The old man, old not in years but old from privation, neglect, and mental suffering, sank back upon his pillow, and seemed to swoon away. I felt in a sore quandary. Here was I, alone in this remote cottage, with a man to all seeming at death’s door, little or no food in the house, no medicines or restoratives, and, to complicate matters, a box containing as my hasty rummage in it had disclosed, notes and gold of considerable value. Like most young people I had practically no knowledge of the treatment of the sick and I had an unreasoning terror of death. I knew enough, however, to feel sure that food and warmth and physic must be had and had at once. I made up a peat fire in the rusty range—the chimney smoked atrociously at first, but anon the damp was drawn out, and the fire glowed red and warm. I found some milk in a tin below stairs, which I judged had been left by some neighbouring farmer’s lass. I warmed it in a pan, and succeeded in getting my patient to swallow a few spoonfuls. I piled on to the bed all the covering I could find. I took from the store a spade guinea, carefully locked and stowed away beneath the bed that precious kist, and then, assuring, or trying to assure, the half-conscious sufferer that I wouldn’t be long gone, I hied me away across the moors to the “Floating Light.” There I purchased a bottle of brandy and such provisions as I thought most likely to be useful, and bribed a man I found drinking in the kitchen to make what speed he could down to Slaithwaite and bring back with him, at any cost, old William Dean, the doctor who had brought me and our Ruth into the world, and who cared the bodies of all the Colne Valley from Marsden to Milnsbridge Then, pretty heavily laden, or rather cumbered than laden, I set off once more for the hermit’s cottage.
Now, by this time the shades of night had begun to fall. There was no moon and few stars, and the track across the moor was none too plain, and I had to guide myself some extent by those turf covers those shooters put up when they are beating the grouse—landmarks I knew well from frequently passing that way. I was about midway to my destination when I heard a couple of gunshots in quick succession.
“Strange,” I thought. “It’s late hours for the shooters to be about. Happen it’s poachers, and if any of those gentry are about yon kist of gold’s none too safe, with no one but a dying man to guard it.”
It is curious that at this moment the thought of the Burnplatters crossed my mind—but they had an unenviable reputation, though, like enough, like a certain other personage, they were not as black as they were painted. Anyhow, I increased my pace almost to a run, but had hardly gone a score of yards when I was brought to a sudden stop by a sound that lifted the hair on my head. It was a deep moan, as of one in pain, followed by a petulant curse, and there was the heavy rustling as of a body dragging through the bracken and heather; another moan, and many another oath, and then silence.
Now, to be sure I’d enough on my hands with the sick parson, but I could not find it in my heart to leave a man, or maybe a woman, to perish on the moor, as wayfarers from Lancashire to Yorkshire, or t’other way about, often did in dark or fog. I had bought a pound of tallow dips at the “Floating Light,” for I’d no mind to sit out the night with my patient and ne’er the gleam of a light to company me withal. I put down my pack, and with much ado struck a light on my tinder box, and not a dozen yards ahead of me, near the track, sprawled, face downwards, the body of a man. I turned him over, dipped my kerchief in a pool of stagnant water, and mopped his forehead, forced some of that precious brandy down his throat, and had the satisfaction of hearing a deep sigh and a quick stream of profanity, which, however, I’m fain to confess was as tuneful to my ears as choicer language for when a man’s swearing he’s not like to die.
“Wheer am I, an’ who are ta?” And the man, raising himself with a grunt on to his elbow, peered into my face by the flickering light of the dip. “If it isn’t little Abe.” Now I was by no means little, but I suppose Ephraim—for Ephraim it was, sure enough as I had seen when I turned him over—still thought of me as the urchin he had companied with as a lad.
“You’re on Stanedge Moor, and how you got here and what you’re doing in this coil you known best—up to no good I reckon,” I said testily, for no man of my inches likes calling little. “Seems to me the question is, being here, how to get away. Are you hurt? You made noise enough.”
“Hurt! Aw sud think I am. Howd that silly light to my fooit—th’ reight ’un. Poo’ mi clog off if yo’ can, it’s swelled an’ all th’ daggers i’ hell’s shooitin’ through it. Tak’ this knife an’ cut th’ clog off, an’ don’t be feart of a drop o’ blood.”
I did as I was bid. “Gi’ me th’ clog, man—it’ll n’er do to leave it on th’ moor for a tell-tale. Not but what th’ varmint knew weel enough who they were shooitin’ at.”
“Th’ varmint?” I queried.