Well, it seemed hopeless. “Will you go for the sixpence, if I give it to you beforehand, Raddy?”
“Give it over, and see. Where the thunder have ye been?” dealing his dog a savage kick, as it came up barking. “Be I to whistle all day?” Another kick.
I had found two sixpences in my pocket; all its store. Bringing forth one, I held it out to him.
“Now listen, Raddy. I give you this sixpence now. You are to run with all your might to the house—and you can run, you know, like the wind. Say that I sent you—you know my name, Johnny Ludlow—sent you to tell them that the French boy is in the coppice dying;” for I thought it best to put it strong. “Dr. Frost, or some of them, must come to him at once, and they must send off for Mr. Featherston. You can remember that. The French boy, mind.”
“I could remember it if I tried.”
“Well, I’ll give you the sixpence. And look here—here’s another sixpence. It is all the money I have. That shall be yours also, when you have done the errand.”
I slipped one of the sixpences back into my pocket, holding out the other. But I have often wondered since that he did not stun me with a blow, and take the two. Perhaps he could not entirely divest himself of that idea of the “ambush.” I did not like the leering look on his false face as he sidled cautiously up towards the sixpence.
“Take a look at him; you can see him from the stile,” I said, closing my hand over the sixpence while I spoke; “convince yourself that he is there, and that no trickery is meant. And, Raddy,” I added, slowly opening the hand again, “perhaps you may want help one of these days yourself in some desperate need. Do this good turn for him, and the like will be done for you.”
I tossed him the sixpence. He stole cautiously to the stile, making a wide circuit round me to do it, glanced at Van Rheyn, and then made straight off in the right direction as fast as his legs would carry him, the dog barking at his heels.
Van Rheyn was better when I got back to him; his breathing easier, the mouth less blue; and his arms were no longer clutching the tree-trunk. Nevertheless, there was that in his face that gave me an awful fear and made my breath for a moment nearly as short as his. I sat down beside him, letting him lean against me, as well as the tree, for better support.