Cutlass and Cudgel

by George Manville Fenn

It looked light in front, where the limestone rocks had given place to chalk, but to right, left, and seaward, all was black as night, and stepping cautiously along, the lad approached the cottages, listening attentively, but not hearing a sound save the gurgling of water as it trickled under the stones on its way to the sea.

As he reached the track leading past the cottages he had a narrow escape from falling over a boat that was drawn up on the stones, but he saved himself with a jerk; and, feeling hot with the sudden start, he turned and crouched down, but there was not a sound to indicate that he had been heard, and drawing a long breath he stepped on to reach the hard earth where his feet were not among the water-worn pebbles, and in a few minutes he was on the road he had traversed twice that day, and walking fast toward the farm.

Once or twice he hesitated, for the way lay so low down in the valley, with the hills towering up to such a height on either side, that the night seemed as dark as during the fog of the previous night; but he got along over the ground pretty well in spite of its seeming more hilly and rough, till at the end of about an hour and a half he felt that he must be approaching the farm, and he advanced more cautiously, listening for footsteps and voices from time to time.

There was a good broad green marge to the lane about here, and he stepped on to it, the turf deadening his footsteps.

“But I don’t recollect seeing this grass in the morning,” he thought; and then he stopped short, for it suddenly occurred to him that he had not come upon the cluster of houses where the people smiled and nodded at one another as they passed.

“I can’t have trailed off into another road, can I?” he said to himself, as he felt quite startled and turned hot.

He looked round, but it was too dark to make out anything, and he was about to start on again, comforting himself with the idea that he must be right, when he heard at a distance the pat-pat of feet on hard ground, and drew back close up to the side to stoop down among some brambles, which told him at once after their fashion what they were.

“If I only dared ask whoever this is,” thought Archy, “I should do.”

His thoughts took another direction directly, for, apparently about twenty yards away, he heard some one sneeze, and then mutter impatiently, followed by another sneeze.

And all the while the regular pat-pat of footsteps came from his right, but not as he had come, for the sound was as if some one was approaching by a road which came at right angles to the one he was in.