BIG PETER.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144856, 7 December 1915, Page 5

BIG PETER.

STRONG ROMANTIC LOVE STORY.

By JOHN SHUTE,

Author of “The Bullion Baby,’’ etc., etc. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS: Big Peter: A minor on the Kampurli Gold Field. The real Lord Camfcray. The Swell and Scotty: Chums of Big Peter. Robert Walker: A solicitor’s clerk. Endeavours to sell a secret to Big Peter. Mr. Fearon; Acts as solicitor to Big Peter. Lord Cambray; Selfish, old, and with a vicious past. Lorrimer; Servant to Lord Cambray. Miss Parker: Aunt to Margaret Parker: With whom. Big Peter is in love. Mrs. Saunders; A poor widow whom Big Peter heips. Tommy Saunders; Her sou. CHAPTER XV.—Continued.

When he had had- his tea, Peter strolled out and took tho road towards the hill upon which Cambray Cnatle stood. When the road got to tho top of the’ hill it took a turn away from the castle and skirted a high wall, behind which must have been a good many acres of level ground, half-purk, half-woodland. By-and-by he came to a gate flanked by a pair of stone-built lodges; but tho gato was apparently never used, for grass was growing up against it, even on the roadway itself, and tho lodges looked as if they were unoccupied. Ho walked on a little farther, until suddenly, as is sometimes the case where a great park has begun to be elaborately enclosed, the high stone wall gave place to wooden fencing. This was everywhere in a ruinous condition, and looked as if it had not been touched for years; and the park, so ly shut in where the wall had boon buit, was open to anyone who liked to enter it.

It was not a park here, though, except in name; it was a thick, close wood. With a glance around him, Peter crept in through a gap in tho fence and began to wander through it. Dy-and-by, the wilder growth ol the wood gave place to more artificial planting, and presently lie found himself in a well-defined shrubbery walk. He followed this for some distance.

Suddenly he stopped. if is keen ears had caught the sound of voices, some distance, away, but audible in the still evening air. They were tho voices of a man and a woman, and as, he stood trying to locate them, his face grow puzzled, because somehow they did not sound like the voices of people in ordinary conversation. Ho stood still for some time, straining his ears to listen. And by-and-by there could bo no doubt that he had come upon something in the nature of a scene.

The map’s voice grew lender, and, as it seemed to him, threatening. He was much too far off to ho able to distinguish any words. The woman’s voice told him nothing; it was no more than a murmur at that distance, and probably ears less keen than his would not have heard it at all-

But with a suddenness that was positively startling, both voices ware raised, the man’s into anger, the woman’s into terror, and before Peter could form any decision in his mind as to what to do, there was a loud shriek, and he sprang forward and ran down the shrubbery path as fast as he had ever run in his life.

As he ran the commotion still continued and increased. Rhododendron bushes grew thick and tall between him and the place from which the voices came. Ho ran along beside them, expecting to find another path or an opening of some sort, dad presently did so, and as he ran out on to a wide lawn at the head of a sheet of water, which he had not expected to find there, ho heard the man’s voice say threateningly: “You shall say ‘yes’ before X let you go, or I’ll let out everything.” Half-facing him, bached hy the dark green of shrubs and trees, was too marble facade of a Grecian summerhouse, and on the graas between him and it was the white-robed figure of a girl, struggling in the arms of a man who had seized and was holding her, while she battled with him with all her strength and sent shriek after ehriek into the air. in a moment Pater had seized the man by the collar, had torn him away with such force that the girl, suddenly released, fell on the grass on her kneea, and had flung him violently down on to the ground. And then he stood staring, with all power to speak and move for the moment taken away from him. For the girl whom he had rescued was his own adored girl of the picture, and the man from whom he had saved her was the man whom he had already once treated with violence in Thaxted Church. CHAPTER XVI BY THE LAKE Peter had no time to take in all that this surprising discovery might mean. He was aware only of the girl on her knees on the ground, and of the man some litle way off where he had violently thrown him.- Suddenly the wild rage that sometimes seizes upon the mildest-mannered of men got hold of him, and with a sort of fierce snarl ho sprang upon the man, seized him by the throat, lifted him up as easily as if ho had been a small child, and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. The man was powerless in that grip of iron. His eyes started out of his head; his teeth chattered as he was shaken to arid fro; the attempts he made with his hands to loosen the grip on him were of no more avail than those of a baby would have been. Peter would have killed him then and there, would have choked the life out of him before bo had come to himself, and without knowing what he was doing in his blind fury. There was only one voice in the world that could have pierced through to his brain at that moment, and it was the voice of the girl wjio now clung on to him and implored him to desist. “You will kdl himl You will kill him!” she cried. At last he threw him from him again, more violently than before, and ho’ lay on the ground gasping and staring, utterly unable for the moment to move hand or foot. _ “And X will kill him,” cried Peter, turning to her with a terrible look in his eyes, from which she did not quail. She still clung to him, and pleaded, with her eyes fixed upon his, and gradually his madness left him, and the realisation of her touch .stole into his brain. “Let him go,” she said. “You havo saved me, and he will never trouble me anv more.” But as for letting him go, not even she could persuade him fco do that. She did not know everything.

"X have let him go once,” said Peter, "and I shan't let him go again. I have been looking for him; and now I have found him, the swine! Ho shan't escape me again!” But still she clung to him, while/ the man on the grass at their feet lay stupidly staring up at them. “Have you been looking tor him?” she said. “Did you know that it was because of him wo had to leave that quiot place where you knew us?” No, Peter did not know that. A flood of light came to him and brought with it a flood of joy. Ho looked at her with eyes more like those kind eyes she already knew. But ho said, “Did you know what he was up there for? Did you know I found him breaking into Thaxted Church in the middle of the night? And he told me a pack of liesiand 1 lot him go. 1 shan’t let him go a second time, and if I don’t handle him myself for what ho has dene to you it is only because he’ll be worse off whou I get him punished!” But she pleaded hard. “For my sake,’’.she said. “Thinly what it would be to mo to have all this come out! He is a servant. How can X bear to have it known that he dared to come and make love to me.”

She shuddered, and turned away her head with a gesture of loathing. Peter was shaken. “Made love to you!” he cried. “If I did let him go I would break every bone in his body first 1”

The man on the grass had recovered himself a little. He raised himself on his elbow. He was a horrid spectacle His face, pale and wild, wore a look almost like madness, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse and cracked, and fiill of fear. “If you will make him let me go,” ho said to tho girl, "I’ll never trouble you any more. If yon let him take mo I'll let out everything —for then I shan’t care what happens.” Again she shuddered, and then_ turned on him passionately. “Oh lif you will go right away and I never see your horrible face any more,” sho cried. “I think 1 might know some happiness.” Sho turned to Peter and said, “If you keep him here and everything becomes known, 1 think I shall die of shame. Then Peter, with a sigh, made a great renunciation. “For your sake,” he said. “I will let him go.” He turned upon the man, who had risen unsteadily to his feet, and, with bis tceteh clenched said, "Yon had bettor go before I can change my mind ; and for your own sake you had hotter go right away, for if ever I como acress you again anywhere in the world ;!” He did not finish his speech, for with furtive tread, like that of some cowardly wild beast, the m*-i had disappeared amongst the thick trees, and they could hoar his footsteps crunching amongst the dry leaves as he ran stumbling through the wood. Then the girl went with unsteady steps towards the temple, and sinking down on the marble seat, buried her face in her hands and wept bitterly. (To bo continued.)