Slowly, and with infinite care, the still form of George Marton was drawn clear of the tree. But no sound escaped the injured man as they moved him. And the omen of it shattered the girl’s last shadow of hope. She crouched on her knees beside him, passing one hand tenderly over the crushed and broken body in a vain endeavour to estimate the damage. And the while Lightning had gone back to the cutter for her basket of remedies.
When the man returned with the basket, Molly had abandoned her examination. She gazed up at the tall, shadowy figure standing over her. The expression of her despairing eyes was hidden in the darkness. But the tone of her voice smote the loyal creature to the depths of his old heart.
“He’s—dead,” she cried. “Oh, Lightning, he’s dead. And he was all I had.”
CHAPTER V
The Sentence
THE cold fabric of discipline at the Police Headquarters at Calford had been shocked into a flutter of excited interest and anticipation. The machine-like routine of police life had, for a moment, reacted to a more human aspect of itself. Interested comment passed from lip to lip, and widely conflicting were the opinions expressed. But, curiously enough, there was pretty general unanimity amongst the lower ranks of the Force in a feeling of quiet satisfaction. Corporal Andrew McFardell had been placed under arrest, and, at “Orderly-Room” that morning, he would be tried and sentenced for permitting the escape of his prisoner while on escort duty from Greenwood to Calford.
Alone in his barrack-room, which had been his charge for so long, Corporal McFardell was more than sick at heart. But over and above everything else he was smarting under a sense of intolerable injustice.
It was four days since he had returned to barracks. And before that he had driven himself and his horse well-nigh to death for ten days, scouring the snowy desolation of the hill country in search of the man who had tricked him so badly in his moment of helplessness. The man had vanished; completely and utterly disappeared. He had made good an escape which McFardell had deemed impossible. The man was a stranger to the country; he was shackled; his horse was none too fresh. How was it possible?
McFardell had expected to discover his frozen body at least. But his ten days of superhuman effort had left him unrewarded. So he had been driven to return to Calford, his horse well-nigh foundered, and himself in little better case, to make his report, and to be promptly placed under arrest for his pains. Then he had been forced to place himself on the sick list, to be attended for the frost which had bitten him almost to the bone. And now, rested and recovered, he was awaiting that brazen summons of the bugle for the thing that was yet to come.
It was curious. As the man lolled upon the brown blankets of his bed his resentment and bitterness were in no way directed against the prisoner who was the cause of his disaster. It was anger, furious anger, against the authority which took practically no cognisance of any circumstance in a case of failure amongst those who acknowledged it.
For years he had laboured and schemed, sacrificing everything to “duty.” Step by step he had gained his advancement by sound, patient work, until now he stood first on the roll of seniority for his sergeant’s stripes. Now he knew that all that record would have to go by the board. It would count for practically nothing. He must face a cold tribunal, governed only by police regulations, which were devoid of all human sentiment. He must accept the last ounce of punishment for the loss of his prisoner for which they happened to call. He would be punished in just the same degree as any other whose record was incomparable with his. The injustice of it maddened him. In his bitterness he claimed the right to treatment in accordance with his record of years of good work.