A Son of Hagar Part 89

"What is it?" asked Hugh Ritson, facing about.

"There be some on us 'at think the pit's none ower safe down the bottom working, where the seam of sand runs cross-ways. We're auld miners, maistly, and we thowt maybe ye wadna tak' it wrang if we telt ye 'at it wants a vast mair forks and upreets."

"Thank you, my lads, I'll see what I can do," said Hugh Ritson; and then added in a lower tone: "But I've put a forest of timber underground already, and where this burying of money is to end G.o.d alone knows."

He turned away this time and moved off, halting more noticeably than usual on his infirm foot.

He returned to his office near the pit-bank, and found Mr. Bonnithorne awaiting him.

"The day is young, but I'm no sluggard, you know," said the lawyer. "I thought we might want a word or two before the meeting at the Ghyll."

Hugh Ritson did not notice the explanation. He looked anxious and disturbed. While stripping off his pit flannels, and putting on his ordinary clothes, he told Mr. Bonnithorne what had just occurred, and then added:

"If anything had been necessary to prove that this morning's bad business is inevitable, I should have found it in this encounter with the men."

"It comes as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer with a curious smile. "Odd, isn't it?"

"Blunted!" said Hugh Ritson, and there was a perceptible elevation of the eyebrows.

Presently he drew a long breath, and said with an air of relief:

"Ah, well, if she suffers who has suffered enough already, he, at least, will be out of the way forever."

Bonnithorne s.h.i.+fted slightly on his seat.

"You think so?" he asked.

Something cynical in the tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear.

"It was a bad change, wasn't it?" added the lawyer; "this one is likely to be a deal more troublesome."

Hugh Ritson went on with his dressing in silence.

"You see, by the interchange your positions were reversed," continued the lawyer.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the other was in your hands, while you are in the hands of this one."

Hugh Ritson's foot fell heavily at that instant, but he merely said, with suppressed quietness:

"There was this one's crime."

"Was--precisely," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

Hugh Ritson looked up with a look of inquiry.

"When you gave the crime to the other, this one became a free man," the lawyer explained.

There was a silence.

"What does it all come to?" said Hugh Ritson, sullenly.

"That your hold of Paul Drayton is gone forever."

"How so?"

"Because you can never incriminate him without first incriminating yourself," said the lawyer.

"Who talks of incrimination?" said Hugh Ritson, testily. "To-day, this man is to take upon himself the name of Paul Lowther--his true name, though he doesn't know it, blockhead as he is. Therefore, I ask again: What does it all come to?"

Mr. Bonnithorne s.h.i.+fted uneasily.

"Nothing," he said, meekly, but the curious smile still played about his downcast face.

Then there was silence again.

"Do you know that Mercy Fisher is likely to regain her sight?" said Hugh.

"You don't say so? Dear me, dear me!" said the lawyer, sincere at last.

"In all the annals of jurisprudence there is no such extraordinary case of ident.i.ty being conclusively provable by one witness only, and of that witness becoming blind. Odd, isn't it?"

Hugh Ritson smiled coldly.

"Odd? Say providential," he answered. "I believe that's what you church folk call it when the Almighty averts a disaster that is made imminent by your own short-sightedness."

"A disaster, indeed, if her sight ceases to be so providentially short,"

said the lawyer.

"Get the man out of the way, and the woman is all right," said Hugh. He picked a letter out of a drawer, and handed it to Mr. Bonnithorne. "You will remember that the other was to have s.h.i.+pped to Australia."

Mr. Bonnithorne bowed his head.

"This letter is from the man for whom he intended to go out--an old friend of my father. Answer it, Bonnithorne."

"In what terms?" asked the lawyer.

"Say that a long illness prevented, but that Paul Ritson is now prepared to fulfill his engagement."

"And what then?"

"What then?" Hugh Ritson echoed. "Why, what do you think?"

"Send him?" with a motion of the thumb over the shoulder.

"Of course," said Hugh.

Again the cynical tone caught Hugh Ritson's ear, and he glanced up quickly, but made no remark. He was now dressed.