Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

THE BROM-WATER MYSTERY

It is wonderful how soon a thing is forgotten, or at least put on a shelf in people's memories. Poor Harry Foster, for example! There was a man now—a man murdered in the discharge of his duty, if ever a man was. And after a month or two another man was travelling the same road with a new mail cart and new sacks of letters, as quiet as water going down a mill-lade. The only difference was that he started a while later in the morning than poor Harry, after it was daylight, in fact, so that the Bewick people had to wait, often till midday, before they got their letters.

And when they made complaint to the Postmaster-General, or some other big-wig, he up and said to them, "You Bewickers, it is open to you to choose one of yourselves to bring up the mails from Breckonside, running the risk of Harry Foster's fate and providing a sufficient guarantee for any loss the post office run by Her Royal High Majesty may sustain."

Something like that he said. But no Bewicker offered. Of course not—why, they had skin creeps at the very thought.

"So," says the post official big-wig, "you Bewick cowards, be good enough to shut up and take your letters when they are sent out to you."

Still there were people who kept thinking about poor Harry for all that. And I was one of them. Elsie did not seem to care so much, or at least so long. Did you never observe that you can't keep a girl long interested in the same thing, unless you keep on telling her all the time how much prettier she is getting to look? But I did not know even that much, not then. I was just mortal green—green as father's spare pasture field after three days' steady rain and one of May sunshine. And, indeed, to tell the truth outright, I thought altogether too much at that time about people, and too little about my Latin and Greek prose, as Mr. Mustard, who was a good classic himself, often told me. He said I should rue it. But I can't say I have ever gone as far as that. Not to date, anyway. Perhaps I may some day, when I start reading Latin to pass the time.

The adventure grew more interesting to me after the policeman and detectives had one by one all cleared off. The affair was "classed," as the French say in their crime books—I learned my French out of these, and a jolly easy way, too—that is, the police were not going to do anything more in the matter, unless something fresh turned up. And it would have to be something mighty fresh, too, to move them. They had all got so sick of the whole business.

There was just one thing that kept me back. That was, I was nearly sure that Elsie's grandfather had something to do with the whole series of crimes of which the death of poor Harry was only the last and the most senseless. Perhaps not Mr. Stennis directly, but somebody about Deep Moat Grange. So, of course, I did not want to bring Elsie into it if I could help it. Because if her grandfather was a murderer, and if all the missing drovers and absconding cattle dealers were laid to his account, and he hanged for it, it would be clearly impossible for Elsie to go on living with Nance Edgar at the Bridge End. And as I was not yet ready to make other arrangements for her (besides being mortally afraid of the curate), I said nothing to any one—least of all to Elsie herself.

I think I had suspected everybody for miles round in turn—from Mr. Codling the policeman to the vicar himself. As for poor Mr. Ball, I had him so completely under observation, and was so sure of his guilt, that when the unfortunate bailiff went out only to fodder the cattle, I followed stealthily in his footsteps, sure that the secret of the mystery lay in the range of cattle sheds or under the pigs' feeding troughs. In the end I only managed to get a welting from father for coming home all muddy from head to foot—and not pleasant mud at that.

But really I did not mind. I was always glad when I got home safe. Now I know that I was taking my life in my hands every minute. Even then I had glimmerings of the fact. The folks of Breckonside might say, as they always did, that the killing of poor Harry was the work of some chance tramps, who would be far away by the next morning. But putting everything together, just as Sherlock Holmes used to do, I couldn't make it out at all. I had his spirit, but not his luck—no, not by any means his luck.

This, however, was what I made out. Harry had jogged on till he met with some one whom he knew, that is, almost immediately after he parted with Davie Elshiner, the poacher. He had talked, parleyed, and then accepted company. Then some one of these, sitting on the back seat of the dog cart, had covered up his mouth and butchered him most foully. After that no more was to be learned. The light vehicle which had bounded from side to side of the narrow drove-road had certainly been empty. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but my father and I know about horses and local conveyances. And we could see by the rebounding, the one wheel climbing the bank, and the other sinking in the slough, that if any one had been inside—nay any thing, the contents of the cart, be they what they would, must have been emptied out.

But Harry, the mail bags, even the parcels for Bewick, had completely disappeared. Nothing except the empty cart and the broad plane-tree leaves were ever seen again. It seemed so simple a thing to trace—a dead body, accounted no easy thing to make away with even professionally, a dozen bags of letters—many with negotiable values, of which the issuing bank had, luckily, reserved the numbers—tobacco in tins, cigarettes in boxes, sweets, sugar in cones, even a Stilton cheese for the old bachelor, Major Templand (retired), who cried out more about the loss of his Welsh rabbit than all the others put together. Clues—there were balls and wads of clues! Only, none of them led anywhere. Neither did the woods, through which there was no track of anything previous to those made by Mr. Stennis's pony the following day. Nothing either way along the road. No, I could put my hand on nothing and nobody. And I gave it up at last, sure nevertheless that it was somewhere about the house of Deep Moat that the solution must be looked for.

And, indeed, some light, such as it was, came from the last quarter from which it could be expected.

Mr. Ablethorpe arrived one fine summer afternoon at our place in Breckonside. I was playing in the backyard, half a dozen dogs tumbling over me. It had been intended that I should go out that afternoon with a van, but somehow one of the men had got back earlier from his morning round, and had been re-dispatched as more trustworthy. Also idleness in a boy was bad enough, but in a man paid weekly wages—insupportable.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Yarrow," cried the curate in his hearty voice, loud but not a bit preachy—I give him that due—"can I have your Joe an hour or two?"

"Have him and keep him, the lazy whelp," cried my father from the back shop, where he was busy writing up his books in his shirt sleeves. Then, laying down his pen where it would not roll over the page (which always roused him to crisply expressed anger), he came out to meet the young curate from the neighbouring parish of Breckonton. Upper or Over Breckonton was still more dependent on my father than my native Breckonside. There were other ways of getting supplies at Breckonside, at least for a time. But Over Breckonton was wholly dependent on my father's vans, carrier's carts, and general delivery of goods.

They shook hands with some heartiness. For though my father had a standing quarrel with both vicars he was always on the best of terms with the curates.

"What might you want him for, Mr. Ablethorpe?"

"Oh," said Mr. Ablethorpe, "the farmers are busy with their moor hay, you see, and I thought if Joe and I——"

"Say no more," cried my father, "you shall have him. And if he does not work like a good 'un, you tell it to me, that's all! I see now why the farmers of your parish call you the 'Hayfork' Minister!"

"Oh, they call me that, do they?" said the curate, not at all disguising his pleasure in the nickname, "well, I'm no great preacher, you know. So it is as well to make oneself of use some way!"

"That's right—that's right," cried my father, "I hope you will put a little of that teaching into the lazy bones of my young whelp. Joe! Ah, Joe, you villain! Come here! Don't skulk!"

As my father did really know where I was (and also because I was an obedient boy with a reverence for the fifth commandment of the Decalogue), I came immediately, greatly to the disappointment of the dogs, who thought themselves in for a good long romp. I found Mr. Ablethorpe explaining to my father that we were just going to call in at Brom Common Farm, to give Caleb Fergusson a lift with his hay—that Caleb was an old man, and would be the better of the assistance of two pairs of sturdy arms. Furthermore, it would keep Joe in training for the next cricket match—Breckonton and District v. Upper Dene Hospital it was.

"I don't know exactly how long we shall be, I tell you frankly," said the curate. "If old Caleb has nearly finished, Joe and I may take a walk before coming home. It won't do to have him getting slack, lying about the yard like this."

"That's all right," said my father, who was aching to get back to his books, and wished nothing better than to have me taken off his hands, "all serene! Don't you fret, Mr. Ablethorpe. Joe will be in good keeping along of you. I wish I could say as much of him always. He is a wandering, good-for-nothing wretch!"

That, you see, was my father's way of talking. He didn't mean anything by it. But the words just flowed naturally from him, and he could no more help abusing me, or, indeed, any of his men, than taking a snooze when sleepy in the afternoon.

The curate, who knew that barking keeps the teeth open and so prevents biting, simply laughed and said, "Well, come along, Joe! You are under my care and authority for this day, at any rate."

As for me, I was glad enough. For, but for Elsie, and the thought of my going to college in the late autumn, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe very well, as, for that matter, did nearly every one who knew him—except his vicar, who did not appreciate a young man being so popular; "stealing the hearts of his congregation from him," as he expressed it.

I was still gladder, because I knew that that afternoon there was not the least chance of seeing Elsie. She had gone up to read Latin and piles of hard books with Miss Martha Mustard, the dominie's sister, who was said to be far more learned even than he. At any rate, though not what you would call "honeysuckle sweet," she had at least a far better temper.

The curate and I set out. It was the selfsame road that Elsie and I had taken earlier in the year, on the May morning when we were the first to look inside poor Harry Foster's blood-stained mail cart.

But now the leaves were turning and drying, already brown at the edges, and splotched with yellow and green along the webbing inside. Soon our feet were on the heather, and I watched the curate to see if he would turn his head to take a look across at the little creeper-hidden cot at the Bridge End, where Elsie was not. But either he was on his guard, or he was as well aware as I myself of her absence. At any rate he never turned his head, but swung along with a jolly hillman's stride which it took me all my pith and length of limb to keep pace with.

And as we went he improved the occasion. Not like a common minister, who asks you if you have been a good boy and always tell the truth. Silly questions, as if the man had never been a boy himself!

But the curate said: "Now, look here, you are getting out of the way of going to church, just because of your father's silly quarrel with the vicar of your parish. That may be well enough for your father. He is a grown man, and can judge about these things as well as you or I. But it is different with a young fellow. He gets into bad habits. Oh, yes, I know you go sometimes to the Presbyterian chapel" (he actually used the word chapel!), "but you do that because Miss Stennis is your friend, and though, of course, anything is better than nothing——"

"It's as good as——" I was beginning hotly, when he interrupted me.

"Yes, yes," he cried hastily, "of course that is all right for those who are in it. But you are a Churchman and the son of a Churchman. I don't go hunting Presbyterians all over two parishes. But when I see a Churchman, and the son of a Churchman, in danger of drifting—well, I step over the line of my duty and speak my mind."

I answered nothing, for after all clergymen have a monopoly of that kind of talk. But I kept my wits about me. I thought he was going to ask me to come regularly to his church so as to keep me away from Elsie, but not a bit of him.

"What I want you to promise me is that when you go to Edinburgh you will lose no time in looking up a friend of mine, Harry Ryan, who has a church on the South Side. If you don't he will look you up. But I want you to go, on the principle of one volunteer being worth two pressed men. More than that, it will do you good, and if you have left any friends here in Breckonside they will, I am sure, be glad that you are being looked after a bit. I don't mean that your liberty will be interfered with in the least. It won't be interfered with half enough in these lecturing barrack-rooms they call Scotch universities. But any way, don't be afraid. Harry Ryan will see you through."

Well, I could say no less than that I would do as he said. And when I heard that Mr. Ryan was a good "cover," as well as a safe bat and change bowler, I thought I would risk it. Afterwards I found it would have been one of the best things I could do. Though, mind you, for all that there may have been some thought of Elsie in the back of Mr. Ablethorpe's mind. For there were heaps and heaps of pretty girls at Mr. Ryan's church, as I found out when I visited the city—all sorts, swell girls, villa girls, and shop girls (these last the prettiest). And he may have thought that among so many I would be almost certain to forget Elsie. He may, I say. I don't know that he did. Only—I should in his place.

Well, my curate, he went on like sticks a-breaking all about the difference between church and chapel, and how, though the Presbyterians were by law established in Scotland, they were only chapel people after all. And that there was only one Church, properly so called. Oh, a lot like that. And he got quite hot about it, because he had been in Scotland himself, and had been called a Dissenter by the parish minister. He had never got over this, and even now the remembrance of it made him ruffle up his hair like tossing moist meadow hay. Then he would start in to explain about it all over again.

I didn't mind, for I thought: "The more he cares for things like that 'Postolic Succession and 'Down with John Knox,' the less time will he have for meandering about Elsie." So I was pleased all right with what he said, though I didn't listen much. However, I promised to go to his friend's church in Edinburgh, and not to any of the Presbyterian "schism-shops." That was what he called them, for he pitched into them proper. Then he was as pleased as Punch, and looked upon me with a sort of air as if he owned me. I bet he took me for a brand plucked from the Presbyterian burning. You see, on the border of the two countries it is different from anywhere else. It is like drawing a chalk line, and both sides, Piskies and Presbies, spar up to it. They are always letting out at each other, while thirty miles inland they don't care a jujube about the matter, and even play golf together and smoke pipes on the sly after sermon. This is truth, and you can put it between the leaves of the Holy Book and swear on it.

Well, I told the curate I would go to his friend Harry Ryan's church—St. James the Less was the name of it. But I didn't say how often I would go! It is always well to keep a sort of anchor out, grappled in the hinterlands of your conscience, when you are promising in the dark, as I was that time.

All this time, when Mr. Ablethorpe was improving me and leading me in the way of the Thirty-nine Articles (no, not exactly—I forgot—he didn't like them; he thought he could have made much better ones, but in the way of the catechism and Prayer Book), we were legging it across big bare Brom Common. He would stop and argue, keeping me looking straight at him till the water came into my eyes. Then on he would go again, more set than ever on making a good Churchman out of me. I never saw anybody quite so certain that he was right as Mr. Ablethorpe. Why, he would have taken his Davy that even the best of Dissenters would only get into a kind of half-way house, back-stairs heaven, and might count themselves lucky if they were not sent flying altogether.

But all this got us over the ground pretty quick, and we were at old Caleb Fergusson's before we knew it. Then, just as we were going into the stackyard I remembered that old Caleb was a Presbyterian, and of the worst and toughest kind—Free Kirk elder right through to the back seam of his coat. So I asked curate how that was, and how he reconciled helping old Caleb with his conscience and all that he had been drilling into me.

But Mr. Ablethorpe only said, "Caleb Fergusson is a Presbyterian, it is true, and very obstinate and blinded. But he has a farm at too dear a rent, and has lost the only son who helped him in the working of it. So I go sometimes to give him a hand."

It was not a very logical explanation after what he had just been unlading into me. But all the same I liked him the better for it—jolly well, too.

We found Caleb just at the end of stacking his meadow hay, and very testy. He had his old wife out to help him. She was tottering on the edge of a rick, half-way up, and all the other help he had was a small boy grandson, whom he was making sorry that he had ever been born. I thought Caleb would have been glad to see us, and so I dare say he was. But his crusty Scotchness would not let him show it. Show it? No fear.

He let Mr. Ablethorpe take his fork, it is true, and ordered down his wife from the stack with the grumble that she had left "the hale affair as saft as saps!"

Then he turned and rated the curate for not coming earlier, if he meant to be any use.

"But it's just like you English Kirkers," he said. "Ye are at the fore wi' your chants and vain ceremonies, but when it comes to the halesome milk o' the Word—faith, but your coo's dry!"

I stood aghast. I expected such a volley from the fervid curate as would sweep the daring old man off the shafts of his red farm cart. But I did not know Mr. Ablethorpe yet.

"I am sorry, Caleb," he said meekly; "I meant to come earlier, but I had a few calls to make and a service to take——"

"Service, quo' he," snorted the old Free Kirker; "the rags o' Rome!"

"And besides," continued the curate, without troubling himself with the taunt, "there was so heavy a dew this morning that I did not think you would be leading till the afternoon!"

"Nae mair we wad, if Providence had left us the means o' waitin' till the hay was decently won. But what can a puir auld bereaved couple dae, hirplin' at death's door, baith the twa o' them?"

By this time I was on the stack, and the Hayfork Minister was sending me up armful after armful to settle into its place.

"Tramp, will ye!" shouted the old man; "that wife o' mine has gotten nae heavier on her feet than a cricket on the hearth, or a spider that taketh hold wi' her hands and is in king's pailaces! Tramp, laddie!"

So, as Mr. Ablethorpe forked the hay, I stepped sturdily round, till I, too, was fain to strip to my shirt, and even moisten the sweet-smelling bog hay with the sweat of my brow.

And while we worked old Caleb stood by, and, as he expressed it, "tightly tairged the Apiscopian on doctrine and the Scriptures." Mr. Ablethorpe was certainly at a disadvantage in a theological argument conducted from a hay cart (with a borrowed horse) against an assailant sitting crumbling tobacco into a pipe on the safe eminence of an upturned wheelbarrow.

"While we worked Old Caleb ... tightly tairged the 'Apiscopian' on Doctrine and the Scripture."

But the humility with which he listened to the old elder amazed me. It was not that he agreed with him. He carefully guarded against that. But he accepted many of the old Scot's positions, merely gliding in a saving clause by way of amendment, to salve his conscience, as it were, between two forkfuls of hay. Even these, however, were of no effect. For not only was Caleb a little deaf, but he never waited for a reply, and by the time that Mr. Ablethorpe had added his rider Caleb was far into yet another argument destined to the final destruction of the "rags of Rome, and all sic as put their trust in them!"

When work was over for the day, Mr. Ablethorpe would not stay for tea. He had to go farther, he explained, after dabbling his face in the water of the pump trough and wiping it with the fine white cambric handkerchief which I had so scorned.

Caleb accompanied us to the gate, and I looked for a profusion of grateful thanks. But I did not know my Scotsman. All he said was only, "The neist time ye come to gie a body a half-day fowin' (forking), come at an hour when we will get some wark oot o' ye!"

The curate laughed, and shook him by the hand cordially.

"A good old man," he said, as we walked off, "but dreadfully confirmed in his delusions."

"Why did you not tell him what you told me?" I made bold to ask.

Mr. Ablethorpe turned quickly and clapped me on the shoulder.

"I have not faith enough to remove mountains," he said, "but with a spade I can sometimes make a show at moving a molehill where it ought to go."

We continued on over the moor toward the Brom Water, where was the place that Poacher Davie Elshiner had done his fishing that morning of the loss of poor Harry Foster.

I asked Mr. Ablethorpe what we were to do there, and warned him that I had no wish to go nearer to the house of Deep Moat. So that if he counted on visiting his penitent Miss Aphra Orrin he would have to go alone.

"I am perturbed in my mind, and that's the truth," he said. "There is something strange along the branch of the river which flows into the Moat. I walked home that way yesterday, and I wish for your presence and assistance. Two can do so much more than one. Also, you know the locality, as well I know. I look to you to help me to solve the mystery which, to my mind at least, hangs over Brom Water."