Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

And after this direct challenge it needed both Mr. Ablethorpe and Mr. De la Poer to restore order. But the fury of Frankie's mother contrasted so ill with Miss Orrin's glacial calm, that it seemed possible enough that "Frankie" had indeed invented the little circumstance to add to his importance, after hearing of the loss and disappearance of "teacher."

"Moreover," said Miss Orrin, "since Mr. Stennis is too ill to have his bedchamber and house invaded in this way, in future Dr. Hector will arrange for special protection from the police at Longtown. And after this warning let any one cross the moat at their peril."

There was no more to be done. Aphra Orrin had beaten us completely. The baffled tide ebbed back the way it came, and Deep Moat Grange was left alone once more with the secrets it had been successful in guarding in the teeth of a whole countryside in arms and aroused to a high pitch of curiosity.

The two clergymen waited behind, but the sick man would have nothing to do with them, declaring his intention, if he must, of dying as a good Presbyterian. He was the most intractable of invalids, even threatening to break a bottle over Dr. Hector's head if, as he proposed, he should venture to bring with him from Longtown a minister of his own denomination.

"Hobby Stennis is none so ill as that," he said stoutly, "if only I had my will in a safe place, and had seen the little lass, who is all my kith and kin, I would ask no more from doctor or minister in this world."

"I will take charge of the will myself if no better may be," said Dr. Hector. And so, none saying him nay, he rode back to Longtown with the holograph in his breast pocket, jesting with two farmers riding that way as he went. Had he only known, a few sheets of a folio account book covered with close writing in the hand of Mr. Stennis was considerably more dangerous to carry about with him than the latest discovered high explosive!

It was with considerable astonishment that on the evening of his next visit to Deep Moat Grange, about midway between the edge of the woods and the lonely alehouse where my father had alighted, Dr. Hector was suddenly aware of a noose of rope which circled about his neck with a whiz. The next moment he was dragged from his horse. He lay unconscious for an hour on the road, and then coming to himself turned and walked back to Longtown, very stiff and very angry, but conscious of no other loss than that of several copies of prescriptions which he kept in his breast pocket.

"What they can want with these, I don't know," said the vindictive doctor. "I only hope they will take them all together. There was a triple dose of strychnine in one which I wrote for Garmory's dog!"

Now Miss Orrin was a clever woman, and she grasped at once the immense moral value of having the support of Mr. Ablethorpe and his friend and spiritual director Mr. De la Poer. It was quite evident that for the sisters the situation at Deep Moat Grange would no longer be tenable. Mr. Stennis might die any day. The Longtown doctor gave little hope of ultimate recovery. The will had been removed out of Aphra's reach. True, she might possibly induce the old man to make another, disinheriting his granddaughter. If Elsie died in her prison, doubtless sooner or later all would be found out. There were other things also.

It came as the happiest of solutions, therefore, to the strenuous head of the Orrin family, when, a few days after, Mr. Ablethorpe proposed to charge himself with the care of the three "innocents"—Honorine, Camilla, and Sidonia. He knew of a convent, the good sisters of which gave up their lives to the care of women mentally afflicted. Aphra refused point blank any such assistance for herself, even temporarily. But for her sisters she rejoiced openly, and was indeed, after her fashion, really grateful to the two young clergymen who had taken up the cause of the witless and the friendless.