CHAPTER VI.
"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly."
Macbeth, Act I, Sc. 6.
When Mr. Rainsfield parted from Mr. Billing, after escorting him to the junction of the Alma and Brompton roads, he returned home to carry out his contemplated arrangements; in the concatenation of which, his first step was to remove the stores from the building used as a store to an apartment in the house; and he had barely effected this, before Tom, his wife, and Kate returned. When the ladies retired in the evening Tom asked his brother if John Ferguson had been at Strawberry Hill in the morning; and how it was that he had not been seen by any other inmate of the house.
Rainsfield replied that John Ferguson had certainly been there in the morning; and that the cause of his not having been seen by the family was an interview that had taken place between himself and Ferguson by which he, Mr. Rainsfield, had learnt that the blacks were meditating some fresh outrage; and he would therefore be glad if Tom would undertake a mission to them to mediate a pacification.
Rainsfield was playing a deep and hazardous game, and he felt it himself. Even to his brother he had recourse to dissimulation to blind or divert him from a perception of a stratagem in which he was aware he could not procure Tom's concurrence. He therefore wished to get him out of the way while he worked his diabolical machinations. He knew that whatever the purpose of the blacks might be, they would not be diverted by the persuasion of Tom; and, as he naturally conceived their object to be pilfering, he intended to be perfectly prepared for them. At the same time he wished none of his own family to witness the preparations he was making.
"Very well," said Tom, "I will go to-morrow; for, to tell you the truth, I have myself thought for some time that they were hatching some mischief; and my suspicions were the more aroused when I witnessed, along with John Ferguson, their last corroboree. It struck me then, more than once, that I heard your name uttered by them in their song."