第58章 A SHOT IN THE NIGHT(1)

IT was only three short weeks before Cup Day that one afternoon Jim Mason brought a letter to Kenmuir. James Moore opened it as the postman still stood in the door.

It was from Long Kirby--still in retirement--begging him for mercy's sake to keep Owd Bob safe within doors at nights; at all events till after the great event was over. For Kirby knew, as did every Dalesman, that the old dog slept in the porch, between the two doors of the house, of which the outer was only loosely closed by a chain, so that the ever-watchful guardian might slip in and out and go his rounds at any moment of the night.

This was how the smith concluded his ill-spelt note: "Look out for M'Adam i tell you i know hel tn at thowd un afore cup day--f aiim im you. if the ole dog's bete i'm a ruined man i say so for the luv o God keep yer eyes wide."The Master read the letter, and handed it to the postman, who perused it carefully.

"I tell yo' what," said Jim at length, speaking with an earnestness that made the other stare, "I wish yo'd do what he asks yo': keep Th' Owd Un in o' nights, I mean, just for the. present.

The Master shook his head and laughed, tearing the letter to pieces.

"Nay," said he; "M'Adam or no M'Adam,, Cup or no Cup, Th' Owd Un has the run o' ma land same as he's had since a puppy. Why, Jim, the first night I shut him up that. night the Killer comes, I'll lay."The postman turned wearily away, and the Master stood looking after him, wondering what had come of late to his former cheery friend.

Those two were not the only warnings James Moore received.

During the weeks immediately preceding the Trials, the danger signal was. perpetually flaunted beneath his nose.

Twice did Watch, the black cross-bred chained in the straw-yard, hurl a brazen challenge on the night air. Twice did the Master,~with lantern, Sam'! and Owd Bob, sally forth and search every hole and corner on the premises--to find nothing. One of the dairy-maids~ gave notice, avowing that the farm was haunted; that, on several occasions in the early morning, she had seen a bogie flitting down the slope to the Wastrel--a sure portent, Sam'l declared, of an approaching death in the house. While once a shearer, coming up from the village, reported having seen, in the twilight of dawn, a little ghostly figure, haggard and startled, stealing silently from tree to tree in the larch-copse by the lane.

The Master, however, irritated by these constant alarms, dismissed the story summarily.

One thing I'm sartino'," said he. "There's not a critter moves on Kenmuir at nights but Th' Owd Un knows it."Yet, even as he said it, a little man, draggled, weary-eyed, smeared with dew and dust, was limping in at the door of a house barely a -mile away. "Nae luck, Wullie, curse it!" he-cried, throwing himself into a chair, and addressing some one who was not there--"nae luck. An' yet I'm sure o't as I am that there's .a God in heaven."M'Adam had become an old man of late. But little more than fifty, yet he looked to have reached man's allotted years. His sparse hair was quite white; his body shrunk and bowed; and his thin hand shook like an aspen as it groped to the familiar bottle.

In another matter, too, he was altogether changed. Formerly, whatever his faults, there had been no harder-working man in the country-side. At all hours, in all weathers, you might have seen him with his gigantic attendant going his rounds. Now all that was different: he never put his hand to the plough, and with none to help him the land was left wholly untended; so that men said that, of a surety, there would be a farm to let on the March Mere Estate come Michaelmas.

Instead of working, the little man sat all day in the kitchen at home, brooding over his wrongs, and brewing vengeance. Even the Sylvester Arms knew him no more; for he stayed where he was with his dog and his. bottle. Only, when the shroud of night had come down to cover him, he slipped out and away on some errand on which not even Red. Wull accompanied him.

So the time glided on, till the Sunday before the Trials came round.

All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering, hatching revenge.

"Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'--slippin'--slippin'!

Thursday next-- but three days mair! and I haena the proof --Ihaena the proof! "--and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in the agony of his impotence.

All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long after dark had eliminated the features of the room.

"They're all agin us, Wuflie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to be beat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. So they've settled it, and so 'twill be--onless, Wullie, onless--but curse it! I've no the proof! "--and he hammered the table before him and stamped on the floor.

At midnight he arose, a mad, desperate plan. looming through his fuddled brain.

"I swore I'd pay him, Wullie, and I will. If I hang for it I'll be even wi' him. I haena the proof, but I know--I know!" He groped his way to the mantel piece wth blind eyes and swirling brain. Reaching up with fumbling hands, he took down the old blunderbuss from above the fireplace.

"Wullie," he whispered, chuckling hideously, "Wullie, come on!

You and I--he! he!" But the Tailless Tyke was not there. At nightfall he had slouched silently out of the house on business he best wot of. So his master crept out of the room alone--on tiptoe, still chuckling.

The cool night air refreshed him, and he stepped stealthily along, his quaint weapon over his shoulder: down the hill; across the Bottom; skirting the Pike; till he reached the plank-bridge over the Wastrel.

He crossed it safely, that Providence whose care is drunkards placing his footsteps. Then he stole up the slope like a hunter stalking his prey.

Arrived at the gate, he raised himself cautiously, and peered over into the moonlit yard. There was no sign or sound of living creature. The little gray house slept peacefully in the shadow of the Pike, all unaware of the man with murder in his heart laboriously climbing the yard-gate.