With this cheerful augury Tim Kerrick propelled me before him, and the keeper following with Tony, we were marched about the house to the stables and into the harness-room. “You’ll be safe and snug here,” Tim said, ere he turned the key upon us, “Squire’ll deal with you, but not for a good two hours or more. So you can just think it all over in the dark.”
Slamming the door Tim locked us in, and stumped away. His assertion that Mr. Chelton would not deal with us, till he had dined, gave me instant concern for my mother’s anxiety at my failure to return for supper. I pictured her dolefully—with my meal set all ready for me; sitting listening for my steps, peering up at the clock, and running out to the gate and waiting there, but seeing still no sign of me. And dreading, I guessed well, lest I should have disappeared as from the face of the earth—vanished with never a word to her, even as my father—of whom I shall tell presently. I cursed Tim Kerrick, Squire Chelton, and Mr. Bradbury.
“What’s going to happen to us now, John?” Tony muttered through the dark. “What’ll the Squire do with us, do you think?”
“Oh, he’ll laugh, for he’s sure to be half drunk when he sees us. Tell us we’ll be hanged, if we’re not shot for poachers first. And if Tim Kerrick makes the case black enough, Squire’ll give him leave to baste us.”
“Yes, but Tim would have basted us properly, and let us go,” said Tony. “Why should that old black crow want to spoil Tim’s sport and bid him bring us here, unless he’s a notion of having us clapped in gaol? But for him we’d have been through Tim’s hands by now, and been limpin’ home. Do you know him, John?”
“Oh, I only know he’s Squire’s lawyer. You heard Tim say so, if you didn’t know before. I’d never heard of him or clapped eyes on him.”
“He seemed to know you.”
“Yes, he did. But I don’t know how. We’ll hear, when Squire’s dined. Pray God, he doesn’t spare the bottle! Sit ye down, Tony, while you’re able.”
And in the dark we sat down on the cold, flagged floor. I tell you the harness-room was like a vault for gloom and chill. The time we were held there seemed unending; only Tim came near us, and then merely to be assured that we were safe, and to growl vengefully at us, as he flashed his lantern down on us. We wearied soon of conjecturing what should happen to us. We sat huddled together silently, and while Tony sought to pull the rabbit from his pocket, and at last succeeded to sling it from him with a curse, I set myself to pondering over Mr. Bradbury’s mysterious interest in me, and to striving to recollect when, if ever, I had set eyes on the gentleman before. Never, so far as my memory served me, though my mother and I had lived ten years at Chelton.
To my seventh year we had lived with my father in London. I remembered my father clearly, tall and darkly handsome, his black hair silver-threaded, though at the time of his mysterious disappearance he was not more than thirty-seven years of age. I remembered the moods of brooding melancholy darkening the natural liveliness of his disposition; his strength, his tenderness with my mother and myself. I remembered, as the most sorrowful time of my childhood, the day of his disappearance,—my mother waiting the hours through from eve till dawn, hoping against hope for the sound of his return,—the days succeeding of alternate hopes never fulfilled and terrors not allayed.