Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

It was about this time that my father, with torn and bleeding hands, was working desperately at the bar of iron. His knife was worn to a stump, but the open door of Elsie's cell tempted him with a terrible sense of the unknown which was passing outside. Besides, he could not tell at what moment Jeremy might return, and, shutting the door, shut off at the same time his hopes of escape and of helping Elsie, whom he saw already in the grasp of the midnight assassin.

Now if I were writing this to show what a hero I was, I should, of course, have put my own part in the forefront. But as I was at the time little better than a boy who does what he can, and it really was my father who helped Elsie the most—and had done for some time—I am not going to take away the credit from him. Mine is the proper sort of father, that a fellow can be proud of. I think I would have done all that he did if I had been there and had his chances. But then I wasn't, and I hadn't. So Mr. Ablethorpe and I had just come along as best we might—almost, but not quite, the day after the fair.

It was just before daybreak when my father worked his way through the bar, and the fragments fell outward—stonework, plaster, cut iron—all into the little cupboard. Of course, he had been working by the sense of touch for hours. Many a time he had drawn the rough home-made file raspingly across his wrist and hands. His face was stained with dungeon mud, his hair uncropped and matted, his beard tangled, and, as my mother said afterwards—

"If Mad Jeremy was a waur-looking creature than you, Joseph Yarrow, I am none surprised that he frighted ye a' oot o' your leggings and knee-breeks!"

When my father came out through the chamber which had so long been Elsie's he groped about to find the entrance, his heart thumping—so he owned to me—against his ribs lest the way should have been shut by the madman, and he no better off than he had been before—nay, infinitely worse, for the handiwork of the night would be sure to be discovered. He had worked in the dark—furiously—without thought of covering up his traces. But he had brought with him the iron bar which had been his means of direct communication with Elsie from cell to cell.

It was cold weather, and the first drive of February wind as he stood up in the ivy-covered ruin was, as my father expressed it, "like a dash of water in the face to a man." The next instant he was through the crumbling walls, startling the bats and sparrows with a shower of debris, and lo! there before him he saw the house of Deep Moat Grange—in a blaze!

Now comes out the deep and abiding loyalty of the man who had a name for little else than driving a bargain hardly and keeping it to the death. Perhaps, though, he looked upon it as that. Elsie had supported him, fed him, given him drink, furnished him with tools, and so now, though most men would have gone straight back to Breckonside to seek for assistance, Joseph Yarrow—of whom I am proud to call myself the son—struck right across the bridge and tore across the lawn among the lily clumps straight for the front door of the burning house.

The staircase and hall were already filled with a stifling reek, but my father could hear above him the crackling and dull roar of the flames, hungry—like many wild beasts.

It was not dark, for the chamber door above was open, and the light of the conflagration was reflected through. But plump in the middle of the staircase my father encountered a man. It was Mad Jeremy going out serenely enough, carrying the candle in one hand, and his precious melodeon in the other. He saw my father. My father saw him. With one intent to fight and slay they rushed at each other—Jeremy's wild screech mingling with my father's roar as of a charging bull.

Neither got home. My father's iron bar would doubtless have broken the madman's skull, but that, with his usual agility, he leaped to the side. Jeremy smashed the heavy candle over my father's head, and fled upstairs, not because he was afraid for himself, but in order to protect the melodeon from the blow he saw coming.