Here Mr. Mortimer, warm to his work, let out a laugh so blood-curdling that Old Jubilee bolted the length of his rope.
"The boat!" gasped the woman.
"Eh?"
Mr. Mortimer turned and saw the boat glide by the bank like a shadow; heard the thud of Old Jubilee's hoofs, and sprang in pursuit. The woman ran with him.
But the freshest horse cannot bolt far with a 72-feet monkey-boat dragging on his shoulders, and at the end of fifty yards, the towrope holding, Old Jubilee dropped to a jog-trot. The woman caught her breath as Mr. Mortimer jumped aboard and laid hold of the tiller. But still she ran beside panting.
"You won't tell him?"
Mr. Mortimer waved a hand.
"And—and you'll hide 'em—for he's bound to come askin'—you'll hide 'em if you can—"
Mr. Mortimer heard, but could not answer for the moment, the steerage claiming all his attention. When he turned towards the bank she was no longer there. He looked back over his shoulder. She had come to a dead halt and stood watching, her print gown glimmering in the dusk. And so, as the boat rounded the bend by the Brewery, he lost sight of her.
He passed a hand over his brow.
"Mysterious business," he mused; "devilish mysterious. On the face of it looks as if my friend Smiles, not content with self-help in its ordinary forms, has been helping himself to orphans! Must speak to him about it."
He pondered, gazing up the dim waterway, and by-and-by broke into a chuckle.
He chuckled again twenty minutes later, when, having stabled Old Jubilee, he crossed the yard to sup and to season the meal with a relation of his adventure.
"Such an encounter, my poppet!" he announced, groping his way across to the caravan, where his spouse had lit the lamp and stood in the doorway awaiting him. "Smiles—our ingenuous Smiles—has decoyed, has laid me under suspicion; and of what, d'you think? Stealing orphans!"
"Hush!" answered Mrs. Mortimer. "They 're here."
"They? Who? … Not the bailiffs? Arabella, don't tell me it's the bailiffs again!"
Mr. Mortimer drew back as though a snake lay coiled on the caravan steps.
"It's not the bailiffs, Stanislas; it's the orphans."
"But—but, my sweet, there must be some mistake. I—er—actually, of course, I have nothing to do with any orphans whatsoever."
"Oh, yes, you have," his wife assured him composedly. "They are inside here, with a yellow dog."
While Mr. Mortimer yet reeled under this news the door of the courtyard rattled and creaked open in the darkness. A lantern showed in the opening, and the bearer of it, catching sight of the lit caravan, approached with quick, determined strides.
"Can you inform me," asked a high clerical voice, "where I can find Mr.
Christopher Hucks?"
The stranger held his lantern high, so that its ray fell on his face, and with that Mr. Mortimer groaned and collapsed upon the lowest step, where mercifully his wife's ample shadow spread an aegis over him.
"Mr. Hucks, sir?" Mrs. Mortimer answered the challenge. "I saw him, not twenty minutes ago, step into his private office there to the left, and by the light in the window he's there yet."
"But who is it?" she asked, as the stranger, swinging his lantern, marched straight up to Mr. Hucks's door.
"Good Lord, it's the man himself—Glasson! And he's come for his orphans."
"He shan't have 'em, then," said Mrs. Mortimer.
CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH MR. HUCKS TAKES A HAND.
"A many-sided man."—COLERIDGE ON SHAKESPEARE.
Let Mr. Christopher Hucks introduce himself in his own customary way, that is, by presenting his card of business:—
———————————————————————————————————— | | | CHRISTOPHER HUCKS | | | | ANCHOR WHARF, CANAL END BASIN, BURSFIELD | | CANAL CARRIER, LIGHTERMAN, FREIGHTER AND WHARFINGER | | BOAT BUILDER, COAL AND GENERAL MERCHANT | | AUCTIONEER, PRACTICAL VALUER, HOUSE AND ESTATE AGENT | | | |——————— | | | | FIRE, LIFE, ACCIDENT AND PLATE GLASS INSURAMCES EFFECTED | | FIRE AND INCOME TAX CLAIMS PREPARED AND ADJUSTED | | LIVE STOCK INSURED AGAINST DEATH FROM ACCIDENT OR DISEASE | | SERVANTS REGISTRY OFFICE | | | |———————— | | | | AGENT FOR JOHN TAYLOR AND CO.'S PHOSPHATE AND SOLUBLE BONE | | MANURES | | COPPERAS, CHARCOAL, ETC., FOR SEWAGE AND OTHER PURPOSES | | ACIDS AND ANILINES FOR THE TEXTILE TRADES | | | |———————— | | | | VALUATIONS FOR PROBATE EMIGRATION AGENT | | PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS NEGOTIATED WITH CREDITORS | | | |———————— | | | | N.B.—ALL KINDS OF RIVER AND CANAL CRAFT BUILT OR REPAIRED, | | PURCHASED, SOLD, OR TO LET. NOTE THE ADDRESS | | |
Mr. Hucks, a widower, would have to be content in death with a shorter epitaph. In life his neighbours and acquaintances knew him as the toughest old sinner in Bursfield; and indeed his office hours (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. nominally—but he was an early riser) allowed him scant leisure to practice the Christian graces. Yet though many had occasion to curse Mr. Hucks, few could bring themselves to hate him. The rogue was so massive, so juicy.
He stood six feet four inches in his office slippers, and measured fifty-two inches in girth of chest. He habitually smoked the strongest shag tobacco, and imbibed cold rum and water at short intervals from morning to night; but these excesses had neither impaired his complexion, which was ruddy, jovial and almost unwrinkled, nor dimmed the delusive twinkle of his eyes. These, under a pair of grey bushy brows, met the world humorously, while they kept watch on it for unconsidered trifles; but never perhaps so humorously as when their owner, having clutched his prey, turned a deaf ear to appeal. For the rest, Mr. Hucks had turned sixty, but without losing his hair, which in colour and habit resembled a badger's; and although he had lived inland all his life, carried about with him in his dress, his gait, his speech an indefinable suggestion of a nautical past. If you tried to fix it, you found yourself narrowed down to explaining it by the blue jersey he wore in lieu of shirt and waistcoat. (He buttoned his braces over it, and tucked its slack inside the waistband of his trousers.) Or, with luck, you might learn that he habitually slept in a hammock, and corroborate this by observing the towzled state of his back hair. But the suggestion was, in fact, far more subtle, pervasive—almost you might call it an aroma.
The Counting House—so he called the single apartment in which he slung his hammock, wrote up his ledgers, interviewed his customers, and in the intervals cooked his meals on an oil-stove—was, in pact, a store of ample dimensions. To speak precisely, it measured thirty-six feet by fourteen. But Mr. Hucks had reduced its habitable space to some eight feet by six, and by the following process.
Over and above the activities mentioned on his
