Trevlyn Hold: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"When?" asked Miss Diana, eagerly, and Mrs. Chattaway pressed nearer with her troubled countenance.

"It was just before I came up here. I was on my way to Bluck's and someone with a white face, breathless and panting, broke through the hedge right across my path. I did not know him at first; he didn't look a bit like Rupert; but when I saw who it was, I tried to stop him, and asked what was the matter. He shook me off, went over the opposite hedge like a wild animal, and there tore about the field. If he had been an escaped lunatic from the county asylum, he couldn't have run at greater speed."

"Did he say nothing?" a voice interrupted.

"Not a word," replied the farmer. "He seemed unable to speak. Well, before I had digested that shock, there came another, flying up in the same mad state, and that was Jim Sanders. I stopped him. Nearly at the same time, or just before it, I had seen a light shoot up into the sky. Jim said as well as he could speak for fright, that the rick-yard was on fire, and Mr. Rupert had set it alight."

"At all events, the mischief seems to lie between them," remarked some voices around.

There would have been no time for this desultory conversation—at least, for the gentlemen's share in it—but that the fire-engine had put a stop to their efforts. It had planted itself on the very spot where the line had been formed, scattering those who had taken part in it, and was rapidly getting itself into working order. The flames were shooting up terribly now, and Mr. Chattaway was rushing here, there, and everywhere, in his frantic but impotent efforts to subdue them. He was not insured.

George Ryle approached Mrs. Chattaway, and bent over her, a strange tone of kindness in his every word: it seemed to suggest how conscious he was of the great sorrow that was coming upon her. "I wish you would let me take you indoors," he whispered. "Indeed it is not well for you to be here."

"Where is he?" she gasped, in answer. "Could you find him, and remove him from danger?"

A sure conviction had been upon her from the very moment that her husband had avowed his chastisement of Rupert—the certainty that it was he, Rupert, and no other who had done the mischief. Her own brothers—but chiefly her brother Rupert—had been guilty of one or two acts almost as mad in their passion. He could not help his temper, she reasoned—some, perhaps, may say wrongly; and if Mr. Chattaway had provoked him by that sharp, insulting punishment, he, more than Rupert, was in fault.

"I would die to save him, George," she whispered. "I would give all I am worth to save him from the consequences. Mr. Chattaway says he will prosecute him to the last."