Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

Katerfelto started, looking about uneasily, for Dick Boss and his satellites. "Hush! good Master Gale," said he; "a man may have more names than one, and I am known as Father Constant here. The person you speak of fled the country a week ago. You owe him some gratitude, or I am mistaken. 'Twould be a scurvy trick to lay the bloodhounds on his track."

"Never fear, man!" answered the Parson, heartily. "Safe and undisturbed as a November stag shalt thou remain, so long as thou harbourest with us? 'Tis but a cast of thy trade I am asking thee, as though I bade Fin Cooper do me a bit of tinkering on a worn-out kettle. We must have thee down at Porlock to stop a hole in a man's life. Fin is putting a saddle on the sure-footed roan even now. I take no denial, Master Katerfelto. If you come not of good will, I shall carry you thither by force."

"Needs must, when the devil drives," answered the other; "and the proverb seems to hold good with a West-country parson. But, I pray you, let us ride softly and fairly. Lancets and scalpels are none the better for shaking, and I had as lief be hanged by King George, as break my neck in a Devonshire bog!"

Nervous of temperament, loving his ease, and unaccustomed to the saddle, there yet lurked in Katerfelto that professional instinct which seems to pervade every disciple of the healing science. He left his dinner unfinished for a scamper over the moor, regretful indeed, yet with admirable promptitude in the hope of saving a fellow-creature's life. He had practised medicine and surgery before he took to conspiracy and imposition, entertained sufficient confidence in his own skill, believing it greater than it was; and, but for the Parson's reckless speed, and the rough nature of the ground they traversed, would have experienced a doctor's gratification in the excitement of a new case, and the exercise of his art. But that rushing, reckless, headlong ride put to flight all thoughts save those of immediate self-preservation. Fin Cooper's roan, no matter how he came by it, was a swift and sure-footed galloway, with a hard mouth and a determined will of its own. The Parson had no sooner mounted, than he urged his horse to a gallop, and proceeded at that pace up and down the steepest hills, along the most broken paths, over the roughest ground, and through the tallest heather without pause or hesitation; while the galloway, not to be outdone, followed close in its leader's track, now leaping a hidden ditch, now swerving sharply aside to avoid a ravine, anon plunging through a bog up to its girths, with snorts of emulation and defiance. Finally, when the Parson came to an abrupt halt in the gloom of Horner Woods, it bumped against his horse's quarters with a jerk, that fairly shot Katerfelto out of the saddle on its neck and ears.

"I pray you give me a moment's breathing space," urged the discomfited rider as he shuffled back into his seat, "else I warn you, Master Gale, you will bring the dead to heal the living when we arrive at our patient's door!"

"Where there's life, there's hope," answered the Parson, who, in his abstraction, regarded his companion's distress no more than the difficulties in their way. "We are close at hand now. I can hear the tide whispering in the bay. Oh! Master Katerfelto, rescue me this one man from the grasp of death, and ask Abner Gale what you will in return. I am not so bad as you think, and—and—bad as I am, I never went back from my word!"

"I'll do my best," promised the other, observing, with exceeding gratification, that their horses' hoofs now rang on a sound, hard road, and that the scanty lights which marked the village of Porlock were within a quarter of a mile.

Dismounting at old Carew's door, the Parson ushered Katerfelto into Nelly's presence, and while he felt reassured to learn that her grandfather was still alive, could not but mark with deep concern the ravages a few hours of distress and vexation had made on the sweet face of his promised wife. He seemed, however, to recognise one consolation in the midst of all his troubles and anxieties—John Garnet must be far enough off by this time, and there was nothing more to fear from the rival, whose absence he had purchased at the price of his own revenge. In his self-satisfaction, the Parson almost fancied himself a benevolent and forgiving man, with virtues only now coming to maturity, who deserved to be happy because he was good.

Establishing the Doctor in Carew's house, under his grand-daughter's care, Abner Gale had the grace to take his own departure without delay, and rode home through the dark, elated at the successful issue of his enterprise, and the matrimonial prospects opening before him, but unmoved by Nelly's wan looks and obvious misery, as by the north wind that blew so keen at his back in angry gusts, powdering the sleeves of his riding-coat with something whiter than sleet, something, that a month later in the year he would have called snow.