There was no reply.
“Well,” said Tuke, “I perceive this is a point you are sensitive of. Leave it unanswered, then.”
The man looked up gratefully.
“If you will only rest content, sir, with this—that he desired to wean me from honest courses, which failing, he pursued me with all the hatred of his heart.”
“A piece of unconscionable villainy. And had he taken you from other honest employ for the purpose?”
“It was so, sir. I was drudge hitherto in a lads’ school in old Melcombe Regis by the sea.”
“Ah!—well, you happened on Mr. Creel, and——”
“Heaven favour the good gentleman. How he had the news I know not. But so, it seemed, he represented the succeeding owner of ‘Delsrop.’ Sir, I crept back for food. Though the place was my horror and my despair, I had no stomach, feckless creature that I was, to force a living elsewhere. I crept back, and something drove me to tell Mr. Creel my whole unhappy tale. And he believed and pitied me, and put me in charge of the house that had been my bane and my prison. And here have I dwelt ever since; at first in great terror that the men would return, but gradually learning a sad serenity as the years passed and nought occurred to discomfort me.”
“And how would you account for your immunity from further trouble?”
“Ah!—twas e’en that they durst not return to the scene of their crime while yet the hue was up. And so, maybe, with such villains, one came to be hanged and another transported, till all were gone—all but him they called bloody Jack Fern, who hath reappeared after twenty peaceful years, to renew the search.”