Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

"Blush!" repeated John Garnet, and perhaps because their faces were so near together, the blushing seemed all on the other side. "I would never blush to own a true friend; and Waif, my pretty lass, you have proved yourself more than a friend to-day. You say that I am in danger; I know well enough that I soon shall be; but my head is out of the halter as yet, and I see not how you could help if it were in!"

"Out of the halter!" said Waif. "How little you fear and how little you seem to care! Do you think I was not listening at the door when Abner Gale came to the Patron thirsting for the man's blood who took his brother's life? You know not our people, John Garnet, nor the gifts that nature bestows on us, instead of hearth and home, bed and board, gold and silver, houses and land. Do you believe the gipsy can forget a path once trod, a voice once heard, a face once seen? I was dancing in Taunton Fair, when Abner Gale, one of your priests, as you call them, tossed me a bit of silver, with a coarse laugh and a brutal jest. The gipsy has no feelings to wound, no character to sustain, no honour to defend, but she has the instincts and the memory of a dog for friend or foe! Parson Gale had better have bitten his tongue through and kept his silver in his pocket. I know his home, his habits, his haunts, his vices, as I know my own ten fingers. I listened because I hated him. But when I heard more, I listened on, because—because I loved you!"

It was wrong, no doubt, scandalous, shocking, if not entirely without excuse; but something in the proximity of those two young faces again made the girl blush deeper than before.

"There are no secrets too close for the Patron," continued Waif, "and as you have seen, people come from far and near to consult his art. This man's errand was to discover your hiding-place and hunt you down to death. He gave the Patron money—golden guineas—I heard them jingle. He was in earnest—bitter earnest, and so am I!"

"But what said the Patron?" asked her listener. "I thought he was my friend."

"The Patron is every man's friend," answered Waif, "who is willing to do him service, or to pay him gold. He promised to betray you when the moon was full, but that very night he sent you out of London on his own affairs, and I followed close, lest evil should befall, for I knew you were journeying to the West."

Laughing lightly, he asked if that was a dangerous quarter, and whether the Wise Men, who came there from the East, were ancestors of her own?

But Waif scorned to enter on the subject of genealogy with one who could neither believe nor understand her claims to a descent co-eval with the earliest history of man. Her tone was grave and almost stern, while she looked him steadfastly in the face, and proceeded with her warning.

"When a stag goes down to the water, where an enemy waits to take away his life, the voice of a child, or the wave of a woman's hand, is enough to turn him back into the moor. Abner Gale lives in the very country to which you are bound. I know the man, John Garnet, and I will save you from his vengeance, though I swing for it—there! Now will you let me come with you and help you as best I can?"

John Garnet did not hesitate long. True, he was unable to stifle certain scruples, while he reflected on the dangers into which this wilful girl was running of her own accord, on her loss of character, if indeed she had any character to lose, and the inconvenience he would himself experience in accounting for such a travelling companion, however well disguised; above all, on the advantage he was taking of a professed devotion, that exchanged, as he could not but admit, the pure gold of sincere affection for a baser metal, compounded of gratitude, vanity, and self-indulgence. But men have seldom far to seek for an excuse when they would do that which is pleasant and convenient rather than right; so John Garnet persuaded himself that to make this beautiful girl an assistant of his schemes, and comrade in his dangers, was an act of self-denial and loyalty vouching for his fealty to the exile whom he called his lawful king.