“’Tis not far, as you say, sir, and my daughter—”
But Everell had gone, and the obliging old fellow was left to scratch his head and wonder. The more he wondered, the more reason there seemed for doing so. He had not heard anything like a carrier’s wagon pass, as it must have done if it was now at the bridge and bound for Burndale. It was strange enough that a carrier’s wagon should travel that road at such an hour, and stranger still that it should do so without its custodian stopping for a cup of good cheer. And the gentleman’s unwillingness to have his baggage carried!
The ale-house keeper was not so old as to have outlived curiosity. He slipped out, crossed the green, and stood in the middle of the road, peering through the starlit night. Yes, there was the figure of the gentleman, truly enough, swiftly retreating down the village street that led to the bridge. The landlord slunk after him, keeping close to the walls and hedges, and stepping silently. He was soon sufficiently near the bridge to perceive that no conveyance waited there. The assurance of this acted so upon his mind as to make him stop and consider whether it was safe to go further. As he stood gaping, the form of the strange gentleman suddenly vanished. The old man stared for another moment: then, assailed with a feeling that here was mystery nothing short of devil’s work, he turned and fled in a panic to his ale-house.
Everell, who had not once looked back, had passed from the old man’s view by turning from the road to rejoin the waiting poacher. Without a word, Tarby arose, relieved Everell of the cloak-bag, and led the way over the route by which they had come from the park. The palings were again removed and replaced, the stream was again crossed by means of the bars. The two entered the blackness of the glen, Tarby repossessing himself of his fowling-piece. By the time they had ascended to the general level of the park, the moon had risen, and, as they proceeded in a Northwesterly direction, the more open spaces, whether clothed in green sward or in bracken of autumnal brown, wore a beauty which Everell associated in his mind with the young lady not far away, and thus the silent woods and glades seemed to him a forest of enchantment.
Tarby spoke only to call Everell’s attention to landmarks by which he might know the course again. He indicated the whereabouts of the keeper’s lodge without passing near it. They left the park by means of another such weak place in the barrier as had served them before, the poacher remarking that he preferred that kind of egress even when barred gates were near at hand. They now traversed a deserted bit of heath, covered with gorse, and plunged into a rough wood, much thicker and gloomier than the park behind them. Following a ditch, or bed of a dried-up stream, they emerged at last upon some partly clear, rugged land which rose gradually before them. This they ascended, and so came to a region of bare, rocky hills and deep wooded hollows. Tarby kept mainly to the hollows, until at last, having crossed a little ridge, he descended to a vale lying in the shape of a crescent, and seeming in the moonlight to be covered with timber; but a narrow patch of clearing ran diagonally across, watered by a little stream. Everell and his guide came into this clearing at the end by which the brook left it. Near the stream—so near, indeed, that they had barely room to walk between—was a thick mass of tall gorse bushes, threatening scratches to any intruder. Tarby turned in among these at a narrow opening, followed close by his wondering guest. In a moment Everell discovered that the bushes, instead of constituting a solid thicket, formed but a hollow circle, within which was a low cottage of timber and rough plaster.
“Here us be,” said John Tarby, dropping bag and gun to respond to the leaping caresses of a mongrel hound that had sprung up from the door-stone. “He won’t hurt you, sir; ’tis a ’bedient animal. When I tells him to stop here, ’tis here he stops, and won’t come out even to meet me, unless I call or whistle.”
The dog transferred his attentions to Everell on perceiving him to be an approved visitor, while the poacher opened the door and lighted a candle within. Entering, Everell found a combination of kitchen, sleeping-chamber, and living-room, the whole giving an impression of comfort far exceeding that of the bothy he had for a time inhabited in Scotland.
“So this is your castle,” said Everell, looking around with approbation.
“Ay, sir, with the gorse for wall and the brook for moat. And I don’t lack a postern to escape by, if so be I was ever hard pressed in front.” He opened a small square shutter in the back of the room. “’Tis all gorse out there, sir, and only me and the dog knows the path through to the rocks.”
There was at one end of the room a pallet bed, which Tarby assigned to his guest, saying he would shake down some heather for his own use at the opposite end. He went out, and returned with a sackful of this, having borrowed from the reserve supply of his cow, which he housed in a shed on the other side of the stream. He informed Everell that he kept a few fowls also, though the great part of his clearing was made to serve as a vegetable-garden. He asked what Everell would like for supper, and named three or four possibilities besides the rabbit he drew from his large pocket. But Everell had supped at the ale-house, and, as he was now quite fatigued, he went to bed, leaving his host to partake of bread and cheese, while the dog munched a cold bone in the corner.