'Oh, God! Master Harry!' he cried, 'is there no justice in the world? To die there, in that awful place, like a rat in a trap! oh, it is dreadful, dreadful! And then I thought that he was long ago far away from here—a free man.'
'Do you think those two other men threw him down there, Walter?' asked my eldest brother, almost in a whisper.
'No, sir,' he replied, catching his breath. 'Why should they murder the man who alone was capable of taking the boat upon such a long voyage? This is what I think, sir. Poor Tom, instead of coming down in the boat with the other two, left them on Saturday and walked here so that he might light a fire on the top of Little Nobby's on Sunday night to guide them to the place. He told Ruth's father that he thought he should do this in case the night turned out very dark. And Billy says that a fire was made, and that when poor Tom was descending the hill to meet the boat he fell into the cleft and got jammed between the rocky walls.'
'But would not the two other men make a search for him?'
'God knows, sir! We shall never know. They may have thought that Tom had been captured, and that the fire had been lit by Ruth's father. But I think that Billy is right, and that poor Tom, after lighting the fire, was coming down the hill to meet the boat, when in the darkness he wandered off the track and stepped into the crack at the widest part of its mouth, which is right above where we found him. He must have fallen upon his back and become so tightly wedged in in that awful place that he could not use his arms to free himself. And then, sir, even if he had not been stunned, his cries could not have been heard by the other two men, who, unless they purposely made a search, would not have had any reason to go within two hundred yards of the spot where he fell.'
Harry shuddered, and then for some time no one of us spoke. 'King Billy' had been sent off to tell my father of the discovery of the body, or rather skeleton, which Walter and Harry had at first attempted to free from the walls of the chasm, but were too overcome to complete the task.
Together we slowly ascended the bluff, and there a surprise awaited us; for, sitting on their horses, on the brow of the hill, were the dreaded minister and his convict orderly. They had no doubt seen our bags and guns lying on the grass, and had ridden to the crest of the bluff to discover our whereabouts.
Mr Sampson eyed us all very sourly, and scarcely deigned to respond to our salutations, as one by one we walked past him and busied ourselves in silence over our impedimenta. No doubt he saw that both Harry and Walter were very pale, and that Will and I had not yet dried our tears.
'Come here, boys,' he said in his harsh, pompous tones. 'What, may I ask, is the cause of this grief which seems to be shared by all alike?' Then, without waiting for an answer, his glance fell upon Walter Trenfield, who, after saluting him, had turned away, and with averted face was strapping some of our belongings together.
I saw the clergyman's coarse red face, with its fat, terraced chins, grow purple with rage as I had seen it once before, and I instinctively drew back.