He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day's sacrifice was washing past.
He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What, after all, was the old god of the river to the Juggernaut of the city? And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow of old London's many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of that dark spot was here.
CHAPTER XIII.
The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the night through.
Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh breeze blew across the breakwater.
The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone in the glow of the sinking sun.
Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing tithes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune's Well. When he reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes of the assistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.
Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little "snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden partition that stood no higher than a tall man's height, and left a space between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped at the other side of the partition.
"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the sound), "I took the stiff'ning out of him first go off. When he'd done he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn't an old lag, so says I to 'im, 'Green 'un,' I says, 'if you're leary, you'll fetch a easy lagging, and if you're not, it'll be bellows to mend with you.' 'What d'ye mean?' he says. 'It's bloomin' 'ard work here,' I says, 'and maybe you don't get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for a word,' I says. 'You're in my gang, quarrying, and I won't work you 'ard except I'm druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang,' I says, 'and no putting the stick on agen the screw.' 'Don't understand,' he says. 'Then follow a straight tip,' I says; 'stand by your warder and he'll stand by you.' Blest if that lag as I'd give that good advice to didn't get me fined the very next day."