He evaded a mob of journalists at the door of the hotel, and reached Oxford after the winter sun had set, driving to the infirmary in a scurry of snow. In an ante-room he explained his mission to the matron, who seemed much relieved that he had come.
“He’s been asking about you all day, and begging us to tell him if you had been released,” she said. “It’s almost as though he were clinging on to life until he knew you were safe. He’s a poor, half-witted creature. It’s a mercy he is dying.”
Jim was taken into a small room leading from one of the large wards; and here, in the dim light of a green-shaded electric globe, he saw a nurse leaning over the sick man’s bed. He saw the poacher’s red hair, now less towsled than he had known it in the open, and of a more pronounced colour by reason of its washing and combing; he saw the drawn features, and the shut eyes; he saw the rough, hairy hands lying inert upon the white quilt: and for a moment he thought he had arrived too late.
The matron, however, exchanged a whispered word with the nurse; and presently a sign was made to him to approach. He thereupon seated himself at the bedside, and laid his hand upon Smiley’s arm.
For some moments there was silence in the room; but at length the little pig-like eyes opened, and Jim could see the sudden expression of relief and happiness which at once lit up the whole face.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” the dying man whispered. “I didn’t know they’d taken you. If I’d ha’ known that, I’d ha’ told them at once. I thought you was safe in them furrin lands; and when your lady come yesterday and said they’d cotched you and put you in the lock-up, I thought I’d go clean off it, I did.”
Jim pressed his hand. “Smiley,” he said, “why did you do it?”
“Seemed like it was the only way,” he replied. “When I come back into the woods to wait for you, I heerd you and her talking, and I listened; and then I heerd her say as ’ow she’d make your name stink in the nostrils of every gen’l’man, and I knew you couldn’t never be rid o’ she. Then her come running past where I was a-hiding, and her tripped up and fell. Fair stunned, her was. I thought her was dead, her lay that still. So I reckoned I’d make sure. I did it quick, with a stone. Her made no sound.”
“But why did you do it?” Jim repeated.
Smiley-face grinned. “Because you was my friend, and her was your enemy. Because I remembered your face that day when you was a-weeping down there in the woods, and a-longing to be free again.”