CHAPTER III
THE MAN ON THE MOUND
It was very awesome sitting there by the firelight in the lonely barn,
hearing the strange moan of the snow-wind. When Mrs Cottier finished
her story we talked of all sorts of things; I think that we were both
a little afraid of being silent in such a place, so, as we ate, we
kept talking just as though we were by the fireside at home. I was
afraid that perhaps the revenue officers would catch us there and
force us to tell all we knew, and I was dreadfully frightened when I
remembered the captain in the bee-skep who had shaken my throat and
given me such a warning to be silent. When we had finished our supper,
I told Mrs Cottier that perhaps we could harness old Greylegs to the
trap, but this she thought would never do, as the drifts on the road
made it such bad going; at last I persuaded her to mount old Greylegs
and to ride astride like a boy, or like so many of the countrywomen in
our parts. When she had mounted I took the old pony by the head and
led him out, carrying the lantern in my hand.
When we got outside we found, to our great surprise, that the sky had
cleared--it was a night of stars now that the wind had changed. By the
"blink" of the snow our road was quite plain to us, and the sharp
touch of frost in the air (which we felt all the more after our
bonfire in the barn) had already made the snow crisp underfoot. It was
pleasant to be travelling like that so late at night with Mrs Cottier;
I felt like a knight who had just rescued a princess from a dragon; we
talked together as we had never talked before. Whenever we climbed a
bad combe she dismounted, and we walked together hand in hand like
dear friends. Once or twice in the quiet I thought I heard the noise
of the excisemen's horses, and then my heart thumped in my throat;
then, when I knew myself mistaken, I felt only the delight of being of
service to this dear woman who walked by me so merrily.
When we came to the foot of the combe, to the bridge over the
trout-stream, she stopped for a moment. "Jim," she said, drawing me to
her, "I shall never forget to-night, nor the little friend who rode
out to help me; I want you, after this, always to look on me as your
mother--I knew your mother a little, years ago. Well, dear, try to
think of me as you would of her, and be a brother to my Hugh, Jim: let
us all three be one family." She stooped down and kissed my cheek and
lips.
"I will, Mrs Cottier," I said; "I'll always be a brother to Hugh." I
was too deeply moved to say much more, for I had so long yearned for
some woman like my mother to whom I could go for sympathy and to whom
I could tell everything without the fear of being snubbed or laughed
at. I just said, "Thank you, Mims." I don't know why I called her
"Mims" then, but I did, and afterwards I never called her anything
else; that was my secret name for her. She kissed me again and stroked
my cheek with her hand, and we went on again together up the last
steep bit of road to the house. Always, after that, I never thought of
Mrs Cottier without feeling her lips upon my cheek and hearing the
stamp of old Greylegs as he pawed on the snow, eager for the stable
just round the corner.
It was very nice to get round the corner and to see the lights of the
house a little way in front of us; in a minute or two we were
there. Mrs Cottier had been dragged in to the fire to all sorts of
comforting drinks and exclamations, and old Greylegs was snug in his
stable having his coat rubbed down before going to sleep under his
rug. We were all glad to get to bed that night: Hugh and my aunt were
tired with anxiety, and Mrs Cottier and I had had enough adventure to
make us very thankful for rest.
Before we parted for the night she drew me to one side and told me
that she had not mentioned the night-riders to my uncle and aunt while
I was busy in the stable, and that it might be safer if I, too, kept
quiet about them. I do not know how she explained the absence of
Nigger, but I am sure they were all too thankful to have her safely
home again to bother much about the details of her drive.
Hugh and I always slept in soldier's cot-beds in a little room looking
out over the lane. During the night we heard voices, and footsteps
moving in the lane beneath us, and our dog (always kennelled at the
back of the house) barked a good deal. Hugh and I crept from our bed
and peered through the window, but it opened the wrong way; we could
only look down the lane, whereas the noise seemed to come from just
above us, near the stable door; unluckily, the frost had covered the
window with ice-flowers, so that we could not see through the
glass. We were, however, quite certain that there were people with
lights close to our stable door; we thought at first that we had
better call Mrs Cottier, and then it flashed through my mind that
these were the night-riders, come to return Nigger, so I told Hugh to
go back to bed and forget about it. I waited at the window for a few
moments, wondering if the men would pass the house; I felt a horrible
longing to see those huge and ghastly things in skirts and bee-skeps
striding across the snow, going home from their night's prowl like
skulking foxes; but whoever they were they took no risks. Some one
softly whistled a scrap of a tune ("Tom, Tom, the piper's son") as
though he were pleased at having finished a good piece of work, and
then I heard footsteps going over the gap in the hedge and the
crackling of twigs in the little wood on the other side of the lane. I
went back to bed and slept like a top until nearly breakfast time.
I went out to the stable as soon as I was dressed, to find Joe
Barnicoat, our man, busy at his morning's work; he had already swept
away the snow from the doors of the house and stable, so that I could
not see what footmarks had been made there since I went to fetch
Greylegs at eight the night before. Joe was in a great state of
excitement, for during the night the stable had been broken open. I
had left it locked up, as it always was locked, after I had made
Greylegs comfortable. When Joe came there at about half-past seven, he
had found the broken padlock lying in the snow and the door-staple
secured by a wooden peg cut from an ash in the hedge. As I expected,
Nigger was in his stall, but the poor horse was dead lame from a cut
in the fetlock: Joe said he must have been kicked there. I was
surprised to find that the trap also had come home--there it was in
its place with the snow still unmelted on its wheels. I helped Joe to
dress poor Nigger's leg, saying that it was a pity we had not noticed
it before. Joe was grumbling about "some people not having enough
sense to know when a horse was lame," so I let him grumble.
When we had dressed the wound, I turned to the trap to lift out Mrs
Cottier's parcels, which I carried indoors. Breakfast was ready on the
table, and Mrs Cottier and Hugh were toasting some bread at the
fire. My aunt was, of course, breakfasting upstairs with my uncle; he
was hardly able to stir with sciatica, poor man; he needed somebody to
feed him.
"Good morning, Mims dear," I cried. "What do you think? The trap's
come back and here are all your parcels." I noticed then (I had not
noticed it before) that one of the parcels was very curiously
wrapped. It was wrapped in an old sack, probably one of those which
filled the windows of the barn, for bits of straw still stuck in the
threads.
"Whatever have you got there, Jim?" said Mrs Cottier.
"One of your parcels," I answered; "I've just taken it out of the
trap."
"Let me see it," she said. "There must be some mistake. That's not one
of mine." She took the parcel from me and turned it over before
opening it.
On turning the package over, we saw that some one had twisted a piece
of dirty grey paper (evidently wrapping-paper from the grocer's shop)
about the rope yarn which kept the roll secure. Mrs Cottier noticed it
first. "Oh," she cried, "there's a letter, too. I wonder if it's meant
for me?"
We untied the rope yarn and the paper fell upon the table; we opened
it out, wondering what message could be written on it. It was a part
of a grocer's sugar bag, written upon in the coarse black crayon used
by the tallymen on the quays at Kingsbridge. The writing was
disguised, so as to give no clue to the writer; the letters were
badly-formed printer's capitals; the words were ill-spelled, and the
whole had probably been written in a hurry, perhaps by the light of
our fire in the barn.
"Hors is laimd," said the curious letter. "Regret inconvenuns axept
Respect from obt servt Captin Sharp."
"Very sweet and to the point," said Mrs Cottier. "Is Nigger lame,
then?"
"Yes," I answered. "Joe says he has been kicked. You won't be able to
drive him for some time."
"Poor old Nigger," said Mrs Cottier, as she unwrapped the
parcel. "Now, I wonder what 'Respect' Captain Sharp has sent me?"
She unrolled the sacking, and out fell two of those straw cases which
are used to protect wine-bottles. They seemed unusually bulky, so we
tore them open. In one of them there was a roll, covered with a bit of
tarpaulin. It contained a dozen yards of very beautiful Malines
lace. The other case was full of silk neckerchiefs packed very
tightly, eleven altogether; most of them of uncoloured silk, but one
of green and another of blue--worth a lot of money in those days, and
perhaps worth more to-day, now that such fine silk is no longer woven.
"So this is what we get for the loan of Nigger, Jim," said Mrs
Cottier. "We ought, by rights, to give these things to the revenue
officer."
"Yes," I said, "but if we do that, we shall have to say how they came,
and why they came, and then perhaps the exciseman will get a clue, and
we shall have brought the night-riders into trouble."
It was cowardly of me to speak like this; but you must remember that I
had been in "Captain Sharp's" hands the night before, and I was still
terrified by his threat--
"When I know,
Your neck'll go
Like so."
"Well," said Mrs Cottier, looking at me rather sharply, "we will keep
the things, and say nothing about them: but we must find out what duty
should be paid on them, and send it to the exciseman at
Dartmouth. That will spare our consciences."
After breakfast, Mrs Cottier went to give orders to the servant, while
Hugh and I slipped down the lane to see how the snow had drifted in
our little orchard by the brook. We had read somewhere that the Red
Indians often make themselves snow-houses, or snow-burrows, when the
winter is severe. We were anxious to try our hands at making a
snow-house. We wanted to know whether a house with snow walls could
really be warm, and we pictured to ourselves how strange it would be
to be shut in by walls of snow, with only one little hole for air,
seeing nothing but the white all round us, having no window to look
through. We thought that it would be wonderful to have a snow-house,
especially if snow fell after the roof had been covered in, for then
no one could know if the dweller were at home. One would lie very
still, wrapped up in buffalo robes, while all the time the other
Indians would be prowling about in their war-paint, looking for
you. Or perhaps the Spaniards would be after you with their
bloodhounds, and you would get down under the snow in the forest
somewhere, and the snow would fall and fall, covering your tracks,
till nothing could be seen but a little tiny hole, melted by your
breath, through which you got fresh air. Then you would hear the
horses and the armour and the baying of the hounds; but they would
never find you, though their horses' hoofs might almost sink through
the snow to your body.
We went down to the orchard, Hugh and I, determined to build a
snow-house if the drifts were deep enough. We were not going to plunge
into a drift, and make a sort of chamber by wrestling our bodies
about, as the Indians do. We had planned to dig a square chamber in
the biggest drift we could find, and then to roof it over with an old
tarpaulin stretched upon sticks. We were going to cover the tarpaulin
with snow, in the Indian fashion, and we had planned to make a little
narrow passage, like a fox's earth, as the only doorway to the
chamber.
It was a bright, frosty morning: the sun shone, the world sparkled,
the sky was of a dazzling blue, the snow gleamed everywhere. Hoolie,
the dog, was wild with excitement. He ran from drift to drift,
snapping up mouthfuls of snow, and burrowing down sideways till he was
half buried.
There was a flower garden at one end of the orchard, and in the middle
of the garden there was a summer-house. The house was a large, airy
single room (overlooking the stream), with a space beneath it,
half-cave, half-cellar, open to the light, where Joe Barnicoat kept
his gardening tools, with other odds-and-ends, such as bast,
peasticks, sieves, shears, and traps for birds and vermin. Hugh and I
went directly to this lower chamber to get a shovel for our work.
We stood at the entrance for a moment to watch Hoolie playing in the
snow; and as we watched, something caught my eye and made me look up
sharply.
Up above us, on the side of the combe beyond the lane, among a waste
of gorse, in full view of the house (and of the orchard where we
were), there was a mound or barrow, the burial-place of an ancient
British king. It was a beautifully-rounded hill, some twenty-five feet
high. A year or two before I went there it had been opened by the
vicar, who found inside it a narrow stone passage, leading to an inner
chamber, walled with unmortared stone. In the central chamber there
were broken pots, a few bronze spear-heads, very green and brittle,
and a mass of burnt bones. The doctor said that they were the bones of
horses. On the top of all this litter, with his head between his
knees, there sat a huge skeleton. The vicar said that when alive the
man must have been fully six feet six inches tall, and large in
proportion, for the bones were thick and heavy. He had evidently been
a king: he wore a soft gold circlet round his head, and three golden
bangles on his arms. He had been killed in battle. In the side of his
skull just above the circle of gold, there was a great wound, with a
flint axe-blade firmly wedged in the bone. The vicar had often told me
about this skeleton. I remember to this day the shock of horror which
came upon me when I heard of this great dead king, sitting in the dark
among his broken goods, staring out over the valley. The country
people always said that the hill was a fairy hill. They believed that
the pixies went to dance there whenever the moon was full. I never saw
the pixies myself, but somehow I always felt that the hill was
uncanny. I never passed it at night if I could avoid it.
Now, when I looked up, as I stood with Hugh watching the dog, I saw
something flash upon the top of the barrow. In that bright sun, with
all the snow about, many things were sparkling; but this thing gleamed
like lightning, suddenly, and then flashed again. Looking at it
sharply, I saw that there was a man upon the barrow top, apparently
lying down upon the snow. He had something in his hand turned to the
sun, a piece of glass perhaps, or a tin plate, some very bright thing,
which flashed. He flashed it three times quickly, then paused, then
flashed it again. He seemed to be looking intently across the valley
to the top of the combe beyond, to the very place where the road from
Salcombe swings round to the dip. Looking in that direction, I saw the
figure of a man standing on the top of the wall against a stunted
holly-tree at the curve of the road. I had to look intently to see him
at all, for he was in dark clothes, which shaded off unnoticed against
the leaves of the holly. I saw him jump down now and again, and
disappear round the curve of the road as though to look for
something. Then he would run back and flash some bright thing once, as
though in answer to the man on the barrow. It seemed to me very
curious. I nudged Hugh's arm, and slipped into the shelter of the
cave. For a few moments we watched the signaller. Then, suddenly, the
watcher at the road-bend came running back from his little tour up the
road, waving his arms, and flashing his bright plate as he ran. We saw
him spring to his old place on the wall, and jump from his perch into
the ditch. He had some shelter there, for we could see his head
peeping out above the snow like an apple among straw. We were so busy
watching the head among the snow that we did not notice the man upon
the barrow. Something made us glance towards him, and, to our surprise
and terror, we saw him running across the orchard more than half-way
towards us. In spite of the snow he ran swiftly. We were frightened,
for he was evidently coming towards us. He saw that we saw him, and
lifted one arm and swung it downwards violently, as though to bid us
lie down.
I glanced at Hugh and he at me, and that was enough. We turned at
once, horribly scared, and ran as fast as we could along the narrow
garden path, then over the wall, stumbling in our fright, into the
wood. We did not know why we ran nor where we were going. We only felt
that this strange man was after us, coming in great bounds to catch
us. We were too frightened to run well; even had there been no snow
upon the ground we could not have run our best. We were like rabbits
pursued by a stoat, we seemed to have lost all power in our legs.
We had a good start. Perhaps without that fear upon us we might have
reached the house, but as it was we felt as one feels in a nightmare,
unable to run though in an agony of terror. Getting over the wall was
the worst, for there Hugh stumbled badly, and I had to turn and help
him, watching the man bounding ever nearer, signing to us to stay for
him. A minute later, as we slipped and stumbled through the scrub of
the wood, we heard him close behind us, crying to us in a smothered
voice to stop. We ran on, terrified; and then Hugh's foot caught in a
briar, so that he fell headlong with a little cry.
I turned at once to help him up, feeling like the doe rabbit, which
turns (they say) against a weasel, to defend its young ones. It sounds
brave of me, but it was not: I was scared almost out of my wits.
