Freaks on the Fells by Robert Michael Ballantyne (best books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📕

She was groaning woefully. Jack went forward with much anxiety. The old woman was too ill to raise herself; but she had sufficient strength to grasp the child's hand, and, drawing him towards her, to stroke his head.

"Hallo! Moggy, you're ill!"

A groan and a gasp was the reply, and the poor creature made such wry faces, and looked altogether so cadaverous, that Jacky was quite alarmed. He suggested a drink of water, and brought her one. Then, as the old woman poured out a copious stream of Gaelic with much emphasis, he felt that the presence of some more able and intelligent nurse was necessary; so, like a sensible boy, he ran home and delivered his report, as has been already described.

Lucy and Fred hastened at once to the hut of the old woman, and found her in truth in a high fever, the result, no doubt, of the severe wetting of the day before, and having slept in damp clothes. Her mind was wandering a little when Lucy knelt at her side and took her hand, but she retained sufficient self-control to look up and exclaim earnestly, "I can say'd noo--I can say'd noo! I can say, _Thy will be done_!"

She became aware, as she said so, that the visitor at her side was not the one she had expected.

"Eh! ye're no' Miss Flora."

"No, dear granny, but I am quite as anxious to help you, and Flora will come very soon. We have only just heard of your illness, and have sent a message to Flora. Come, tell me what is the matter; let me put your poor head right."

Old Moggy submitted with a groan, and Lucy, assisted by Fred, endeavoured to make her bed a little more comfortable, while the anxious and staring Jacky was sent back to the house for some tea and a dry flannel gown. Before his return, however, Flora Macdonald, who chanced to be in the neighbourhood, came in to see Moggy, and immediately took the case in hand, in a way that greatly relieved Fred and Lucy, because they felt that she was accustomed to such incidents, and thoroughly understood what to do.

Hobbs, who came in a few minutes later with the Sudberry medicine chest, was instantly despatched by Flora for the doctor, and George, who entered a few minutes after that, was sent about his business, as were also a number of gossips, whose presence would ere long have rendered the small hut unbearably warm, but for Flora's decision.

Meanwhile all this unusual bustle had the effect of diverting the mind of the patient, who ceased to groan, and took to wandering instead.

Leaving them all thus engaged, we must beg the reader to accompany us to a very different scene.

It is a dense thicket within the entrance of the pass, to which reference has been made more than once. Here a band of wandering beggars or gypsies had pitched their camp on a spot which commanded an extensive view of the high-road, yet was itself concealed from view by the dwarf-trees which in that place covered the rugged hill-side.

There was a rude hut constructed of boughs and ferns, underneath which several dark-skinned and sturdy children were at play. A dissipated-looking young woman sat beside them. In front of this hut a small fire was kindled, and over it, from a tripod, hung an iron pot, the contents of which were watched with much interest, and stirred from time to time by a middle-aged woman of forbidding aspect. Beside her stood our amiable friend with the squint and the broken nose, who has already been mentioned as having received a merited thrashing from Mr Sudberry.

"Yes, the little brute has come back," said the gypsy, grinding his teeth in a way that might have led one to suppose he would have been glad to have had the "little brute" between them.

"Serves ye right for stealin' him away!" said the woman.

"Serves me right!" echoed the man, bitterly. "Did I not vow that I would have my revenge on that old witch? Did she not stand up in court and witness again' me, so that I got two year for a job that many a fellow gits off with six months for?"

"Well, you know you deserved it!" was the woman's comforting rejoinder. "You committed the robbery."

"So I did; but if that she-wolf had not made it out so bad, I'd have got off with six months. Ha! but I knew how to touch her up. I knew her weakness! swore, afore I left the dock, that I'd steal away the little cub she was so fond of--and _I did it_!"

There was a gleam of triumph in the gypsy's face as he said this, but it was quickly followed by a scowl when the woman said--

"Well, and much you have made of it. Here is the brat come back at the end o' five years, to spoil our harvest!"

"How could I know he'd do that? I paid the captain a goodish lump o' tin to take him on a long voyage, and I thought he was so young that he'd forget the old place."

"How d'ye know that he hasn't forgot it?" inquired the woman.

"'Cause, I seed him not twenty miles from this, and heerd him say he'd stop at the Blue Boar all night, and come on here in the morning--that's to-morrow--so I come straight out to ask you wot I'm to do."

"Ha! that's like you. Too chicken-hearted to do any thing till I set you on, an' mean enough to saddle it on me when ye'r nabbed."

"Come, that's an old story!" growled the man. "You know wot _I_ am, and I knows wot _you_ are. But if something's not done, we'll have to cut this here part o' the country in the very thick o' the season, when these southern sightseers are ranging about the hills."

"That's true!" rejoined the woman, seriously. "Many a penny the bairns get from them, an there's no part so good as this. Ye couldn't _put him out o' the way_, could ye?"

"No," said the man, doggedly.

The woman had accompanied her question with a sidelong glance of fiendish meaning, but her eyes at once dropped, and she evinced no anger at the sharp decision of her companion's reply.

"Mother!" cried the young woman, issuing from the hut at the moment, "don't you dare to go an' tempt him again like that. Our hands are black enough already; don't you try to make them _red_, else I'll blab!"

The elder woman assumed an injured look as she said, "Who spoke of makin' them red? Evil dreaders are evil doers. Is there no way o' puttin' a chick out o' the way besides murderin' him?"

"Hush!" exclaimed the man, starting and glancing round with a guilty look, as if he fancied the bare mention of the word "murder" would bring the strong arm of the law down on his head.

"I won't hush!" cried the woman. "You're cowards, both of you. Are there no corries in the hills to hide him in--no ropes to tie him with-- that you should find it so difficult to keep a brat quiet for a week or two?"

A gleam of intelligence shot across the ill-favoured face of the gypsy.

"Ha! you're a wise woman. Come, out with your plan, and see if I'm not game to do it."

"There's no plan worth speakin' of," rejoined the woman, somewhat mollified by her companion's complimentary remarks. "All you've to do is to go down the road to-morrow, catch him, and bring him to me. I'll see to it that he don't make his voice heard until we've done with this part of the country. Then we can slip the knot, and let the brat go free."

"I'll do it!" said the man, sitting down on a stone and beginning to fill his pipe.

"I thought he was dead!" said the woman.

"So did I; but he's not dead yet, an' don't look as if he'd die soon."

"Maybe," said the woman, "he won't remember ye. It's full five year now sin' he was took away."

"Won't he?" retorted the man, with an angry look, which did not tend to improve his disagreeable visage. "Hah! I heerd him say he'd know me if he saw me in a crowd o' ten thousand. I would ha' throttled the cub then and there, but the place was too public."

A short silence ensued, during which the gypsies ate their food with the zest of half-starved wolves.

"You'd better go down and see old Moggy," suggested the woman, when the man had finished his repast and resumed his pipe. "If the brat escapes you to-morrow, it may be as well to let the old jade know that you'll murder both him and her, if he dares to blab."

The man shook his head. "No use!" said he. But the woman repeated her advice in a tone that was equivalent to a command, so the man rose up sulkily and went.

He was not a little surprised, on drawing near to the hut, to find it in a state of bustle, and apparently in possession of the Sudberrys. Not daring to show himself; he slunk back to his encampment, and informed his female companion of what he had seen.

"All the more reason to make sure work of him on the road to-morrow!" said she, with a dark frown.

"So I mean to!" replied the man doggedly. With these amiable sentiments and intentions animating their breasts, this pair crept into their booth and went to rest in the bosom of their family.


STORY ONE, CHAPTER 20.


MYSTERIOUS MATTERS--A HAPPY RETURN, ETCETERA.

The morning which followed the events narrated in the last chapter broke with unclouded splendour. It was the second of the four bright days which relieved the monotony of those six dreary weeks of rain.

Rejoicing in the glorious aspect of earth and sky, and in the fresh scents which the rain had called forth from every shrub and flower on the mountains, Mr Sudberry dashed about the White House--in and out-- awaiting the assembling of the family to breakfast with great impatience. His coat-tails that morning proved the means of annihilating the sugar-basin--the last of the set which had graced the board on his arrival in the Highlands, and which had been left, for some time past, "blooming alone," all its former companions having been shattered and gone long ago.

According to custom, Mr Sudberry went forward to the barometrical banjo, intending to tap it--not that he expected correct information _now_. No; he had found out its falsehood, and was prepared to smile at anything it should say. He opened his eyes, however, and exclaimed "Hallo!" with unwonted energy, on observing that, as if in sheer defiance of the weather, of truth, and of public opinion, its index aimed point-blank at "stormy!"

He speedily discovered that this tremendous falsehood was the result of a careful intestine examination, to which the instrument had been privately subjected by Master Jacky the evening before; in the course of which examination the curious boy, standing below the barometer, did, after much trouble, manage to cut the bulb which held