Through the Fray: A Tale of the Luddite Riots by G. A. Henty (novel books to read txt) 📕

The night was a wild one. The weather had changed suddenly, and the rain beat fiercely in the faces of the hands as they made their way back from the mill up to Varley. As the night came on the storm increased. The wind as it swept across the moor swirled down into the hollow in which Varley stood, as if it would scoop the houses out of their foundations, and the drops of rain were driven against roof and wall with the force of hailstones.

Bill Swinton was sitting up again with John Stukeley, and as he bent over the sick man's bed and tenderly lifted his head while he held a cup with some cooling drink to his lips, the contrast between his broad, powerful figure, and his face, marked with the characteristics alike of good temper, kindness, and a resolute will, and the thin, emaciated invalid was very striking. Stukeley's face was without a vestige of color; his eyes were hollow and surrounded by dark circles; his cheeks were of an ashen gray pallor, which deepened almost to a lead color round his lips.

“Thou ought'st not to talk so much, John,” Bill was saying. “Thou know'st the doctor said thou must not excite thyself.”

“It makes no difference, Bill, no difference at all, talk or not talk. What does it matter? I am dying, and he knows it, and I know it—so do you. That bit of lead in my body has done its work. Strange, isn't it, that you should be here nursing me when I have thought of shooting you a score of times? A year ago it seemed absurd that Polly Powlett should like a boy like you better than a man like me, and yet I was sure it was because of you she would have nothing to say to me; but she was right, you will make the best husband of the two. I suppose it's because of that I sent for you. I was very fond of Polly, Bill, and when I felt that I was going, and there wasn't any use my being jealous any longer, I seemed to turn to you. I knew you would come, for you have been always ready to do a kindness to a chap who was down. You are different to the other lads here. I do believe you are fond of reading. Whenever you think I am asleep you take up your book.”

“Oi am trying to improve myself,” Bill said quietly. “Maister Sankey put me in the roight way. He gives me an hour, and sometimes two, every evening. He has been wonderful kind to me, he has; there ain't nothing oi wouldn't do for him.”

The sick man moved uneasily.

“No more wouldn't Luke and Polly,” Bill went on. “His father gived his loife, you know, for little Jenny. No, there ain't nowt we wouldn't do for him,” he continued, glad to turn the subject from that of Stukeley's affection for Polly. “He be one of the best of maisters. Oi would give my life's blood if so be as oi could clear him of that business of Mulready's.”

For a minute or two not a word was said. The wind roared round the building, and in the intervals of the gusts the high clock in the corner of the room ticked steadily and solemnly as if distinctly intimating that its movements were not to be hurried by the commotion without.

Stukeley had closed his eyes, and Bill began to hope that he was going to doze off, when he asked suddenly; “Bill, do you know who sent that letter that was read at the trial—I mean the one from the chap as said he done it, and was ready to give himself up if the boy was found guilty?”

Bill did not answer.

“You can tell me, if you know,” Stukeley said impatiently. “You don't suppose as I am going to tell now! Maybe I shan't see any one to tell this side of the grave, for I doubt as I shall see the morning. Who wrote it?”

“I wrote it,” Bill said; “but it warn't me as was coming forward, it war Luke's idee fust. He made up his moind as to own up as it was he as did it and to be hung for it to save Maister Ned, acause the captain lost his loife for little Jenny.”

“But he didn't do it,” Stukeley said sharply.

“No, he didn't do it,” Bill replied.

There was a silence again for a long time; then Stukeley opened his eyes suddenly.