“Ah! and how can I face the Colonel, his father. I can’t do it, my lad, Ydoll Churchtown’s been a happy enough home for me, and I’ve allus made a living in it, but it’s all over now. I must be off at once.”
“To get help?” cried Joe, raising his ghastly face from where it rested upon the weathered stone, and looking more ghastly now from the blood which had started from a slight cut on his brow.
“Nay; I’ve done all I could do here for young Gwyn—all as a man can do. I’ve got to take care o’ myself now, and be off somewheres, for the Colonel’ll put it all on to me.”
“Go! Run away!” cried Joe. “Oh, you wouldn’t be such a coward! Here, quick! try again.—Gwyn, old chap! The rope—the rope. Oh, do try and catch hold,” he shouted down the pit.
But there was no reply; and wild now with frantic horror, the boy seized the rope and began to climb over the wall. “Ah! none o’ that!” roared Hardock, grasping his arms; and now there was a desperate struggle which could only have the one result—the mastery of the boy. For at last Hardock lifted him from the ground and threw him on his back amongst the heath, and held him down.
“It’s no good to fight, young ’un,” he said breathlessly. “You’re strong, but my muscles is hardest. I don’t say nought again’ you, though yer did hit me right in the mouth with your fist. I like it, for it shows your pluck, and that you’d do anything to try and save your mate. Lie still. It’s of no use, yer know. I could hold down a couple of yer. There, steady. Can’t yer see I should be letting yer go to your death, too, my lad, and have to hear what the Major said as well as the Colonel. Not as I should, for I should be off; and then it would mean prison, and they’d say I murdered you both, for there wouldn’t be no witness on my trial, but the rope, and mebbe they’d give me that for my share, and hang me. There, will yer be quiet if I let yer sit up?”
“Yes, yes,” said the boy, with a groan of despair.
“And yer see as I can’t do nothing more, and you can’t neither.”
“I—I don’t know, Sam,” groaned the boy, as he lay weak and panting on his back in the purple-blossomed heath. “No, no, I can’t see it. I must do something to try and save him.”
“But yer can’t, lad,” said the man, bitterly. “There arn’t nothing to be done. It’s a gashly business; but it wouldn’t make no better of it if I let you chuck yourself away, too. There, now you’re getting sensible.”