CHAPTER LXIII.
Gray’s Proceedings.—A Narrow Escape.—The Night Visit to Learmont.
The necessity for some immediate movement, in order to insure his personal safety, now came strongly across the oppressed and wavering mind of Gray, and hastily tearing down the bill from the tree, he clasped his throbbing temples with his hands, and strove to reduce his thoughts to order and consistency. That the bill-sticker had gone to get assistance to apprehend him, was the frightful notion that never for one instant left his mind, and without any definite notion of where he was going, he went round the declivity of the hill, until he arrived completely on the other side. The only means of concealment that there presented itself was a thick hedge, but then he thought how very insecure a place of refuge would that be, in the event of an active search being made for him.
The country before him was level for a considerable distance, with only here and there a small clump of trees. After some minutes more of painful thought an idea suggested itself to him, which was very much in accordance with his usual complicated habits of thought. That was, to leave some portions of his apparel on the bank of the pond, to induce a belief that he had drowned himself in its waters, and then to scramble into one of the trees, and hide till nightfall among the branches.
This was the only feasible plan of escape that suggested itself to him, for with his utter ignorance of the localities of the fields, an attempt to cross them to the village would most probably be seen, and but a short race in his exhausted and sickly state would ensure his capture. “At night,” he thought, “I will venture to Learmont’s—it is my only chance. I will then offer for a thousand pounds to deliver up Ada to him, and he still supposing, probably, that nothing material has happened, may consent, when I will find a means of leaving England for ever, and mature at my leisure plans of revenge against them all. But now most of all, Ada, will I mark you well. You, who have reduced me to my present state, my bitterest malediction light upon you. I would, I could have made you great and wealthy, but now I will devise some finely woven scheme to revenge myself on those I hate, without missing you.”
He then laid several articles of his clothing by the bank of the pond to which he had walked, while the reflections we have worded were passing through his brain. Then hastily repairing to one of the clumps of trees we have mentioned, he with much difficulty and pain, for he was sadly bruised, contrived to ascend it, and although the pangs of hunger began, even now to harass him, he resolved that the shadows of evening should shroud all things before he ventured from his retreat.
From his elevated position he now commanded a good view of the surrounding country, and far down the hill he had first ascended, he saw the forms of three persons rapidly approaching.
At that distance he could not see their forms distinctly, but as they neared the brow of the hill, he felt no doubt that one of them was the man who had stuck the placard to the tree. Now he saw them pause and point forwards, then with an accelerated pace they all three advanced towards the tree near which the bill sticker had left them. They now paused, and appeared to be consulting upon their next step, when one apparently saw the articles of clothing which Gray had left by the bank of the pond, and they all came to the spot using gestures to each other of astonishment.
They remained for several minutes in close consultation now, and then as if in accordance with an arrangement they had just made, one of them remained by the pond while the others commenced carefully peering into the hedges and bushes.
After satisfying themselves that he they sought was not immediately at hand, they both ran up Traitor’s-hill, and from its summit took a long searching glance at all the surrounding fields. One of these men, Gray could see now to his intense fright, had a gun in his hand, and that fright was increased to absolute abject terror when he saw him level it at one of the trees in the vicinity, and fire among the branches, awakening many echoes and starting from their covert many birds who flew twittering and screaming from among the branches.
Then to his agony he saw the gun again loaded, and the man pointed it at another tree and fired. The sharp report went through Jacob Gray’s excited brain like electricity, and it was only by twining his feet round an arm of the tree in which he was, and clutching another with his hands, that he saved himself from falling in his agitation to the ground.
The two men now conversed for some minutes in an undertone. Then one raising his voice, said in a tone that came clearly to Jacob Gray’s anxiously straining ears,—
“Oh, don’t give it up yet—it’s worth a try.”
“So it is, but it’s a bore to fire away so much powder for nothing,” said the other.
“Oh, nonsense, blaze away,” said the first, “I call it good sport.”
“Well, here goes then,” remarked the man with the gun, as he deliberately rammed down another charge.
Jacob Gray now trembled so excessively that had the men been near at hand the shaking of the branches of the tree must have at once betrayed him; but fortunately for him they were too much occupied with the trees they were firing into to heed any other at a distance, however short.
As they came sauntering on, Jacob Gray with a deep groan that he could not repress, saw that a very few minutes more would bring the tree in which he was, under the aim of the man with the gun.
Bang went the piece again, and another flight of screaming birds flew from the tree fired at, and along with a number of crows took refuge in the one occupied by Gray. The men were now within a few paces of the tree, and he could hear in his elevated position with painful distinctness every word they said.
By a great effort, he in a great measure stilled the trembling which would have betrayed him, and lay along a thick branch nearly breathless from terror.
“You may depend he’s off,” said the man with the gun. “He wouldn’t wait for you.”
“Unless he’s drowned himself,” remarked the other, who was the bill-sticker.
“No fear of that,” remarked the other with a laugh, “these kind of fellows never cheat the hangman that way. He has had time to run across the field to Highgate or Hampstead, or even to skulk into town you may depend.”
“Well, I’d take my oath it was him as was mentioned in the bill,” said the man who had brought all this danger upon Gray. “I was thankful I got off scot-free from him, I can tell you. He would soon have blown my brains out if I had said half a word.”
“Oh, bother you,” cried the other, “you were too fainthearted, you mean to lay hold of him.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk with a gun in your hand, but what odds was I with a paste-pot against a right down regular murderer, I should like to know?”
“Upon my faith,” said he with the gun, “I should have enjoyed seeing you sneak off—I really should.”
As he spoke, he commenced reloading his gun with deliberation. Oh, what a horrible process that was to Jacob Gray. Each moment gave him a pang of fear that nearly stopped the beating of his heart. How he watched the action of the ramrod as the powder was pressed down. Then the rattle of a number of small shot as they went down the barrel, came upon his ears with dreadful distinctness. Again there was a piece of paper pressed into the muzzle of the piece, and as the ramrod forced it home with a dull sound upon the charge, Jacob Gray perspired in every pore, and with difficulty kept himself from shrieking, mercy! Mercy!
“That’s an old tree,” remarked the man, as he primed the gun, and stepping back a pace or two levelled it among the branches. “I recollect it when I was a boy.”
“Fire away,” said the other, who seemed quite to enjoy the sport.
“Now—now,” thought Jacob, “now to fall a bleeding wounded man to the ground—now for pain, horror, capture, death.”
He closed his eyes, and clung to the branch on which he lay with pure desperation. All thought of a consistent character became lost in abject terror. It seemed to him an age ere the man fired into the tree. Then suddenly a loud report reached his ears. Small branches of the tree fell about him, and he uttered a deep groan, as he felt a shock upon his face, and along one arm, which assured him he had been hit by some of the shots. The pain of a gun-shot wound is not immediate; the first effect is rather as if sensation had been suddenly stunned, but when the shock subsides, and the blood again resumes its wonted channels, the agony of the wound commences. Such was the case with Jacob Gray, and although but very few of the shots had struck him in the face, the neck, and on one arm, he could have screamed with pain in the course of a few moments, and it required all the counteracting influence of the master feeling of his mind—fear—to prevent him from discovering himself. Clinging still to the branch desperately he endured the pain in silence for he durst not even moan. His first groan had been drowned in the report of the gun, but now that the echoes had died away, and all was still, the least sound of pain from his lips might be his utter destruction.
The men were silent for some moments after the discharge of the gun—then he who had fired it remarked in a disaffected tone,—
“He ain’t there. It’s no use. He must have given us the slip.”
“No, he could not stand that, I’m sure I couldn’t,” said the bill-sticker, “I never saw so many birds fly out of a tree in my life.”
“That’s because we have hunted them from all the others, and they took refuge in this one blockhead,” cried the man with the gun, whose temper did not seem at all improved by the non-success of his expedition.
“Well, you needn’t get in a passion,” suggested the other.
“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”
“Upon my conscience—”
“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”
“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself. What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”
“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with the gun.
“What?”
“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”
“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very face. Oh, oh!”
“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow yourself for all I care.”
“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”
“I shan’t stay here to be fooled any longer,” said the other.
“Will you lend me the gun, then?”
“Lend you my gun?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you particularly well—never mind.”
So saying, he of the gun marched off in very great dudgeon, leaving the bill-sticker gazing after him.
“Well,” he muttered, “there’s an air and a grace, I never knew he was so hasty before. I—I think I’ll have a hunt for the fellow myself, and—yet he might master me, and I think I won’t. It’s all very well to take a prisoner, but when the prisoner takes you, it ain’t near so pleasant.”
Having come to this sage conclusion, the bill-sticker rapidly walked away, glancing every now and then around him in terror, lest Gray should make a sudden dart at him from behind some tree or hedge.
“Here! Here,” moaned Jacob Gray, as he smeared the blood from his face with his hand, “here I must remain in hunger and pain till night, and then my only hope now is to crawl to Learmont’s!”