When he again came up into the light, he was a marked man, under Warder Black's constant suspicion.
Now, however, his expression was changed: he no longer belonged to Colmoor, though he was there. Sometimes he felt like shouting at the burden of his secret. In his impatience to proclaim it, he pined to write to Loveday—but now his punishment had lost him that privilege.
Meantime, the problem was to get ten good miles beyond Colmoor: a hard one; but his brain had already accomplished a task far harder: and the greater implied the less.
His first thought, when he had begun to plan, had been Loveday; his second, that on no account could he permit Loveday to incur further risk, or expense, for him; his third, that he might yet use Loveday to any extent not involving risk or expense.
At the next weekly “School” he sat near a Thames-works hackle-maker, who, though he could write, was no scholar, and was laboriously spoiling a second letter-sheet, when Hogarth whispered him: “Can I help you? I see it's to your mother. I could get her a quid from a friend of mine”.
“Well, I'm much obliged....!”
The laborious letter, after half an hour, had in it:
“If you go to 15, Cheyne Gardens, the gentleman will give you a sovereign which he owed me for cutting down the elm in the beech-wood at Teddington for him”.
Now, Loveday lived at 15, Cheyne Gardens, and had only to see those words “the elm in the beechwood,” to scent a cypher from Hogarth.
He offered five pounds for that letter: but it was two weeks before he decided upon the intended words: “Small chloroform—trenches—rock”.