A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 78

"Somebody has been gathering a nosegay here to-day," said he; "now, mamma, there's only two ways put of this field--let us go straight to that gate; that is the likeliest."

Near the gate was some clay, and Reginald showed her several prints of small feet.

"Look," said he, "here's the track of two--one's a gal; how I know, here's a sole to this shoe no wider nor a knife. Come on."

In the next field he was baffled for a long time; but at last he found a place in a dead hedge where they had gone through.

"See," said he, "these twigs are fresh broken, and here's a bit of the gal's frock. Oh! won't she catch it?":

"Oh, you brave, clever boy!" cried Lady Ba.s.sett.

"Come on!" shouted the urchin.

He hunted like a beagle, and saw like a bird, with his savage, glittering eye. He was on fire with the ardor of the chase; and, not to dwell too long on what has been so often and so well written by others, in about an hour and a half he brought the anxious, palpitating, but now hopeful mother, to the neighborhood of Ba.s.sett's wood. Here he trusted to his own instinct. "They have gone into the wood," said he, "and I don't blame 'em. I found my way here long before his age. I say, don't you tell; I've snared plenty of the governor's hares in that wood."

He got to the edge of the wood and ran down the side. At last he found the marks of small feet on a low bank, and, darting over it, discovered the fainter traces on some decaying leaves inside the wood.

"There," said he; "now it is just as if you had got them in your pocket, for they'll never find their way out of this wood. Bless your heart, why _I_ used to get lost in it at first."

"Lost in the wood!" cried Lady Ba.s.sett; "but he will die of fear, or be eaten by wild beasts; and it is getting so dark."

"What about that? Night or day is all one to me. What will you give me if I find him before midnight?"

"Anything I've got in the world."

"Give me a sovereign?"

"A thousand!"

"Give me a kiss?"

"A hundred!"

"Then I'll tell you what I'll do--I don't mind a little trouble, to stop your crying, mamma, because you are the right sort. I'll get the village out, and we will tread the wood with torches, an' all for them as can't see by night; I can see all one; and you shall have your kid home to supper. You see, there's a heavy dew, and he is not like me, that would rather sleep in this wood than the best bed in London city; a night in a wood would about settle his hash. So here goes. I can run a mile in six minutes and a half."

With these words, the strange boy was off like an arrow from a bow.

Lady Ba.s.sett, exhausted by anxiety and excitement, was glad to sit down; her trembling heart would not let her leave the place that she now began to hope contained her child. She sat down and waited patiently.

The sun set, the moon rose, the stars glittered; the infinite leaves stood out dark and solid, as if cut out of black marble; all was dismal silence and dread suspense to the solitary watcher.

Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that solemn sky.

She shuddered a little as the cold dews gathered on her, for she was a woman nursed in luxury's lap; but she never moved.

The silence was dismal. Had that wild boy forgotten his promise, or were there no parents in the village, that their feet lagged so?

It was nearly ten o'clock, when her keen ears, strained to the utmost, discovered a faint buzzing of voices; but where she could not tell.

The sounds increased and increased, and then there was a temporary silence; and after that a faint hallooing in the wood to her right. The wood was five hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in front and to her left.

The hallooing got louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed and terrified by the glaring lights and loud resounding halloos.

Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at last a line of men and boys, full fifty carrying torches and lanterns, came up, and lighted up the dew-spangled leaves, and made the mother's heart leap with joyful hope at succor so powerful.

Oh, she could have kissed the stout village blacksmith, whose deep sonorous lungs rang close to her. Never had any man's voice sounded to her so like a G.o.d's as this stout blacksmith's "hilloop! hilloop!"

close and loud in her ear, and those at the end of the line hallooed "hillo-op; hillo-op!" like an echo; and so they pa.s.sed on, through bush and brier, till their voices died away in the distance.

A boy detached himself from the line, and ran to Lady Ba.s.sett with a traveling rug. It was Reginald.

"You put on this," said he. He shook it, and, standing on tiptoe, put it over her shoulders.

"Thank you, dear," said she. "Where is papa?"

"Oh, he is in the line, and the Highmore swell and all."

"Mr. Richard Ba.s.sett?"

"Air, his kid is out on the loose, as well as ours."

"Oh, Reginald, if they should quarrel!"

"Why, our governor can lick him, can't he?"

CHAPTER XL.

"OH, don't talk so. I wouldn't for all the world they should quarrel."

"Well, we have got enough fellows to part them if they do."

"Dear Reginald, you have been so good to me, and you are so clever; speak to some of the men, and let there be no more quarreling between papa and that man."

"All right," said the boy.

"On second thoughts take me to papa; I'll be by his side, and then they cannot."

"You want to walk through the wood? that is a good joke. Why, it is like walking through a river, and the young wood slapping your eyes, for you can't see every twig by this light, and the leaves sponging your face and shoulders: and the briers would soon strip your gown into ribbons, and make your little ankles bleed. No, you are a lady; you stay where you are, and let us men work it. We shan't find him yet awhile. I must get near the governor. When we find my lord, I'll give a whistle you could hear a mile off."

"Oh, Reginald, are you sure he is in the wood?"

"I'd bet my head to a chany orange. You might as well ask me, when I track a badger to his hole, and no signs of his going out again, whether old long-claws is there. I wish I was as sure of never going back to school as I am of finding that little lot. The only thing I don't like is, the young m.u.f.f's not giving us a halloo back. But, any way, I'll find 'em, _alive or dead."_

And, with this pleasing a.s.surance, the little imp scudded off, leaving the mother glued to the spot with terror.

For full an hour more the torches gleamed, though fainter and fainter; and so full was the wood of echoes, that the voices, though distant, seemed to halloo all round the agonized mother.