"Us" Part 19

"I wish it were!" said Tim. "No, that's a place they call Monkhaven, but it's on the road to Sandle'ham. Did you never hear tell of Monkhaven, master and missy?--think now."

But after "thinking" for half a quarter of the second, the two fair heads gave it up.

"No; us had never heard of Monkhaven. What did it matter? Us would much rather go straight home."

Then Tim had to enter upon an explanation. He did not know the nearest way to Sandle'ham, and they might wander about the country, losing their way. They had very little money, and it most likely was too far to walk.

He was afraid to ask unless sure it was of some one he could trust; for Mick might have sent word to some one at Monkhaven about them. Then after Sandle'ham, which way were they to go? There was but one thing to do--ask the police. The police would take care of them and set them on the way.

But oh, poor Tim! Little did he know the effect of that fatal word, and yet he had far more reason to dread the police than the twins could have. More than once he had only just escaped falling into its clutches, and all through his vagrant life he had of course come to regard its officers as his natural enemies. But he had put all that aside, and, strong in his good cause, was ready now to turn to them as the children's protectors. Duke and Pamela, on the contrary, who had no real reason for being afraid of the police, were in frantic terror; their poor little imaginations set to work and pictured "prison" as where they were sure to be sent to. They would rather go back to the gipsies, they would rather wander about the fields with Tim till they died--rather _anything_ than go near the police. And they cried and sobbed and hung upon Tim in their panic of terror, till the poor boy was fairly at his wit's end, and had to give in so far as to promise to say no more about it at present. So they spent the early hours of the beautiful spring morning in a copse outside the little town, where they were quite happy, and ate the provisions Peter's wife had put up for them with a good appet.i.te, thinking no more of the future than the birds in the bushes; while poor Tim was grudging every moment of what he felt to be lost time, and wondering where they were to get their next meal or find shelter for the night!

It ended at last in a compromise. Tim received gracious permission himself to go to the police to ask the way, provided he left "us" in the wood--"us" promising to be very good, not to stray out of a certain distance, to speak to no possible pa.s.sers-by, and to hide among the brushwood if any suspicious-looking people came near.

And, far more anxious at heart than if he could have persuaded them to come with him, but still with no real misgiving but that in half an hour he would be back with full directions for the rest of their journey, Tim set off at a run in quest of the police office of Monkhaven. He was soon in the main street of the town, which after all was more like a big village--except at the end where lay the ca.n.a.l wharf, which was dirty and crowded and bustling--and had no difficulty in finding the house he was in search of. On the walls outside were pasted up posters of different sizes and importance--notices of new regulations, and "rewards" for various losses--but Tim, taking no notice of any of these, hastened to knock at the door, and eagerly, though not without some fear, stood waiting leave to enter.

Two or three policemen were standing or sitting about talking to each other. Tim's first knock was not heard, but a second brought one to the door.

"Please, sir," said the boy without waiting to be asked what he wanted, "could you tell me the nearest way to Sandle'ham? I'm on my way there--leastways to some place near-by there--there's two childer with me, sir, as has got strayed away from their home, and----"

"What's that he's saying?" said another man coming forward--he was the head officer evidently--"Tell us that again,"--"Just make him come inside, Simpkins, and just as well shut to the door," he added in a low voice. Tim came forward unsuspiciously. "Well, what's that you were saying?" he went on to Tim.

"It's two childer, sir," repeated Tim--"two small childer as has got strayed away from their home--you may have heard of it?--and I'm a-taking them back, only I'm not rightly sure of the way, and I thought--I thought, as it was the best to ax you, seeing as you've maybe heard----" but here Tim's voice, which had been faltering somewhat, so keen and hard was the look directed upon him, came altogether to an end; and he grew so red and looked so uneasy that perhaps it was no wonder if Superintendent Boyds thought him a suspicious character.

"Ah indeed!--just so--you thought maybe we'd heard something of some children as had _strayed_--_strayed_; not been decoyed away--oh not at all--away from their home. And of course, young man, _you'd_ heard nothing. You, nor those that sent you, didn't know nothing of this here, I suppose?" and Boyds unfolded a yellow paper lying on the table and held it up before Tim's face. "This here is new to you, no doubt?"

Tim shook his head. The yellow paper with big black letters told him nothing. Even the big figures, "20 Reward," standing alone at the top, had no meaning for him. "I can't read, sir," he said, growing redder than before.

"Oh indeed! and who was it then that told you to come here about the children to ask the way, so that you could take them home, you know, and get the reward all nice and handy? You thought maybe you'd get it straight away, and that we'd send 'em home for you--was that what father or mother thought?"

Tim looked up, completely puzzled.

"I don't know anything about a reward," he said, "and I haven't no father or mother. Di----" but here he stopped short. "Diana told me to come to you," he was going to have said, when it suddenly struck him that the gipsy girl had bid him beware of mentioning any names.

"Who?" said the superintendent sharply.

"I can't say," said Tim. "It was a friend o' mine--that's all I can say--as told me to come here."

"A friend, eh? I'm thinking we'll have to know some more about some of your friends before we're done with you. And where is these same children, then? You can tell us that anyway!"

"No," said Tim, beginning to take fright, "I can't. They'd be afeared--dreadful--if they saw one o' your kind. I'll find my own way to Sandle'ham if you can't tell it me," and he turned to go.

But the policeman called Simpkins, at a sign from his superior, caught hold of him.

"Not so fast, young man, not so fast," said Boyds. "You'll have to tell us where these there children are afore you're off."

"I can't--indeed I can't--they'd be so frightened," said Tim. "Let me go, and I'll try to get them to come back here with me--oh do let me go!"

But Simpkins only held him the faster.

"Shut him up in there for a bit," said Boyds, pointing to a small inner room opening into the one where they were,--"shut him in there till he thinks better of it," and Simpkins was preparing to do so when Tim turned to make a last appeal. "Don't lock me up whatever you do," he said, clasping his hands in entreaty; "they'll die of fright if they're left alone. I'd rather you'd go with me nor leave them alone. Yes, I'll show you where they are if you'll let me run on first so as they won't be so frightened."

Simpkins glanced at Boyds--he was a kinder man than the superintendent and really sharper, though much less conceited. He was half inclined to believe in Tim.

"What do you say to that?" he asked.

But Boyds shook his head.

"There's some trick in it. Let him run on first--I daresay! The children's safe enough with those as sent him here to find out. No, no; lock him up, and I'll step round to Mr. Bartlemore's,"--Mr. Bartlemore was the nearest magistrate,--"and see what he thinks about it all. It'll not take me long, and it'll show this young man here we're in earnest.

Lock him up."

Simpkins pushed Tim, though not roughly, into the little room, and turned the key on him. The boy no longer made any resistance or appeal.

Mr. Boyds put on his hat and went out, and the police office returned to its former state of sleepy quiet so far as appearances went. But behind the locked door a poor ragged boy was sobbing his eyes out, twisting and writhing himself about in real agony of mind.

"Oh, my master and missy, why did I leave you? What will they be doing?

Oh they was right and I was wrong! The perlice is a bad, wicked, unbelieving lot--oh my, oh my!--if onst I was but out o' here----" but he stopped suddenly. The words he had said without thinking seemed to say themselves over again to him as if some one else had addressed them to him.

"Out o' here," why shouldn't he get out of here? And Tim looked round him curiously. There was a small window and it was high up. There was no furniture but the bench on which he was sitting. But Tim was the son of a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for so long. He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have thought scarcely wide enough for his arm. His sobs ceased, his face lighted up again; he drew out of his pocket his one dearest treasure, from which night or day he was never separated, his pocket-knife, and, propping the bench lengthways slanting against the wall like a ladder, he managed to fix it pretty securely by scooping out a little hollow in the roughly-boarded floor, so as to catch the end of the bench and prevent its slipping down. And just as Superintendent Boyds was stepping into Squire Bartlemore's study to wait for that gentleman's appearance, a pair of bright eyes in a round sunburnt face might have been seen spying the land from the small window high up in the wall of the lock-up room of the police office. Spying it to good purpose, as will soon be seen, though in the meantime I think it will be well to return to Duke and Pamela all alone in the copse.

Tim had not been gone five minutes before they began to wonder when he would be back again. They sat quite still, however, for perhaps a quarter of an hour, for they were just a little frightened at finding themselves really alone. If Tim had turned back again I don't think he would have had much difficulty in persuading them to go with him, even to the dreadful police! But Tim never thought of turning back; he had too thoroughly taken the little people at their word.

After a while they grew so tired of waiting quietly that they jumped up and began to run about. Once or twice they were scared by the sounds of footsteps or voices at a little distance, but n.o.body came actually through the copse, and they soon grew more a.s.sured, and left off speaking in whispers and peeping timidly over their shoulders. At last, "Sister," said Duke, "don't you think us might go just a teeny weeny bit out of the wood, to watch if us can't see Tim coming down the road? I know which side he went."

"Us promised to stay here, didn't us?" replied Pamela.

"Yes; but us _would_ be staying here," said Duke insinuatingly. "It's just to peep, you know, to see if Tim's coming. He'd be very glad, for p'raps he'll not be quite sure where to find us again, and if us goes a little way along the road he'd see us quicker, and if us can't see him us can come back here again."

"Very well," said Pamela, and, hand in hand, the two made their way out of the shelter of the trees and trotted half timidly a little way along the road. It felt fresh and bright after the shady wood; some way before them they saw rows of houses, and already they had pa.s.sed cottages standing separately in their gardens and a little to the right was a church with a high steeple. Had they gone straight on they would soon have found themselves in Monkhaven High Street, where, at this moment, Tim was shut up in the police office. But after wandering on a little way they got frightened, for no Tim was to be seen, and they stood still and looked at each other.

"P'raps this isn't the way he went after all," said Pamela. They had already pa.s.sed a road to the left, which also led into the town, though less directly.

"He _might_ have gone that way," said Duke, pointing back to this other road; "let's go a little way along there and look."

Pamela made no objection. The side road turned out more attractive, for a little way from the corner stood a pretty white house in a really lovely garden. It reminded them of their own home, and they stood at the gates peeping in, admiring the flower-beds and the nicely-kept lawn and smooth gravel paths, for the moment forgetting all about where they were and what had become of their only protector.

Suddenly, however, they were rudely brought back to the present and to the fears of the morning, for from where they were they caught sight of a burly blue-coated figure making his way to the front door from a side gate by which he had entered the garden; for this pretty house was no other than Squire Bartlemore's, and the tall figure was that of Superintendent Boyds. He could not possibly have seen them--they were very tiny, and the bushes as well as the railings hid them from the view of any one not quite close to the gates. But they saw _him_--that was enough, and more than enough.

"He's caught Tim and put him in prison," said Pamela, and in a terror-stricken whisper, "and now he's coming for _us_, bruvver;" and bruvver, quite as frightened as she, did not attempt to rea.s.sure her.

Too terrified to see that the policeman was not coming their way at all, but was quietly striding on towards the house, they caught each other again by the hand and turned to fly. And fly they did--one could scarcely have believed such tiny creatures could run so fast and so far.

They did not look which way they went--only that it was in the other direction from whence they had come. They ran and ran--then stopped to take breath and glance timidly behind them, and without speaking ran on again--till they had left quite half a mile between them and the pretty garden, and ventured at last to stand still and look about them. They were in a narrow lane--high hedges shut it in at each side--they could see very little way before or behind. But though they listened anxiously, no sound but the twittering of the birds in the trees, and the faint murmur of a little brook on the other side of hedge, was to be heard.

"He can't be running after us, I don't fink," said Pamela, drawing a deep breath.

"No," said Duke, but then he looked round disconsolately. "What can us do?" he said. "Tim will never know to find us here."

"Tim is in prison," said Pamela, "It's no use us going back to meet him.

I know he's in prison."

"Then what can us do?" repeated Duke.

"Us must go home and ask Grandpapa to get poor Tim out of prison," said Pamela.