CHAPTER II.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9254, 5 June 1908, Page 4

CHAPTER 11.

The insulted and outraged lover was afoot early in tho morning, and in a sheltered lane midway bet-wen, his own homestead and that of hie sweet-heart's father he came suddenly upon the farmer, who started at him like a man distracted. •'You hero yet?" stammered Eddy. "Here yet? "What do you mean?" "The body's found!" whispered Eddy, with trembling lips. " They're scouring the country for you at this minute. They've been up to the Weald Farm already. The news is everywhere f" "The body?" answered Westwood, wonderingly. "The body's found? What body?" 1 " For- heaven's sake, John," said the fanner, in a voice of eager anguish, "don't play tricks wi' me! Sir Michael's servant entered his master's room at four o'clock this morning and found him lying there stone cold. The same man 6wears he met you leaving the Tower at half-past nine last night." ''-That's true/ said John- A tide of horror swept over him, and he gasped in breathing like a man who has suddenly been plunged in ice-cold water. "You must fly the country, lad," 6aid Eddy. "Get clear at once. They're down at your house by now: and if they hadn't taken a short cut across the fields you'd have fallen in with them. Do you 6lip into yonder coppice, and I'll get back to the Weald for a horse and T>ring him hither." "But why should I run away?" urged Westwood. "I'm innocent. I went out with evil thoughts agen, the man, I confess it. It was in my mind to do him a mischief] but I turned away without having changed a word with him — without having set eyes on him. 35 "John," said the farmer^ "they'll^ hang thee all the same. Thou must fly the country, lad. 1 can hear voices now ! Get into shelter. Hid© thee till I come back again." The younger man. all dazed and shaken, stepped softly into the coppice and cowered there whilst the farmer stole away. Westwood had lain concealed barely a minute when a handful of men came down the road at a jog-trot, conversing with each, other as they rode. He heard his own name epoken, and he knew that they were in search of him. Ten. minutes late yet there was a Round of hoof-beats on the road; and then a low, cautious whistle broke upon the air. Westwood crept with a guilty-looking stealth from the coppice and saw the farmer near at i hand. 1 " Ride that way,'"' said Eddy. " They're over yonder, and you'll have a mile or two the 6tart of them before you're seen. Make for the coast and fret out of the country. Turn the norse loose when you've done with, him ; he'll find his way home again. And take this with you. I bent my pride last night to stoop to my cousin Dick, and he lent me five hundred pounds, heaven blees him !" " Master Eddy," said Westwood, accepting a bag the farmer proffered, "I'm grateful in my heart to you. I'm running away, to be sure, and I'm not certain that I'm not a fool^to do it, for if I was never to look you in the face again, an' if these was my last words, I am innocent of this dreadful crime ! I swear it before Heaven !" " Pray heaven it may turn out so," said tue farmer. " But, meanwhile, mount lad and ride for your life! Thou 'lt have a good piece of bone beneath thee. I've rode him myself with,out a halt for forty mile, an' I scale twice thy weight. Good-bye, lad, and God guide thee safe home again!" John shook hands, and was off across country like an arrow. But as he crested a long, low hill which lay immediately before him he heard shouts behind and felt instinctively that his flight was known already. He rode as a man only rides with the fear of death behind him, and left the shouting in the far distance. He looked often over his shoulder, and, seeing no sign of pursuit, he began to spare his horse a little and to nurse him ixJir the journey which lay before. He had hunted a good deal in his day, and he knew the country well. He made straight for Hythe and dismounted a mile away from his destination, gave the horse a sounding clip upon the quarters, and saw him start homeward at a trot. . He entered the village on foot, and after a good deal of chaffering with a boat-owner — half fisherman, half-smuggler, and all rogue — he secured a passage across the channel. The man was surly and suspicious, and the fugitive's eagerness to start was in itself a thing to set his thoughts at work. But ten clinking guineas, with the image of His late lamented majesty King George I. upon them, found him an ample sedative for any scruples. " The tide serves in haff-an-hour," he said, '''and we may get aboard at once." So in ihe grey dawn of a late August morning John Westwood found himself standing for the first time in his life on foreign soil. He had forty guineas in English gold in his pocket and a dozen phrases of very English French to his tongue. These latter were mostly of a very useless sort, and as he turned them over in his mind he could not find one amongst them to express his earliest and simplest want. There was a straight road before him leading inland, and in a while it brought him to a small wayside inn. Whilst he was yet alone he had taken the precaution to stow away his fortune in safety, and he carried but a single coin in his breeches' pocket. He was both hungry and thirsty, for, being unused to sea travel, he had passed a whole night in sickness, and he felt now as empty as a drum. He was a fugitive from justice, to be sure, but strong in the consciousness of ] his own innocence, and being hopeful of its ultimate establishment, lie telt less J disturbed than might have been expected. He walked boldly into the house, and having salaamed to a fat woman in sabots after what he imagined to be the French method, he displayed, his coin and pointed to his mouth. The woman took the coin and examined it with curiosity, and John, seeing a tow of bottles standing at the wall and a wooden platter with a loaf on it upon a shelft, indicated each in turn. The woman continued to scrutinise the coin, •and a lame, swarthy fellow, with coalblack hair and eyes, who sat at the clean-swept, fireless hearth, went towards her to assist in the examination. He spoke a few rapid words in an assuring tone and then became explanatory, with much superfluous gesture. The woman nodded, and in a minute or two the exile had a fairly plentiful meal before him. The lame man sat at a table and looked at Aiim as he ate and drank. Westwood touched the bottle and asked a question with his eyes. The man grinned and nodded, and gave an order for a second pewter. He filled up when Westwood passed the < bottle, and, having sipped, leant half-way across the table and said: "English, not?" "Yes," said John, " T'm English, English, sure enough." " I am stranger here," said the new acquaintance. "lam of Italia — what you call Eetaly. Of the Eetaly of Switzerland Eh?" Westwood nodded to signify tbat he understood. •' Where you go? 1 ' the stranger of the Ttaly of Switzerland asked. This was a frightful poser, for Westwood not only did not know where he was going, but had not even any very precise idea as to where he was. He knew that he looked disconcerted, and that he was a natural object for suspicion, but he made ebift to answer: "I'm going a long way from hereaway over yonder." "I guida you, <$i?" said the stran- j ger. "You wanta very much a guida. The country is known to me like that!' 1 Hp laid Ms brown hand upon the f-able with the palm upwards. Westwood began to dislike the look of him. Ho

imagined he could detect a jeering threat in the man's tone, and his own .position made him sensitive. The woman in the sabots brought him his change in silver and counted it out before him. He finished his meal in silence, pocketed the change, and rose to go. He had not walked twenty yards along the road when he turned at the sound of a footstep in his rear, and there was the new acquaintance only a yard or two behind him. He carried under his arm a bag of worn and weatherstained green baize, with the head of a fiddle protruding from it. He gave a hop and a jump and landed himself at Wefitwood's side, tapping the fiddle as he spoke. "This my companion," he said. "That's right enough," returned Westwood, "but you're not mine. I I don't want a companion. I prefer to be left alone." "Do you run away from anything?" the swarthy little man asked, with a ! grin of insolence undisguised. j "Look here," said Westwood, "I've I told you plain and straight already I ! don't want you. You go back to the public where I found you and leave me alone." "You see that so little town just yonder?" said the Italian. " There is there what you call a gendarmerie." "What's that in English?" "Ah! you do not know? It is a place of soldiers of the law. Shall I make a little call there? To see a : stranger, who lands from a smugglingj boat and speaks not their language, and has no passport; they will be very glad !" " AVho told you I'd got no passport?" Westwood asked, angrily, but not without a touch of fear. " Shall I make a little call," the man repeated, "or shall I go by with, my master to be his guida, eh?" "Oh, hang it all!" said Westwood. " Come along." "Ah!" said the Italian, " you take me as guida. ]t jis very well. I am Ferranti. That is my name. Will you give me your name?" "Oh," said Westwood, "Smith will do for me." "Smeet," said Ferranti. "Very well, Mr Smeet, you come with me. I I am your guide and I talk for you what you wanta." " This is a fin© posture of affairs," thought Westwood to himself. "This fellow's game is plain as daylight. He'll suck me till I'm dry, and then he'll hand me over to the law for King's money. But it -will go hard, if I can't give him leg-bail sooner or later." He found it easier to conceive this idea than to carry it into practice, for Signor Ferranti seemed to sleep with one eye open, and at any hour for the days and nights they spent together Westwood's merest movement showed him wide awake to the intention of escape. The strolling fiddler was a merry and companionable rascal, -and, ill spite of the fact that he kept so keen a watch and had so evident a purpose, he beguiled Westwood on the road to nowhere into an occasional oblivion of his cares. They had journeyed together witho.it a goal in sight or thought for perhaps a fortnight, when John, received "a shock from which he di 3 not easily recover. For it happened that Ferranti, approaching him in a little aubevgo where their beds were already paid tor, signalled to him, swiftly and mysteriously, to withdraw. The dusk was talling fast, and the country, under the tranquil autumn sky, with a stain or two of sunset crimson and amber still lingering in it, lay quiet and deserted. " Gome with me," said Ferranti, with his finger on his lips. "Gome, to a place of quiet." He led the way for his companion with a hasty stealth along the road; and then, pausing in the shadow of a plantation which lined it, spoke five words which pierced their hearer to tbs marrow. "Do you know John Westwood?" The man thus questioned stood with parted lips and staring eyes. But he offered no answer to tlie question "Ah!" said the Italian, "I. guessed that it would be so. You are being inquired for, my friend. The law is nfter you. Now, I do not know what you have done that the law should be after you, and as for me, I mock myself of the law always. But j'ou have been to me a good master, and I teli you." John stood silent, and the Italian's bead}' eyes looked piercingly at him through the dusk. "You do not wish to meet the law '? Very well, then. You will to me one English guinea give aud ', I shall buy you things that will change i you. You cannot speak. You are my i brother that cannot speak, and you will never open your mouth to me except when we are quite alone. But we will go on now and we will be miles away before morning." . With a deadly fear at Lis £">axt «To3m

■ niinii iiiiiiMi«mnii«i»7"iwi-nff--i iiii-i^inr-iTja—nMßa—atngapms Westwood walked all that night, and walked on til. 1 dwn, and at daybreak Ferranti; wTiose boast that he knew the country was well sustained, left him. in a wood hard by a little village, where he made the purchases he required, and so transformed his companion that he might have passed, and, in fact, did pass, as a peasant of the country. The device of dumbness served him well, and for a week or two nothing jnore was heard of the new +'ear. Then quite suddenly it came again. " They ask for John Westwood still, mv peer friend,"' said Ferranti. " They aelc for John Westwood everywhere ! I have net told you, but for a day or two I have shake in my shoes five times | to hear your nama ; T have shake in my shoes and my blood have run cold! i They are here and they are there, and i they are all ways! But we shall -take I to the fields and the woods, and I shall beat them jet, because, as I tell you, ■ T know the tsountiy like my hand," The weather was pleasant, and the young English farmer fell into a dull, \ strange contentment with the gipey j life, and for yet another week or two nothing occurred to shake him out of it. Now that their community of interefrte was co fimily established Ferranti was much less watchful of his charge than, he had originally been. He knew, indeed, that John was so impressed with the sens© of his own peril that he scarce dared to move a .yard without him. And thus it happened that the young fellow, couched in some hollow of the wood 6, *would sometimes be left alone for hours whilst his comrade went out to purchase provender, and if it might be, to secure intelligence of the pursuit. He came back one night with a grave face. " There is now with the law an Englishman," he said. "I have seen the carriage in which he travels. He has with him an officer who aeks sharp questions, and it is everywhere of an Englishman, young and tall, and who looks strong; and I have heard something. This. John Westwood, the man they follow, it i 6 with him a charge that he has killed somebody !" " Now look here, Ferranti,' said Westwood, with a trembling voice, "you haven't known me for long, but do you, now — do you — in your heart of hearts, believe that I could hurt a worm? You know you don't." " Bah !" said the Italian, " I mock myself of the law always. I have never killed anybody, but that is what you say, of course, by accident. I have never wished; I have never wanted; I have never had no need, and what you have no need you do not do." "No, nol" cried Westwood, fairly horrified by this cynical philosophy. "I am innocent! I threatened the man, and he got 6hot somehow, ana the blame got fixed on me. But I am as innocent as you are. I couldn't take a fellow-creature's life. It isn't in me." "Ah : , well," returned Ferranti, " 1 drink your wino^; I eat your loaf; I share your lodging. It is to me nothing what you nave done, or what you have not done. It is something to you that you are not caught, eh?" "Yes," said Westwood, drearily, " it's my life if they catch me. They'll 6tretch my neck for me, and make short work of it too, innocent as 1 am-" They stuck close to their hidingplace all that day, and passed the night m a dry ditch ; and when John woke in the morning he 6eemed conscious of a curious stillness in the air. He listened to catch his comrade's breathing, but he heard no sound. With a dreadful, half-roused suspicion in his mind he stood up and looked about him. He ventured on a cautious i whisper of Ferranti'« name, but no j answer was returned. He half reproached himself for the fancy which I sent his hands to the customary hidingplace of the bag of gold, and yet he I was not in the least surprised when he I missed it. He knew in a second that he had been robbed and deserted, and the sense of his own helplessness flowed over hie spirit like an ovewhelming tide. He searched the pockets of the disguise he wore and found that he had stiff a liberal handful of silver left between him and actual starvation; but he could see only too clearly that the end of the chase- he had evaded until now was drawing near. There were some scraps left from last night's meal, and a bottle of country wine was not altogether empty. Starvation would begin to set in after a very little while, for he could not even ask for food without his tongue betraying ' him . It did not occur to him to curse Ferranti's faithlessness; and when he had s-at awhile surveying the certainty of fate which lay before him, he took a sudden courage in. his hands, and asked himself: "Why should I lie here to die like a dog, who am certain to die.' anyway? I'll go out and meet my foe like a man — like- an Englishman and like an old Kent yeoman !" So lie broke out of the wood and marched sturdily down to the village, where he made signs for food and had his wants supplied. He was a good deal stared at, and he was- aware of many whispers, but he had made up a desperate mind to all this, as it seemed, quite long ago, and was not much disturbed by it. He w-as quite assured that it could not be more than a day or two before his seizure, and with the certainty of fate a great calm seemed to v fall on him, the calm of an absolute and resolved despair. He took the open road and felt as if he had set fear behind him, and had done with it in this 1 life for ever. He did not know whither his footsteps led, but, as a matter of fact, he was o^\ the old road between Dijon and Paris. The way on euner side was lined with tall poplars, and the country for miles ahead was level as a billard-board. Far and far away the lines of poplars dwarfed themselves and seamed to meet, and the landscape was eternally the same. Now and again a carriage passed him, and he never heard the swift rumble of wheels and the crack of the driver's whip without feeling the arresting hand upon hie shoulder and hearing in advance the cry to halt. He never turned his head, and he felt no qualm of fear. But when half a dozen vehicles had passed him thus, a seventh came, and it seemed to have an actual voice for him which was different from that of all the rest. He turned and looked at it whilst it was yet far off, and Ferranti's minute description of the carriage he had seen was fulfilled in every line and tone of it. If he should hide and allow the vehicle to pass him by there might be a way of momentary escape, but it seemed scarcely worth while to take it. He planted himself squarely against one of the wayside poplars, folded his arms and awaited the oncoming vehicle. It was speeding past him, when he heard a sudden suppressed scream from within it, and a rogue French voice barked out the words, " Halte, la !" The driver pulled his horses to their haunchee, the wheels grated harshly on the dusty road, and out sprang j» French official with fierce moustachios and eyebrows heavy enoueh to have furnished another pair. Well, it was here at last — here and welcome! — and the fugitive braced himself to meet his doom. But could he trust his ears to the belief that a Kentish voice familiar to him from childhood was calling to him by name in choking and shaking accents? And could he believe his eyes when he caw Farmer Eddy struggling cut .of the voiture bearing the fainting form of his daughter Edith in his arms as though she were a clumsy bundle? He stood amazed and wonder-stricken, and the whole thing was like a dream. '•'We've got un at last!" the farmer wae shouting, between tears and laughter. " And a rare old chase you've led U3, to be sure. -Now, if I was in your shoes, John, I'd never forgive old Eddy ac long as I could shake a stick at un, for ho believed you guilty, John-, and I all the while you was as innocent as a babe unborn, and I stand here to prove it. But, bow, here's his Magnificence, who was lent to me by the British Am-

bassador at Paris, and I can't say a word to un in his own lingo, and here's Edith in a dead faint, though she knows it's her duty to do all the blessed chatter as is done in this country. Wake up, my dear, now, doo'ee ! Here's John — John Westwood, dearie — just as hale and hearty to look at as when he started. "Why, haven't ye got oven a good-morn i^n' for him, darling?" The girl began to moan ever so little and opened her eyes, and, in a while, to the French official's embarrassment, she and her lover were close locked in one another's arms. The official discreetly looked the other way, and took snuff with am air as if he saluted the universe at large. He had grown familiar with Westwood' s story in the course of a month's travel with his sweetheart, and from that day onward ho was able to pronounce amongst his countrymen, that "la phlegme Anglaise'' Avas a fable. For there was drama enough enacted on that dusty highway within the next five minutes to satisfy the most ardent lover of the emotions. Edith flung herself, a lovely avalanche, on John's broad breast. She kissed her father, and the old yeoman blubbered openly, and Edith and the farmer talked together in such bewildering fashion that John could make neither head nor tail of the whole business for a while, except that he was free of suspicion, and 1 mioht safely return home at. any moment. And then it came out little by little that, after the inquest liad been held, and a verdict of wilful murder solemnly returned against John Westwood, Mr Ronald had come back home to discover the wild letter addressed to him by the suicide, and to remove all suspicion of the young yeoman's guilt for ever. " An' what's more, my lad," cried Eddy, "the young dog's as different from the old rm as ever was chalk from cheese. He's got a heart inside of him, and he's known a bit o' trouble himself in his own clay. He's going to have patience with us on account of the late bad years; and my cousin Bob, as I have so unworthily despised, have turned up trumps, John. He's lent me a thousand pound and set me on my legs , again. An' I tell 'cc, John, if ever ! there was a father as was proud and i pleased at the prospect of dancing at his daughter's wedding, I'm the man!"