“God be thanked for a plain word from ye at last!” Moon said bitterly. “Can ye talk any more in that fashion?”
“There’s little else to say,” the humiliated magistrate replied. “If it would serve any end now to add my testimony against Northrop and Haigh—for they’re both dead as clay, I fear——”
Moon bent his narrow brows on him.
“That’ll do,” he said; “now hold your tongue.... James, if you can come with me we’ll fit John up for money. We’re not beat because Emmason’s frightened. There’s chances. Juries aren’t so ready to convict now for these half-crown matters when it’s a man’s neck; and Raikes knows his way about. Come. We’ve only two words to say to the lads, and the safest place for Cope will be his own bed. Come.—Don’t you go adding testimony, Emmason. Good day.”
They passed out into the glaring street, and that same afternoon John Raikes, with half a dozen pigeons in a cage, set off on horseback for York.
Cope was no longer a jest. Even that merry soul, Cole the clogger, had ceased to button his coat over his arms and to slip the clogs on his hands, and only the magpie continued from habit to whistle “Hey, Johnny Cope,” when the supervisor’s toddling steps sounded down the croft. The reiterated “Good morning—morning, morning, morning,” was returned shortly and without merriment; and Cole declared that he could have flung a clog-sole at the man only for his jarring laugh. Somebody had called the supervisor “the nail i’ the stocks”—an expression from the fulling-mill, where, should a nail get into the trough where the heavy stampers pounded the wet cloth, the whole work was rent—and the nickname stuck.
And, as if he had now less to conceal, Cope, too, bore himself differently. At any rate, if he still used the “Mr.” in addressing even a weaver, and his “hn, hn” was no less insinuating than before, he was differently interpreted, and an indefinable truculence was read into his actions. He even went a little further; for a young lad, grown bold, sang out one day in the market-place (as he had done a hundred times before), “Hey, Johnny Cope!” But this time Cope stepped to him, laughed a vicious little laugh, and took him a smart cut over the calves with his cane, passing on with his head over his shoulder, while the dumbfoundered lad whimpered and rubbed his wealed calves. A man standing by remarked, as if on a point of general discipline: “Serve him right;” but the significance of the incident did not pass unnoticed.
Cicely was with Sally again, and Monjoy still passed his nights elsewhere than in Horwick. It was to Monjoy, during one of these intervals in his labour, that Cope revealed a little more of what was in his mind. They had sat next to one another at the “Pipes” (where Cope still called frequently, and always for his single glass of weak brandy and water); and suddenly Cope, leaning towards Monjoy, said, “A word with you, Mr. Monjoy.... I am granted a search-warrant, on suspicion of I know not exactly what, over your new house up the Fullergate—hn, hn! You know as much of it as I, belike, for I may say it was forced on me; but my duty, hn!—I should have been happy to wink at it, but when magistrates become aware—hn! So at your convenience, eh?”
He scarcely took the trouble to put contempt into his tone, contempt for their childish machinating, and Monjoy gave an embarrassed laugh. “Nay, what the devil’s this?” he exclaimed; and Cope peered at him, again patted the air mockingly, and gave the engraver the “La, Mr. Monjoy!” which he seemed to reserve especially for him.
“Ay, Emmason can hand in his commission as soon as he likes,” was Matthew Moon’s comment when this was reported to him; and even Monjoy seemed unusually contemplative. But John Raikes was to be trusted, and money could be raised at a word.