The Shadow of a Crime Part 53

The noise of wheels approaching startled the girl out of her troubled dream. w.i.l.l.y was coming home. In another minute he was in the house.

"Rotha, Rotha," he cried excitedly, "I've great news, great news."

"What news?" asked Rotha, not daring to look up.

"Great news," repeated w.i.l.l.y.

Lifting her eyes furtively to his face, Rotha saw that, like his voice, it was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with delight.

"The bloodhounds are gone," he said, and, throwing off his cloak and leggings, he embraced the girl and kissed her and laughed the laugh of a happy man. Then he hurried out to see to his horse.

What was Rotha to do? What was she to say? This mistake of w.i.l.l.y's made her position not less than terrible. How was she to tell him that his joyousness was misplaced? If he had come to her with a sad face she might then have told him all--yes, all the cruel truth! If he had come to her with reproaches on his tongue, how easily she might have unburdened her heavy heart! But this laughter and these kisses worked like madness in her brain.

The minutes flew like thought, and w.i.l.l.y was back in the house.

"I thought they dare not do it. You'll remember I told them so. Ah!

ah! they find I was in the right."

w.i.l.l.y was too much excited with his own reading of this latest incident to sit in one seat for two minutes together. He walked up and down the room, laughing sometimes, and sometimes pausing to pat his mother's head.

It was fortunate for Rotha that she had to busy herself with the preparations for w.i.l.l.y's supper, and that this duty rendered less urgent the necessity for immediate response to his remarks. w.i.l.l.y, on his part, was in no mood at present to indulge in niceties of observation, and Rotha's perturbation pa.s.sed for some time unnoticed.

"Ralph will be back with us soon, let us hope," he said. "There's no doubt but we do miss him, do we not?"

"Yes," Rotha answered, leaning as much as possible over the fire that she was mending.

The tone of the reply made an impression on w.i.l.l.y. In a moment more he appeared to realize that there, had throughout been something unusual in the girl's demeanor.

"Not well, Rotha?" he asked in a subdued tone. It had flashed across his mind that perhaps her father was once more in some way the cause of her trouble.

"Oh, very well!" she answered, throwing up her head with a little touch of forced gayety.

"Why, there are tears in your eyes, girl. No? Oh, but there are!" They are tears of joy, he thought. She loves Ralph as a brother. "_I_ laugh when I'm happy, Rotha; it seems that _you_ cry."

"Do I?" she answered, and wondered if the merciful Father above would ever, ever, ever let this bitter hour pa.s.s by.

"No, it's worry, Rotha, that's it; you're not well, that's the truth."

w.i.l.l.y would have been satisfied to let the explanation resolve itself into this, but Rotha broke silence, saying, "What if it were _not_ good news--"

The words were choking her, and she stopped.

"Not good news--what news?" asked w.i.l.l.y, half muttering the girl's words in a bewildered way.

"The news that the constables have gone."

"Gone! What is it? What do you mean, Rotha?"

"What if the constables have gone," said the girl, struggling with her emotion, "only because--what if they have gone--because--because Ralph is taken."

"Taken! Where? What are you thinking of?"

"And what if Ralph is to be charged, not with treason--no, but with--with murder? Oh, w.i.l.l.y!" the girl cried in her distress, throwing away all disguise, "it is true, true; it is true."

w.i.l.l.y sat down stupefied. With a wild and rigid look, he stared at Rotha as they sat face to face, eye to eye. He said nothing. A sense of horror mastered him.

"And this is not all," continued Rotha, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "What would you say of the person who did it--of the person who put Ralph in the way of this--this death?" cried the girl, now burying her face in her hands.

w.i.l.l.y's lips were livid. They moved as if in speech, but the words would not come.

"What would I say?" he said at length, bitterly and scornfully, as he rose from his seat with rigid limbs. "I would say--" He stopped; his teeth were clinched. He drew one hand impatiently across his face. The idea that Simeon Stagg must have been the informer had at that moment got possession of his mind. "Never ask me what I would _say_," he cried.

"w.i.l.l.y, dear w.i.l.l.y," sobbed Rotha, throwing her arms about him, "that person--"

The sobs were stifling her, but she would not spare herself.

"That person was MYSELF!"

"You!" cried w.i.l.l.y, breaking from her embrace. "And the murder?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely, "whose murder?"

"James Wilson's."

"Let me go--let me go, I say."

"Another word." Rotha stepped into the doorway. w.i.l.l.y threw her hastily aside and hurried out.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII. WHICH INDICTMENT?

Under the rude old Town Hall at Carlisle there was a shop which was kept by a dealer in second-hand books. The floor within was paved, and the place was lighted at night by two lamps, which swung from the beams of the ceilings. At one end a line of shelves served to separate from the more public part of the shop a little closet of a room, having a fire, and containing in the way of furniture a table, two or three chairs, and a stuffed settle.

In this closet, within a week of the events just narrated, a man of sinister aspect, whom we have met more than once already in other scenes, sat before a fire.

"Not come down yet, Pengelly?" said, this man to the bookseller, a tottering creature in a long gown and velvet skull cap.

"Not yet."

"Will he ever come? It's all a fool's errand, too, I'll swear it is."

Then twisting his shoulders as though s.h.i.+vering, he added,--

"Bitter cold, this shop of yours."

"Warmer than Doomsdale, eh?" replied the bookseller with a grin as he busied himself dusting his shelves.

The other chuckled. He took a stick that lay on the hearth and broke the fire into a sharp blaze. The exercise was an agreeable one. It was accompanied by agreeable reflections, too.