A MURDERER’S MISTAKE.
A toll-keeper on the main road some miles south of Edinburgh was standing at his open door watching the gambols of his two children, when a weary traveller approached and arrested his gaze. There was something uncommon about the dusty tramp when his appearance could rouse interest in an old toll-keeper, accustomed to look with indifference on every kind of wanderer that God’s earth can produce. This one was an old man, tall and gaunt and white-haired. So far there was a bond of interest between them, but with age the comparison ceased, for the toll-keeper was stout and well-clad, and had a comfortable expression beaming from every part of his face; while the stranger was haggard, worn, and drooping, like one who had got all that earth was likely to give, and did not care how soon the giving ceased. Above the toll-keeper’s happy face was a ticket intimating that he was licensed to sell tobacco; while in one window a few bottles of confections and biscuits, and the words “Refreshments and Lemonade” on a show card, summed up his efforts at trading. The dusty tramp halted in front of the toll-keeper, giving the stout man a full view of his poor clothing and fragile boots, from which his toes were peeping, and his sharp eyes eagerly devoured the intimation above the doorway.
“Good evening, sir,” he said quietly, as he fumbled among his clothes for a pocket, and at length produced a penny.
The toll-keeper in general was gruff enough with tramps, even when they seemed disposed to buy his wares, but there was a ring in the tones of this one which struck a chord of pity in his breast, and he returned the greeting kindly. In front of the window showing the biscuits and sweets was a wooden bench. The haggard one limped towards this bench, saying in the same quiet tones—
“Might I rest for a bit on this bench?”
There was nothing arrogant or bold in this request, but rather a ring of indifference or despair. It was as if he had said—“It doesn’t matter whether you say yes or no, or whether I sit down or move on, or drop dead by the way. The end is not far off either way.”
“Oh, ay, sit as lang as ye like; ye’re welcome,” said the toll-keeper, heartily. “You look like you had come a far way?”
“I have, sir—a matter of four hundred miles,” said the white-haired tramp, knitting his brows; then recovering himself, he said in his former quiet tones, “I suppose you couldn’t let me have a penn’orth of tobacco? I’ve on’y a penny left.”
“Hout, ay;” and the toll-keeper brought a liberal length of roll tobacco, which the weary traveller grasped eagerly and paid for promptly with his penny. He bit off a piece and chewed it fiercely, his eye resting steadily the while on the face of one of the toll-keeper’s children, a rosy-cheeked girl of seven or eight, who was gazing on the gaunt face and figure in a species of awe.
“It’s good for killing hunger,” he observed, with his eye still meditatively fixed upon the child; “not that I’ve felt much of it,” he hastily added, as if in fear that the toll-keeper would think that he meant to beg; “I haven’t had time to think of that. That’s a pretty child,” he abruptly added, alluding to the girl.
“Yes, but she’s not looking so well as she did,” answered the toll-keeper, with a father’s pleased look at the compliment. “We nearly lost her with fever a while ago.”
“Imphm!” grimly returned the white-haired tramp. “Mebbe some day you’ll wish she had been taken. She’ll grow up to a fine lass, and then some one will envy you of your bonny flower and crush it up in his fingers, never thinking or caring to think that your heart’s inside of it. You’ll go mad, then, and think how happy you could have been smoothing the turf on her grave when she was a little child.”
“God forbid!” fervently exclaimed the toll-keeper, catching the child up in his arms, as if to shield her there.
“God? What’s God got to do with it, I’d like to know?” cried the white-haired tramp, with his hard tones rising to a despairing snarl. “Is there any God? I never see him, though there’s plenty of devil about—that everybody can see with their eyes shut. Look you, sir!” he added, clenching one bony hand and smiting the palm of the other in fearful excitement, “I’ve done with God for ever! When my girl was like that little one I used to go to church o’ Sundays, and feel pious and good, and have my heart full of softness and gratitude. I’ve felt as if I could have took the whole world into my arms to bless it. But that’s all gone now, and the devil’s the one I speak to. He’s been with me all the way, cheering and helping me over the weary miles, and I won’t turn agen him now when I’m near the end of it.”
The toll-keeper shrank back before the terrible words and sudden hurricane of passion which convulsed the speaker; then he gathered the two children in his arms, and said softly to them—
“Run round into the garden, bairns, and pull some bonnie flowers, and make a fairy’s feast in a corner, with rose leaves for plates. I’ll come round and see it when it’s done. Haste ye now!” and, with a kiss and a smile, he dismissed them.
“Excuse me, sir; I forgot about the little uns,” said the tramp, falling back into his former subdued tones, and evidently perfectly understanding the toll-keeper’s haste to get the children out of hearing. “I’ve seen the day when I’d ’a’ been horrified at such words myself. It’s the way the world goes. We’ve good occasion to look mercifully on them as is far down, ’cause we may get into their state afore we die. I knew a man once—a Methody he was—who preached a sermon on that man that was hanged for killing his sweetheart up in London. It would have done you good to hear it—how he pitched into that poor chap in the condemned cell. Well, that same Methody quarrelled with a man about some furniture, and went home and got a log of wood, and came back and struck the other over the head till he died, and he was had up for murder, and convicted and hanged for it, as sure as you stand there. I wondered, when I saw him brought out, if he had been pitching into himself when he was in the condemned cell;” and the white-haired tramp laughed a hard, sardonic, unmusical laugh, without a vestige of merriment in the sound.
The toll-keeper fidgeted uneasily, and began to wish this man of such changing moods gone.
“Are you going far?” he asked, wishing to change the subject.
“I’m going on—on—to be hanged,” said the stranger, absently; then, recovering himself on noting the toll-keeper’s look of horror, he said, abruptly, “What do you call this ’ere town?”
The toll-keeper named the place.
“That’s it!” cried the tramp, rousing up and speaking with a kind of triumphant ferocity. “That’s the place—I’m not going far past that. I’ve come to find a man out and pay a debt.”
To pay a debt!—a man who had just parted with his last penny! The toll-keeper’s suspicions were confirmed—the old man’s brain was affected; his wrongs, if he had any, had deprived him of reason. At this stage there came an interruption to their conversation from a field on the opposite side of the road. There was no gate or stile at that part of the field, but over the wall there came clambering a gamekeeper and a gentleman, who had evidently been hard at work with the gun among the woods and coverts further back. The gamekeeper, after a word or two from his companion, walked on with the heavy bag of game, while the gentleman strolled forward familiarly to the toll-keeper’s door, wiping the sweat from his brow, and looking almost as tired as the tramp there seated. As he did so, the tramp noted what a fine face the gentleman owned—not so very pretty or finely proportioned, but full of sympathy and gentle courtesy, and altogether likeable and attractive even to a man old, soured, and broken in spirit.
“A warm day, John,” the new-comer said, with just one swift passing glance at the tramp on the bench. “A glass of lemonade, as quick as you can, for I’m dying of thirst.”
“Will you no come in an’ sit doon, sir?” returned the toll-keeper, obsequiously.
“No, thank you—this will do nicely. Now, hurry!” and the gentleman seated himself easily beside the tramp on the bench, where they formed a queer contrast—the tramp old and done, the gentleman in the full flush of youth and strength, and evidently with everything at his command that could make man happy.
“A warm day this,” he added pleasantly to the white-haired tramp. “You look tired and thirsty too. Will you have a drink with me? John, another glass of lemonade and some biscuits,” he imperatively called out, as the tramp refused the proffered gift, with an instinctive touch at his fore-lock. The lemonade was brought and decanted, the first glass being handed to the gentleman, who politely handed it to the white-haired tramp, who, with another protest, not quite so firm as the first, and the words, “Long life to you, sir!” placed the grateful beverage to his lips and drank it off, the gentleman then following his example. The biscuits had been brought out on a tray, and the frank sportsman lifted one of these, and then crammed the remainder bodily into the hands of the tramp.
“Eat away; I only want a bite. I shall be having dinner when I get home,” he said, in a careless, yet kindly manner, which disarmed the gift of anything calculated to offend the most sensitive. “You’re English, I think?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the white-haired man, in so soft a tone that the toll-keeper felt inclined to rub his eyes to see if it was really the same man.
“London way, eh?” continued the gentleman, toying with the biscuit.
“Yes, sir—Rotherhithe,” said the tramp, eating as if he had not eaten for some time.
“Ah, I’ve been often there myself—a fine place,” said the gentleman, with kindling eyes; and then they talked pleasantly of London and its attractions, the gentleman never once showing by word or look that he considered the tramp his inferior. At length he rose to go, took up his gun and paid the toll-keeper, and then, with a pleasant nod to both toll-keeper and tramp, he walked off towards the town.
The tramp looked after him in silence, munching the while at one of the biscuits.
“Who is that?” he said at length, with less gloom on his face and bitterness in his tones.
“Oh, that’s young Gowlieden.”
“Gowlieden? Good heavens! what a name to go to bed with!” said the tramp. “Well, anyway, he’s a good fellow; God bless him, and send more of his kind into this hard world!”
“Gowlieden isn’t his real name,” said the toll-keeper with a smile. “It’s the name of one of his father’s estates, and it’s our fashion here in Scotland to give the big folks the name of their land. That’s the heir, you know, and we call him young Gowlieden. His real name is Stephen Barbour. They live at a place called Frearton Hall, on the other side of the town.”
“What!”
The tramp had started to his feet, and given out the word with a shout which almost drove the breath out of the toll-keeper’s body.
“Yes, Frearton Hall—what’s wrong with that?” stammered the toll-keeper.
“And Stephen Barbour, you say, is his name?” cried the tramp, with every feature of his face gradually overspreading with horror and loathing.
“Yes, that is his name.”
“My God!” moaned the white-haired tramp, snatching the bite from his own mouth and dashing it down on the road, and then trampling on it with insensate fury; “my God! and I broke bread with him, and took the drink from his hands, and thought him so kind and noble-looking! And I said ‘God bless him,’ not knowing any better. Why did the words not blister on my tongue?”
“You know him, then? You have met the young laird before?” said the astonished toll-keeper.
“Never, never! But I know him, the scoundrel! I know him too well.”
“He’s no scoundrel,” cried the toll-keeper, warmly. “He’s as good and true a man as any that breathes. Everybody likes him far or near, and never yet did I hear any but yourself say a word against him.”
The tramp did not seem to hear the words. He sent the last of the biscuits skimming as far as he could throw them, and, wringing his hands, he dropped on his knees on the dusty road.
“Forgive me, Meg, forgive me!” he muttered in a frantic fashion, with his thoughts evidently far away. “How could I know any better?”
Tears were flowing down his cheeks, and these stopped the harsh words which were rising to the lips of the toll-keeper. The tramp tugged out a ragged handkerchief to wipe away the tears, and in doing so dragged out something hard and shiny, which dropped with a metallic clank on the road. The toll-keeper looked round just in time to see that the dropped article was a pistol, which the tramp was hurriedly putting out of sight again. All his sympathy vanished at the sight of the weapon.
“You had better be going,” he said coldly, “for if the police saw you carrying that, they’d soon give you a place to sleep in.”
“I’m going,” said the tramp calmly, rising and moving off. “I haven’t far to go now. Oh, if I had only known!”
Thus he limped away, still wiping his eyes with the ragged handkerchief; and if the county constable had chanced to pass the spot that night, the toll-keeper would certainly have warned him to look after the mad old man, as he thought him. As it was, he got leave to go on to the town, and further. On the north side of the place, and but half a mile from the toll, Frearton Hall stood within its own grounds. There was a lodge at the entrance, kept by the gamekeeper already alluded to, but if the tramp entered there, he had opened the gate and walked in unseen. The dinner at the hall was just over when one of the servants brought a message, which she whispered into the ear of the young laird.
“Wants to see me? Who is he? Did he give no name?” he was heard hurriedly to say.
“No, sir; and he’s such an awful-like man—just like a tramp or a beggar,” answered the girl.
“A tramp? Oh, I see! Is he old and white-haired?” said the gentleman, remembering the scene at the toll-keeper’s house, and the queer character he had assisted there. “Excuse me; I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to the others in the room; and he ran out, expecting to find the man in the hall.
“He wouldn’t come in; he said he’d wait outside,” said the girl, noticing her young master’s look of disappointment. “P’r’aps he’s away by this time.”
The young laird stepped briskly through the hall and looked out into the dusk. The sun had just set, and there was still light enough to see any one near the spot. At the head of the walk leading to the house there was a clump of laurels and a drooping ash, and Stephen Barbour fancied he saw a white-haired head look out from behind that, and quickly cleared the space to find his suspicions correct. The queer tramp stood before him, with his right hand hidden down among the rags by his side.
“Oh, it’s you again?” said the gentleman frankly, at the same time extending his hand to be shaken.
“You’re Stephen Barbour, eldest son of Russel Barbour, aren’t you?” said the tramp, taking no notice of the proffered hand, and glaring on the young man with a ferocity which startled the other.
“I am, sir—what then?”
“Then I’ve come to pay you back for what you did to Meg,” said the old man, with suppressed fury. “Take that!” and instantly he raised his right hand, and a pistol-shot rang out on the soft evening air.
Quickly as the hand was raised the victim had time to throw out his own in a futile grasp at the old man’s arm; then, when the bullet reached him, though desperately wounded, Barbour, with a loud cry, threw himself upon his assailant, grasping him tightly in his arms as if he would have squeezed the breath out of the man’s body. The tramp had made no attempt to escape, and probably meant to make none; but the grasp annoyed him, and he struggled violently for a moment, and at length, as the senses of the wounded man were leaving him, succeeded in throwing Barbour backwards. At the same moment a coachman, turning a corner of the house with a pitchfork in his hands, ran forward to learn the cause of the disturbance, and seeing his young master in the act of being thrown down by a ragged tramp, he ran at the old man full tilt with the prongs of the fork, one of which passed clean through the tramp’s arm.
This assault seemed to rouse the old man to a pitch of insane fury, which gave him an unnatural strength. He rushed at the coachman, wrenched the pitchfork from his hands, smashed him furiously over the head with the long pole, and then, throwing down the new weapon, turned and vanished.
The spectacle which met the eyes of the alarmed household when they rushed out was that of two men lying prostrate on the ground, with the pitchfork and pistol near them, and the first impression naturally was that the coachman in an insane moment had turned and attacked his young master. In a minute or two the true state of affairs was made known; the wounded man was borne into the house, and messengers despatched in every direction in search of the murderous assailant. From the first the medical man summoned gave very little hope of Barbour’s recovery, and positively forbade him being questioned in any way. But when the news of the crime had been sent to Edinburgh, and I went out to get the facts of the case, the toll-keeper had spoken to the county constable of all that took place at the door, and, after a visit to that worthy, I thought I had the true solution of the mystery, which was far from being the case. During some of his visits to London the young heir had met the old tramp’s daughter; the usual heart-rending result had followed, and the visit of the father had been undertaken solely for revenge. That was my view of the case, and in spite of the deadly determination with which that vengeance had been wreaked, my sympathy lay more with the poor father than his victim. To my surprise, however, both the toll-keeper and the county police strongly dissented from my opinion. Stephen Barbour, they strenuously declared, was quite incapable of such villainy. His character was singularly pure, and his whole life had been known to these men to be honourable and upright. From the lowest to the highest, every one had a good word for Stephen Barbour, and at the time of the shooting he was about to be married to a gifted young lady, who for years had been sole mistress of his affections. Without troubling to argue the point I set out to trace the murderer. Edinburgh was not a great distance from the scene of the attack, and the nearest large city, and my experience is that a genuine red-handed murderer always seeks safety among the masses of the biggest town within reach, unless he can at once leave the country. This one was poor—his last penny had been expended—therefore he could not go far quickly. I returned to Edinburgh, and the same afternoon met a man at the Night Asylum who had given the old tramp twopence, and a bit of white cotton to bind round his wounded arm. He had come upon him at the roadside near the city trying to remove the ragged coloured handkerchief with which he had bound up the arm, and which he was afraid might poison the wound.
On getting this news I started for the South Side, and had got as far as Minto Street, when, looking up one of the quiet streets leading towards St Leonards, I saw a tramp seated on a gate step, and moved up to have a look at him. So minutely had the man been described to me, that I recognised him at a glance. He was seated on the step holding his wounded arm, and staring straight before him in despair and apathy, his face white as his hair, and his whole expression that of a man longing for death to end his troubles.
I stopped before him, and when his dull eyes at length rose to meet my own, I said to him sharply—
“You were out at Frearton Hall last night?”
A slight flush came into his bloodless face at the words, and he faintly tried to rise.
“Yes, sir,” he answered. “You’re a pleeceman, though you don’t wear the clothes?”
“Take care what you say—it’ll all be used against you,” I said, as I gave him my hand to help him to his feet.
“Oh, I don’t mind that a bit,” he said in a woeful and weary way that went straight to my heart. “Is he dead?—the man I fired at—is he dead?”
“He was not when I left him, but they’re expecting that,” I curtly answered. “Can you walk with me to the Central—it’s more than a mile—or would you need a cab?”
“I’m willin’ to walk as far as my strength will carry me,” he said, with child-like obedience, as he took my arm for support. “Only to think that I’ve been an honest working man, striving to do what’s right all my life, and yet to come to be hanged for murder after all! And I’m not sorry, either. I’m glad I’ve killed him, for I expect my Meg to die through him.”
I looked at him curiously, thinking that his mind was affected, but the quick eyes took in the look at once, and he added—
“I’m not touched here;” and he put a finger-point to his forehead; “don’t think that. I’m as right in the head as you are—only worn out and done. I was strong enough till it was all over, and then I seemed to have not the strength of a sparrow.”
I thought he was right, and at the end of the street hailed a cab from the stance, and we drove to the Central, he looking out on the crowded streets with great interest, and making another of his queer remarks.
“I s’pose it’s the last time I’ll see so many people till I’m brought out to be hanged,” he said, stolidly. “Well, it won’t be any worse than what I’ve felt already here—here;” and he put his hand on his breast and quickly added, “Be you a family man, now?”
I nodded gravely.
“And you don’t look a bad ’un—you didn’t kick me or pull me about as I’ve seen some do, never thinkin’ they’ll be old themselves one day. You’ve a gal, mebbe?—one you’ve sort o’ set your heart on!” he added, hooking his bony fingers on one of my arms and fixing me with those searching eyes of his. “How’d you feel if any one stole her out of your bosom, and ruined her, and cast her at your feet—a poor, bleeding, crushed thing, ready to lie down and die? Wouldn’t you feel like killing that man? I see it in your face. Well, that’s just how I felt; we’re both alike, only that I’ve done it, and you haven’t come to that yet.”
At the Office he quietly and calmly gave his name as Philip Huddlestone, and when asked if he had any statement to make, he said—
“I’ve nothing to say but that I shot the man, and that I’m not sorry I did it. I’m only a poor man, a journeyman painter by trade, but I’ve my feelings the same as the richest. I’ve a daughter I set my heart on, and though she was only a barmaid, you mustn’t think she wasn’t good and pure. That man—him that I shot, and ain’t sorry for—met her at the bar, and got talking to her about love and nonsense, and kept telling her of his estate that he’d come into when his father died, and of the money he had coming to him. Well, the poor gal didn’t know no better, and made up to run away with him to Paris. He was to marry her there, and I believe did go through some affair of the kind to blind her eyes when he saw she was set on coming back if he didn’t. But then the law ain’t strong enough there to make it binding in England, and he knowd she was no more his wife in this country than I am. Well, he kept her till he was tired of her, and then bolted and left her. She got helped across the water, and then came back to her poor old dad. I didn’t know my own gal—my own flesh and blood. I think she’s dying, and I left her in safe hands while I came up to Scotland to see her righted. She sent me to do that, but she didn’t know I meant to do it with a pistol. I walked most of the way, ’cause we’re very poor, and I’m not so able to work as I used to be.”
That was the substance of the prisoner’s declaration, and, after emitting the same, he was taken away and locked up, his wounded arm being first properly dressed. But before a week had elapsed there came a surprise for us all. The wounded man had so far recovered as to be able to receive an account of the prisoner’s declaration, when he expressed the most unbounded astonishment, and emphatically denied all knowledge of the circumstances. That he spoke the truth few could doubt, for it was ascertained beyond question that Stephen Barbour had not been in Paris for more than a year. The complication seemed so mysterious, and the statements of both men remained so emphatic, that a messenger was despatched to the prisoner’s home, and that man found the daughter as emphatic in her statements as her father, and in the end brought her to Scotland to see the wounded man whom she claimed as her lawful husband. This step proved a wise one, for on the poor girl being introduced to the invalid, she at once cried out—
“That is not Stephen Barbour—he is like him, but older and fairer.”
This answer gave the old laird the first clue to the mystery. His second son, a fast youth whom it was impossible to keep at home, spent most of his time in London, and often got into good society by passing himself off as the eldest son and heir. Thus he had been introduced to the pretty barmaid, and by the name of Stephen he had been married to her in Paris.
This, his latest piece of villainy, plunged the whole family into grief, involving as it did not only the family honour, but almost costing his innocent and beloved brother and another man their lives.
So enraged were his relatives that the case was given into the hands of the police, and Adam Barbour, to his profound disgust and surprise, was arrested in London, and tried and convicted of false impersonation, for which he was sent for three months to prison.
Stephen Barbour made a good recovery, and was able at the trial of Huddlestone to speak so feelingly and kindly of the prisoner, that all—even the accused—were moved, and the sentence was the light one of nine months’ imprisonment. The daughter Meg was cared for by the Barbours, and ultimately, I believe, on the death of the man she had married, received the second son’s portion, supplemented by a handsome addition from Stephen Barbour. Her father rejoined her in London at the expiry of his sentence; but either the excitement of his journey to Scotland, or the prison life which followed it, had been too much for his slender frame, and he scarcely saw the end of the year.