AFTER THE FIRE.
EFORE daybreak next morning John Hatfield had taken Count Litvinoff's advice, and he and several others who had borne an active part in the night's work had shaken the dust of Thornsett off their feet and taken their departure in various directions. Had they not been quite so precipitate their leave-taking might have been more dignified and less secret, for Litvinoff's confidence in his own powers of diplomacy had been more than justified. When, somewhat to his chagrin, his eloquence failed to reconcile Roland Ferrier to the idea of taking no legal steps to punish the intending incendiaries—for, in spite of the way in which the Count had watered the story down, Roland had managed to get a pretty accurate idea of the truth—he made a hasty journey over to Aspinshaw. He found Miss Stanley in a state of great excitement about the events of the night before, of which she had heard a very much embroidered and highly-coloured version.
'Oh, Count Litvinoff,' she said, coming forward to meet him, 'I am so glad you have come. I have just sent two of the servants down to Thornsett to find out who was hurt. Mr Clarke, of Thorpe, has just been here, and told us that you saved so many lives last night.'
'Saved so many lives last night!' repeated Litvinoff. 'They must have been the lives of rats and mice, then.' And he gave her a plain and unvarnished account of the whole story, from the interview of the deputation with Roland to his own visit to the man he had cut down. He had the very rare faculty of telling the exact truth in a particularly exciting way—any adventure in which he had been personally engaged he always told from some point of view not his own—so that the hearer saw him playing his part in the scene rather than heard the chief adventurer recounting his adventures.
As he skilfully put before her the picture of the one man facing the infuriated crowd, he could see her eyes sparkle with sympathy, and could read interest and admiration in her face.
'And so you were not hurt, after all?' she said. 'I am so glad. But what of the men? Will they be punished? They've got themselves into trouble, I'm afraid, poor fellows.'
'Ah!' he answered, meeting her questioning glance with an earnest expression on his serious face. 'It was about them I came to speak to you. Our friend Ferrier is determined, not unnaturally perhaps, to resent and to punish last night's madness. I've done my utmost to reason him out of his resolve to be avenged on these poor fools, but he's not in a humour to listen to reason. It will need something stronger than that to induce him to let the men escape the natural consequences of their folly.'
'Oh, but Hatfield—surely he'd not punish him?'