Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

Poor Harry Foster and his fate was always in the background of my mind. But not so much, as I could see, in Elsie's. Now I like my father well enough, as fathers go. He is a grocer, not at all mysterious, but makes lots of money. Now if, instead, he were the Red Rover of the Seas—well, bless me if I would give twopence to find out about him.

But of course Elsie is different. She always was different from every one else, and now she was keen as a terrier at a rat hole to find out all about the Stennises, and the queer crew that was battening on her grandfather, old Hobby, the Golden Farmer of Deep Moat Hollow.

Before I saw her, Elsie had made Nance's breakfast, shared it, and seen her off to her work. Nance was in great demand. She could act as foreman or grieve on occasion, and people who wanted their work quickly done, like my father, used often to give Nance as much as a shilling a day extra for coming to them.

I don't think either of us had much thought of finding out about poor lost Harry Foster. How could we, with all those city detectives, from East Dene and Thorsby, even (they whispered) from Scotland Yard itself, ranging everywhere like pointer dogs over the heather?

Indeed we were almost like dogs on a scent ourselves, so keen were we to see with our eyes the mysterious Grange and all the queer folk there. I hardly think we would have turned aside to look at Harry Foster himself, had he been lying in his last bloody sleep, as plain as in a waxwork. But we were not tried. Nothing of the kind happened.

As we went across the moor, every low spiky arch of bramble and tuft of gorse was shining and sparkling. The wren and the gowdspink were preening themselves and shaking off the dews that fell on their feathers as they fussed to and fro about their nesting business. Then we dived into Sparhawk Wood, and came out again on the country cross-road along which Bailiff Ball had seen Dappled Bess plunging madly with her empty cart. The Brom Water flowed still as a canal on our left, down towards the Moat Pond. It was certainly heartsomer to be out under the sky and the crying whaups, with the blue Cheviots looking over the tree tops, than in Grange Longwood, where somebody might be watching you from behind every bush and you none the wiser.

But before we came to the Bridge End, where we had found the marks of the struggle that first morning, Elsie had an idea that if we struck across the road and kept round the edge of the Brom Water, we would escape the bailiff's cottage and stand a good chance of seeing Deep Moat Grange without being discovered by anybody.

When we got there it was only about six in the morning, and eerie enough in the gloomy bits, where you could not see a handsbreadth of sky, and nasty things, which you told yourself were only rabbits, would keep moving and rustling in the undergrowth.

I would have been glad to go back even then, because after all, it was silly. Just imagine—mad folks, and murderers, maybe, skulking in coverts! I am as brave as anybody when all is open and I have a chance to run. I am too old to believe in ghosts, of course; but for all that there are queer things to be seen in old green droopy woods like that of Deep Moat Hollow. The trees whisper and seem to know such a lot. After about an hour I get shivers down my back.

But it was no use arguing with Elsie. She went on first, and I guarded the rear—that being the most dangerous position. And I did it well, for I declare I got crick in the neck just with looking over my shoulder.