry me. Whether I proved myself worthy or not of his
good opinion is a question which I must leave you to ask my
husband. All that I had to relate about myself and my doings is
now told. Whatever interest my perilous adventure may excite,
ends, I am well aware, with my escape to the farmhouse. I have
only ventured on writing these few additional sentences because
my marriage is the moral of my story. It has brought me the
choicest blessings of happiness and prosperity, and I owe them
all to my night-adventure in The Black Cottage.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|
