hides away the rope in his trunk, and begins to unbutton his mud-stained gaiters. The little boy cries out in a feeble voice for his medicine.
The usher pours a tablespoonful of the mixture into a wine-glass with a steady hand, and carries it to the bedside.
The boy is about to take it from him, when he utters a sudden cry.
“What’s the matter?” asks Jabez, angrily.
“Your hand!—your hand! What’s that upon your hand?”
A dark stain scarcely dry—a dark stain, at the sight of which the boy trembles from head to foot.
“Nothing, nothing!” answers the tutor. “Take your medicine, and go to sleep.”
No, the boy cries hysterically, he won’t take his medicine; he will never take anything again from that dreadful hand. “I know what that horrid stain is. What have you been doing? Why did you climb out of the window with a rope? It wasn’t to make a swing; it must have been for something dreadful! Why did you stay away three hours in the middle of the night? I counted the hours by the church clocks. Why have you got those strange clothes on? What does it all mean? I’ll ask the Doctor to take me out of this room! I’ll go to him this moment, for I’m afraid of you.”
The boy tries to get out of bed as he speaks; but the usher holds him down with one powerful hand, which he places upon the boy’s mouth, at the same time keeping him from stirring and preventing him from crying out.
With his free right hand he searches among the bottles on the table by the bedside.
He throws the medicine out of the glass, and pours from another bottle a few spoonfuls of a dark liquid labelled, “Opium—Poison!”
“Now, sir, take your medicine, or I’ll report you to the principal to-morrow morning.”
The boy tries to remonstrate, but in vain; the powerful hand throws back his head, and Jabez pours the liquid down his throat.
For a little time the boy, quite delirious now, goes on talking of the summer rambles and the Christmas games, and then falls into a deep slumber.
Then Jabez North sets to work to wash his hands. A curious young man, with curious fashions for doing things—above all, a curious fashion of washing his hands.
He washes them very carefully in a small quantity of water, and when they are quite clean, and the water has become a dark and ghastly colour, he drinks it, and doesn’t make even one wry face at the horrible draught.
“Well, well,” he mutters, “if nothing is gained by to-night’s work, I have at least tried my strength, and I now know what I’m made of.”
Very strange stuff he must have been made of—very strange and perhaps not very good stuff, to be able to look at the bed on which the innocent and helpless boy lay in a deep slumber, and say,—
“At any rate, he will tell no tales.”
No! he will tell no tales, nor ever talk again of summer rambles, or of Christmas holidays, or of his dead sister’s pretty words. Perhaps he will join that wept-for little sister in a better world, where there are no such good young men as Jabez North.
That worthy gentleman goes down aghast, with a white face, next morning, to tell Dr. Tappenden that his poor little charge is dead, and that perhaps he had better break the news to Allecompain Major, who is sick after that supper, which, in his boyish thoughtlessness, and his certainty of his little brother’s recovery, he had given last night.
“Do, yes, by all means, break the sad news to the poor boy; for I know, North, you’ll do it tenderly.”
Chapter IV
Richard Marwood Lights His Pipe
Daredevil Dick hears the alarum at five o’clock, and leaves his couch very cautiously. He would like, before he leaves the house, to go to his mother’s door, if it were only to breathe a prayer upon the threshold. He would like to go to his uncle’s bedside, to give one farewell look at the kind face; but he has promised to be very cautious, and to awaken no one; so he steals quietly out through the drawing-room window—the same window by which he entered so strangely the preceding evening—into the chill morning, dark as night yet. He pauses in the little garden-walk for a minute while he lights his pipe, and looks up at the shrouded windows of the familiar house. “God bless her!” he mutters; “and God reward that good old man, for giving a scamp like me the chance of redeeming his honour!”
There is a thick fog, but no rain. Daredevil Dick knows his way so well, that neither fog nor darkness are any hindrance to him, and he trudges on with a cheery step, and his pipe in his mouth, towards the Slopperton railway station. The station is half an hour’s walk out of the town, and when he reaches it the clocks are striking six. Learning that the train will not start for half an hour, he walks up and down the platform, looking, with his handsome face and shabby dress, rather conspicuous. Two or three trains for different destinations start while he is waiting on the platform, and several people stare at him, as he strides up and down, his hands in his pockets, and his weather-beaten hat slouched over his eyes—(for he does not want to be known by any Slopperton people yet awhile, till his position is better)—and when one man, with whom he had been intimate before he left the town, seemed to recognize him, and approached as if to speak to him, Richard turned abruptly on his heel and crossed to the other side of the station.
If he had known that such a little incident as that could have a dark and dreadful influence on his life, surely he would have thought himself foredoomed and set apart for a cruel destiny.
He strolled into the refreshment-room, took a cup of coffee, changed a sovereign in paying for his ticket, bought a newspaper, seated himself in a second-class carriage, and in a few minutes was out of Slopperton.
There was only one other passenger in the carriage—a commercial traveller; and Richard and he smoked their pipes in defiance of the guards at the stations they passed. When did ever Daredevil Dick quail before any authorities? He had faced all Bow Street, chaffed Marlborough Street out of countenance, and had kept the station-house awake all night singing, “We won’t go home till morning.”
It is rather a dull journey at the best of times from Slopperton to Gardenford, and on this dark foggy November morning, of course, duller than usual. It was still dark at half-past six. The station was lighted with gas, and there was a little lamp in the railway carriage, but for which the two travellers would not have seen each other’s faces. Richard looked out of the window for a few minutes, got up a little conversation with his fellow traveller, which soon flagged (for the young man was rather out of spirits at leaving his mother directly after their reconciliation), and then, being sadly at a loss to amuse himself, took out his uncle’s letter to the Gardenford merchant, and looked at the superscription. The letter was not sealed, but he did not take it from the envelope. “If he said any good of me, it’s a great deal more than I deserve,” said Richard to himself; “but I’m young yet, and there’s plenty of time to redeem the past.”
Time to redeem the past! O poor Richard!
He twisted the letter about in his hands, lighted another pipe, and smoked till the train arrived at the
