Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

"The woman stands fully committed—take her away!" cried the sheriff.

He had glanced at his watch. It was in fact, long past his dinner hour! As if moved by his hand policemen rapidly displaced the two clergymen, and Aphra disappeared down a flight of stairs to the cells below.

But, curiously enough, the mob had no thought of her. The reading of Hobby Stennis' confession—so ghastly, perverted, cold-blooded, dead to all moral sense, even triumphant, ending with the will which gave everything to Elsie—had so incensed the people that there was a rush when a kind of crack-witted preaching man from Bewick shouted, "Make an end, ye people, make an end! Let none of the viper's brood escape! She is a woman, this Elsie, and will breed the like—murderers and monsters every one! She is a Stennis, and we have had enough of such. To Breckonside! To the Bridge End! Find the heiress, chosen as the fittest to succeed the man-slayers and make an end! Hang her quick to a tree!"

I could now see what my father had meant by leaving the place so hurriedly. Mr. Ablethorpe, who knew, had warned him of what was coming. And that, as there was no other outlet for the passions of the angry mob, Elsie might be in some temporary danger of violence and ill usage, if of nothing worse. Therefore, he had hurried off, taking Rob Kingsman with him. As for me, even while thinking these thoughts, I was swept out of the doorway, and carried along by the throng, my feet scarcely touching the ground. The mob, chiefly rough Bewick miners and labourers, took the road toward the Bridge End of Brecksonside at a trot, bawling "Death and vengeance!" against all of the blood of Stennis.

And there was now but one of that name and race—Elsie!

CHAPTER XXXVII

I AM HEROIC

You may be sure that I kept up with the crowd. It was a disagreeable crowd—Bewick Muir pitmen, and the navvies from the East Dene and Thorsby waterworks—they were making a new pipe-line through the Bewick Beck Valley, and the navvies were interested in poaching—so that was what had brought them so far from home. Only the few Breckonside people who had not left early knew anything bout Elsie.

All that was known to the bulk of those present was that Hobby Stennis had amassed a great fortune by entrapping and making away with drovers, farmers and cattle dealers—that he had rigged out Deep Moat Grange for that purpose, and that in his last will and testament he had expressed a wish that his heirs should continue the business. The sole heir appeared to be a certain Elsie, and her they naturally enough took for a dangerous malefactor.