Chapter VIII

The moon had not risen; the sun had gone down; the sky, which for near a month had been as calm and serene as a good mind, was covered over with long lines of dark grey cloud, heavy, and near the earth; when a solitary horseman took his station under a broad old tree upon the wide waste, called Uppington Moor, and gazed forth as well as the growing darkness would let him. It was a dim and sombre scene, unsatisfactory to the eye, but exciting to the imagination. Everything was vague and undefined in the shadows of that hour, and the long streaks of deeper and fainter brown which varied the surface of the moor, spoke merely of undulations in the ground, marking the great extent of the plain towards the horizon. A tall solitary mournful tree might be seen here and there, adding to the feeling of vastness and solitude; and about the middle of the moor, as one looked towards the west, was a small detached grove, or rather clump of large beeches, presenting a black irregular mass, at the side of which the lingering gleam of the north-western sky was reflected in some silvery lines upon what seemed a considerable piece of water. That was the only light which the landscape contained, and it would have cut harsh with the gloomy and ominous view around, had not a thin mist, rising over the whole, softened the features of the scene, and left them still more indistinct and melancholy.

It was an hour and a place fit for sad thoughts and dark forebodings, and the horseman sat upon his tall powerful gelding in the attitude of one full of meditation. He had suffered the bridle to drop, his head was slightly bent forward, and his eye strained upon the scene before him; while his mind seemed to drink in, from its solemn and cheerless aspect, feelings as dark and dismal as itself. He sat there about a quarter of an hour, and not a sound had been heard upon the moor but the deep sort of sobbing creaking of a neighbouring marsh, or the shrill cry of some bird of night, as it skimmed by with downy and noiseless wings. There was not a breath of air stirring; no change took place in the aspect of the sky or the earth; it was as if nature were dead, and the feeling seemed to become oppressive, for the horseman at length gently touched his beast with his heel, and made him move slowly out from under the branches of the tree.

Scarcely had he done so, however, when the distant sound of a horse's feet was heard, as if coming at a very tardy and heavy pace from the west. The sound, indeed, would not have been perceptible at that distance, but for the excessive stillness of all around, and the eagerness with which the traveller listened. His eye was now bent anxiously, too, upon the western gleam in the water, and in a few minutes the dark figure of another man on horseback was seen against the brighter background thus afforded, riding slowly on, as the road he followed wound round the mere.

It was like a scene in a phantasmagoria, and in a moment after, two more figures were added, and all three suddenly stopped. None of the minute part of their proceedings were visible, and it was impossible, at that distance, to discern how they were occupied; but a moment after, there seemed a sudden degree of agitation in the group, then came a bright flash, followed at a considerable interval by the report of a pistol, and immediately after all three horsemen disappeared.

"What may this mean?" said the stranger, aloud. "I fear there is mischief." The sound of his voice seemed strange in the midst of this solitude, but he had scarcely spoken when the stillness was again broken by the noise of a horse's feet; but this time it came from another direction, not exactly opposite, but much to the right hand of the spot whence the former sounds had proceeded, and the beast was evidently galloping as fast as he could, over turf. It came nearer and nearer, and the watcher went back under the tree.

At length, another powerful cavalier became visible, approaching at full speed; and as he drew nigh he looked round more than once, and pulled up his horse suddenly by the tree. "Are you there?" he asked, in a low voice: and the next moment the other came forth and joined him.

"Quick! quick! master Harry," continued the one who had joined him: "Put your horse into a gallop, and come on with all speed."

"But I told you, Franklin," replied the other, holding back, "I told you that I would have nothing to do with it! What I saw a month ago under the park wall was quite sufficient: and I would have no hand in such a business, were it to put a crown upon my head."

"Foolish boy! the business is done without you to a certain point," replied his companion. "I have served you whether you would or not; and I suppose, of course, you will be ungrateful. Come on with me, and you shall have the key of the chest, which I have ventured my neck to get for you. You have nothing to do but to walk in and take what is your own. But come on quickly! You would not have me taken, I suppose; and I have reason to think I am followed."

Thus saying, he put his horse again into a gallop, and Langford followed at the same pace. Two or three times, as they rode on, Franklin Gray looked back over the moor; but no moving object of any kind was to be seen, except one of those creeping phosphoric lights which linger on the edges of an old marsh; no sound of any kind was to be heard, but the measured beating of their horses' feet upon the hollow-sounding turf.

At length, when they had gone about two miles further, Franklin Gray cheeked his horse's speed, saying, "There is no one following now--yet they made the signal from the hill! Did you not hear a pistol shot just before you came up?"

"Yes," replied Langford; "I heard it distinctly, and saw the flash. Was that a signal that some one was following you?"

"It was," answered Gray. "But how you could see the flash I don't understand, for they were down below the brow of the hill, where one can see both roads to the castle."

"Oh no!" said Langford. "The men who fired that shot were upon the moor close by Upwater Mere; and I very much fear, Gray, that some of these accursed evil companions of yours have been again committing an act that you neither knew of nor desired."

"If they have," exclaimed Gray, with a horrid imprecation, "I will shoot the first of them, were he my own brother."

"How many were there of them on the watch?" demanded Langford. "Two," replied his companion.

"Then I will tell you what I saw," answered Langford. "As I sat on my horse and looked out over the mere, which just caught a gleam from the sky, the figure of a horseman crossed the light, as if he were going to the castle. Just at that minute two more came out upon him--from amongst the beeches, it seemed to me; then came the pistol shot; and a minute after they all disappeared."

Gray gave utterance to another terrible oath; and then, after thinking a few minutes, he added, "But it can't be any of my people! They dared not, after the warning I gave them about that bad business under the park fence."

"At all events," cried Langford, reining up his horse entirely, "had we not better go back and see? I fear very much, Franklin, that they have shot the man, whoever he is."

"No, no," replied Franklin; "if they have shot him, he is shot, and there is no need of our meddling with the matter."

"But he may be merely wounded," replied Langford; "we had better go back."

"No!" thundered Franklin Gray--"I tell you no! It is mere madness! We are but half a mile from the house; when I have got there, we shall learn who has done this, and I will send out and see if there is any one hurt. Come on, come on!"

Langford followed his bidding; and renewing their quick pace, they rode on for about half a mile further, till, amid a clump of tall trees, at the very edge of the moor, where some poor thin unproductive fields connected it with the cultivated country, they perceived a light shining from a small window in a tall building before them.

At that period there still remained scattered over the face of England a number of those edifices which, fortified to a certain degree, combined the modern house with the ancient feudal hold, and had been rendered very serviceable to both parties in the progress of the great rebellion. These fortified houses were of every size, from that which really well merited the name of castle, to that which was no more than a mere tower; and many of them, either from being injured by the chances of war, or from having lost a great part of their utility when the scourge of civil contention was removed from the country, had gone to decay, or had been applied to the calmer and more homely uses of the barn, the grange, or the farm-house.

Such was the house which Langford and his companion now approached; and, as far as the darkness of the hour suffered its outline to appear, it seemed to the former to be a tall heavy tower of stonework, with four small windows on the side next to them. Beneath its protection, and attached to it on one side, with the gable end turned towards the road, was a lower building with a high peaked roof of slates; and close by, another mass of masonry, apparently the ruins of a church or chapel. The light that the horsemen had seen came from one of the upper windows of the tower; but there were lights also in the less elevated building by its side. A low wall stood before the whole, enclosing a little neglected garden; and through a gate which stood open in this wall, Franklin Gray led his companion in, and up to the door of the tower. There, beside the door, stood the ancient steps which many a burly cavalier in the Hudibrastic days, and in days long before that, had employed to mount his horse's back; and there, too, on either side of the entrance, was many a ring, staple, and hook, for the purpose of fastening up the troopers' horses, while their masters rested or caroused in the hall hard by.

Having attached their bridles to two of these hooks, Franklin Gray and his companion proceeded to seek admission into the tower. To gain this, Gray first struck the door three or four times distinctly with his heavy hand. The moment he had done so, a light step was heard running along within, and after manifold bolts and bars had been withdrawn, the boy Jocelyn threw open the door; and Langford followed his companion into a low narrow entrance hall, on the right of which was another door, and at the end a dim flight of stone steps leading apparently to the upper apartments.

Scarcely, however, had the foot of Franklin Gray fallen three times on that stone passage, when a light came gleaming down the stairs, and the next instant the flutter of a woman's garments was seen, as she descended with a step of joy. She was as lovely a creature as the eye of man ever rested upon, though the first years of youthful grace were passed, and though the sun of a warmer land than this had dyed her skin with a rich brown. Her eyes--her large full liquid eyes--were as black as jet, and the long dark fringe that edged both the upper and the under lid left but little of the white visible. The glossy black hair, divided on the forehead, was tied in a large massy knot behind, without any ornament whatsoever; but along the whole line might be traced a strong undulation, which told that, if free, it would have fallen in ringlets round her face; and even as it was, two or three thick curls escaped from the knot behind, and hung in glossy masses on her neck. Her age might be three or four and twenty, and her form had the fulness of that age, but without having lost any of the symmetry of youth.

She carried a lamp in her hand, and the light of it showed her dark eyes sparkling with joy as they rested upon Franklin Gray. Setting down the light upon the stairs, she darted forward at once, and cast herself upon his bosom, exclaiming, with a strong foreign accent, "You have come back! You have come back! Oh, I have been so uneasy about you!"

"But why, my Mona?" demanded Franklin Gray, with his whole tone and manner changed to one of the utmost gentleness, as soon as he addressed her. "Why more to-night than at other times, when I am obliged to leave you?"

"Oh, I do not well know," she replied; "but you kissed me twice before you went, and then you came back to kiss me once more, and bid me remember you; and I felt sure you were going on some dangerous expedition. I felt sad at heart myself, too, as if some evil would come of this night."

"Evil has come of it, I fear," replied Franklin Gray; but he then added quickly, seeing her turn pale at his words, "Evil not upon me, or of my doing, Mona. But go up again, beloved! and I will come to you directly. You see I have some one with me."

She turned her eyes upon Langford, whom she appeared not to have noticed before; and then bowing her head gracefully and slowly, she raised the lamp again, and disappeared up the steps.

When she was gone, Franklin Gray turned round and gazed upon Langford for a moment, with a proud yet melancholy smile. There was a world of meaning in his look, and Langford could only reply to it by exclaiming, with a glance still more sorrowful, "Oh, Gray, this is very sad!"

"Come, come," cried his companion; "it shall be amended some day, Harry. Come, Jocelyn," he continued, turning to the boy, "tell me, master page, who are in the hall, and how many?"

The boy's brow became grave at the question. "There are but three, sir," he replied; "there is James of Coventry, and there is Doveton and little Harvey."

"Indeed!" said Gray, shutting his teeth close, as if to keep down angry feelings that were rising fast--"indeed!" and with his right hand he threw open the door which led into a small dark room. That again he strode across, giving Langford a sign to follow, and then opened another door, which admitted them into a much larger chamber, well lighted, in the midst of which was a large table furnished with a flagon and some drinking cups. At the further end sat two men playing with dice, while a third, a short smart-looking personage, was standing behind, observing their game. They ceased when Gray and his companion appeared; and the merriment which they evidently had been enjoying, was over in a moment.

"But you three left!" said Gray, as he entered, "but you three left! Where are Hardcastle and Wiley?"

"They went out shortly after you, Captain Gray," replied one of the men who were playing; "I can't tell where they are."

"Doveton," replied Gray, in a calm grave tone, "you are a gentleman and a soldier; so are you, James; and Master Harvey, too, though he did not serve with us either in Germany or in the New World, has had the honour of serving in Ireland, and is a man of honour. Now, I ask you all, straightforwardly, where are these two men gone to? Marcham and Henry of the Hill I took with me; all the others I know about also; but where are Wiley and Hardcastle, and what are they about?"

"Why, really, sir," replied the man called Doveton, "we can only tell by guess; for since that business down in the green lane they have kept very much by themselves, and don't seem to deal fairly with us, especially Wiley."

"I'll tell you what, captain," said the man who was standing behind, and whom they called amongst themselves Little Harvey, "I wish Wiley was out from amongst us; he will get us all into mischief some day. He does not do things in a gentlemanlike way. I guess what he has gone after, but he has not succeeded, I see." And as he spoke, he gave a significant glance towards Langford, as if he were in some degree connected with the matter in question.

"Indeed!" said Gray; "I suspect your meaning, Harvey; but let us hear more plainly what you think. Though I direct and guide, and am always willing to take the greatest dangers on myself, still we are comrades, and should treat each other as such. What is it you think, Harvey?"

"I won't say what I think," replied the man; "but I'll say what I saw. When you sent the boy Jocelyn down to the Manor, Wiley cross-questioned him both before he went and when he came back; and when he heard him give you a message about a gentleman meeting you on the moor, he whispered a good dead to Hardcastle, who came up and asked me if I would go along with them upon an enterprise which must be quite secret, and which must be done without your knowing it. I refused; and told him, I thought that after the business down in the lane, he had better not let Wiley lead him; but to that he answered, that this was a matter which could not fail as the other had done, and that it would be over in five minutes. I said I would not go, however, and they went without me."

"Hark, they are coming!" said Gray, as the sound of horses' feet was heard stopping opposite the house. "Let them in the back way, Jocelyn, and bring in supper. Here! Come with me, Master Harry." And he led the way back into the hall by which they had at first entered, and in which there still remained the lamp that the boy Jocelyn had carried when he gave them admittance. Gray carefully shut the doors behind him; and when he stood alone in the passage with Langford, he unbuttoned his vest, and took from an inner pocket a key of a very peculiar and extraordinary form.

"There is the key, Master Harry," he said, speaking quickly, and with, strong passions of some kind evidently struggling in his breast. "Your own fate is now in your power! Manage it as you will!"

"But tell me how this has been obtained," said Langford.

"I have no time for long stories," replied his companion sharply. "There it is! that is sufficient. But I will tell you so far, I--I alone--though directed by one who knew the house well, walked through it this night, from one end to the other; and within six yards of the old man himself, with nothing but a door between us, took this key from the hiding place where he thought it so safe, and brought it away undiscovered. Now, Harry, leave me! I am not in a humour to speak much. I have matters before me that may well make me silent. Mount your horse, and be gone with all speed. Why do you linger? Oh! I will send out ere ten minutes be over, and if there be a possibility of undoing what has been done amiss, it shall be undone, on my honour. Take the back road," he added, as he opened the door for Langford; "and for worlds go no more upon the moor to-night! I ask you for my own sake," he added, seeing his companion hesitate; "not for yours, but for mine!"

Langford made no reply, but mounting his horse, rode away with feelings of a nature the most mingled and the most painful.

Those of the man he left behind were of a different character, but still terrible. With Langford there were feelings which he seldom experienced, doubt and hesitation as to his own course of action, mingling with vague apprehension of evil, and deep regret to see a man possessed of many noble qualities, who had been his friend, his companion, and even his protector in the early days of youth, now plunged into a current, terrible in itself, and terrible in its consequences--following a course which he had long suspected that Gray did really follow, but without having conviction forced upon him till that night.

With Franklin Gray it was very different; his whole feelings, for the time, were swallowed up in one stern and gloomy resolution.

There was anger, indeed, at the bottom of that resolution; wrath of the most bitter and deadly kind; but even that was almost lost in the effort to exclude from his thoughts everything that might shake, even in the least degree, the dark and terrible determination he had formed.

As soon as Langford had quitted him he returned to the hall in which he had left his comrades, and there, as he expected, he found the party increased by the presence of the two men, Wiley and Hardcastle, whose names we have mentioned more than once, and whom we have seen busy in the attack upon Alice Herbert.

It was evident that some conversation had passed between them and the others regarding the indignation which they had excited in their leader, and while, in the rough countenance of Hardcastle, might be traced a great deal of shame and apprehension, in the more cunning face of Wiley appeared a degree of hesitating uncertainty, mingling strangely with dogged defiance, and making him look like an ill-tempered hound about to receive the lash, but not very sure whether to lie down and howl, or fly at the throat of the huntsman. The boy Joselyn was busily bringing in some dishes, and setting them on the table; but he glanced at Franklin Gray from time to time, seeming to know better than any one present the character of the man with whom they had to deal, and to divine what was likely to be the issue.

Franklin Gray said not a word in regard to the matter which was in all their thoughts; but sitting down at the head of the table he made some observation upon the bread, which was not good; and then added, speaking to the others--"Begin, begin! Marcham and Henry of the Hill won't be long."

"I heard them coming over the hill but now," said the boy Jocelyn.

Gray made no reply, and the rest began their meal in silence; but he ate nothing, looking curiously at the knife in his hand, as if there was something very interesting in the blade. He made the boy give him a silver cup, indeed, full of wine from the tankard; and as he was drinking it, the two others, whom he had mentioned, came in laughing, and seemed surprised to see the grave and stern manner in which the supper was passing.

The matter was soon explained, however; for no sooner had they sat down in the places left for them, than Franklin Gray fixed his eyes upon Wiley, and said, "Now, my masters Wiley and Hardcastle, we are all present but two: be so good as to tell me where you have been to-night?"

The time which had elapsed, the indifference, and even carelessness, which had hitherto appeared in Gray's manner, and a cup or two of wine which he himself had drunk, had removed the degree of apprehension which at first mingled with the sullen determination of Wiley; and he replied at once, with a look of effrontery, "I don't think that at all necessary, Captain! I rather believe that I have as much right to ride my horse over any common in the kingdom as you have, without giving you any account of it either."

"You hear!" said Franklin Gray, looking round calmly to the rest, "you hear!"

"Come, come, Master Wiley," cried the man, called Doveton, "that won't do, after what we all swore, when we came down here. Come, Hardcastle, you are the best of the two; come, you tell Captain Gray at once what you have been about. We must know, if it be but for our own safety."

"Oh! I'll tell at once," said Hardcastle. "Devilish sorry am I that I ever went; and I certainly would not have gone had I known how it would turn out. I'll never go again with Wiley as long as I live: I told him so, as we came over the common."

Wiley muttered something not very laudatory of his companion; but it was drowned in the stern voice of Franklin Gray, who exclaimed, "Go on, Hardcastle!"

"Why, we went out to the beeches by Upwater Mere," replied Hardcastle; "and we had not been there long, when up came some one on horseback, going along slowly towards the castle. It was not the person we were looking for, however----"

"Pray, who were you looking for?" interrupted Franklin Gray.

"Why, I think that is scarcely fair, Captain," said Hardcastle.

"It matters not," replied Gray; "I know without your telling me. Go on!"

"Well, as the young man came up," continued the other, "Wiley said we might as well have what he had upon him. So we rode up, and asked him to stop, quite civilly; but, instead of doing so, he drew his sword, and spurred on his horse upon Wiley, and----"

"Well," exclaimed Gray, impatiently; "what then? I heard the pistol fired," he said, seeing the man hesitate; "so tell the truth."

"Well," said Hardcastle, "well;" and as he spoke he turned somewhat pale: "well, then Wiley fired, you know, and brought him down; and we pulled him under the beeches, and took what we could get. We have not divided it yet, but it seems a good sum."

As his companion had been detailing the particulars of their crime, the changes which had come over Wiley's countenance were strange and fearful. He had watched with eager anxiety the countenance of Franklin Gray, who sat nearly opposite to him at the other end of the table; but, being able to gather nothing from those stern dark features, he ran his eye rapidly round the faces of the rest, and after several changes of expression, resumed, as well as he could, the look of cunning and daring impudence which he had at first put on. The entrance of the boy Jocelyn with some plates, just behind him, however, made him give a sharp start and look round. Franklin Gray fixed his eyes upon the boy, and waved his hand; and Jocelyn immediately went round to the other side of the table.

"Hardcastle," said their leader, "I shall find some means of punishing you. As for you, Wiley----"

"You shall not punish me, Captain Gray!" interrupted Wiley, knitting his brows and speaking through his teeth; "for by----, if you don't mind what you're about, I'll hang you all."

Franklin Gray sat and heard him calmly, keeping his eyes fixed upon him with stern unchanging gaze till he had done speaking. He then looked round once more, saying, "You hear!" and, at the same moment, he drew a pistol from under his coat. Every face around turned pale but his own; and Wiley started up from the table. But before he could take a single step, and while yet, with agony of approaching fate upon him, he gazed irresolute in the face of his leader, the unerring hand of Franklin Gray had levelled the pistol and fired.

The ball went right through his head; the unhappy man bounded up two or three feet from the ground, and then fell dead at the end of the table. Franklin Gray sat perfectly still, gazing through the smoke for about a minute; and through the whole hall reigned an awful silence. He then laid the pistol calmly down on the table before him, and drew forth a second.

Hardcastle crossed his arms upon his breast, and looked him full in the face, saying, "Well, Captain, I'm ready."

"You mistake me," said Gray, laying down the pistol on the table, with the muzzle towards himself. "My friends, if I have done wrong by the shot I have fired, any of you that so pleases, has but to take up that pistol and use it as boldly as I have done its fellow. What say you; am I right or wrong?"

"Right, right!" replied every voice.

"Well, then," said Gray, putting up the weapons again, "some of you take him down; and you, Doveton and Marcham, hark ye;" and he spoke a few words to them apart. "Take Hardcastle with you," he added; "that shall be his punishment!" so saying, he turned, took up a lamp that stood near, and quitted the hall.

Franklin Gray mounted the steps in the tower that we have mentioned, slowly and sadly; paused halfway up, and fell into deep thought. His reverie lasted but a minute: he then proceeded, and reached the room where the fair being whom he called Mona was watching anxiously for his coming. Her eyes questioned him; but he made no reply in words. He threw his right arm round her, however and rested his face upon her bosom for several minutes, with his eyes shut; then pressed her to his heart, kissed her cheek, and said "Come my Mona, come and see our babe sleeping."