“No,” he said, “for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with one of my sarks on, and Bridget’s best linen sheet tied in ribbons about his head.”
“And how, then, was he dressed?” said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn at Shepstone.
“Oh,” answered Boyd Connoway, “just like you or me. I took no particular notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I did. But the track is not canny even in the broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the glimmer o’ the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide ye! But the man that had been hidden in our ‘ben’ room was aye for going on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious, as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co’en lads, waiting to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see.”
“‘You trust a man that kens,’ I said to him, ‘never a skarrow will wink, nor a lantern swing. The Isle o’ Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder have their business better at their fingers’ ends than that. But I will tell ye what ye may hear when we get down the hill by the joiner’s shop—and that’s the clink o’ the saddle irons, and the waff o’ their horses’ lugs as they shake their necks—them no liking their heads tied up in bags.’
“‘Get on,’ he said, ‘I wish your head were tied up in a bag!’ And he tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. ‘Set me on the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.’
“This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating (it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks!
“We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks—the same that Will of the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o’ Auchenhay once held for two hours again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves Portowarren—no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the paler edge of the sea.
“Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I was held in suspicion for this night’s work—as also my wife Bridget.
“After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight.
“‘There,’ he cried back, ‘let them make what they will of that if ye be called in question. And, hear ye, Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a careless, idle good-for-nothing!’”