"What! have you not gone?" he said roughly, and with a reddening cheek. "You do not help me by staring at me like a dead pig! If you can get food, no matter what it is, don't bring it here. You may be followed. Lay it down at the opening of this rat-run, where you enter it from the house. I shall find it when the coast is clear."
His manner was changed, and Jack would have been more than mortal if he had not felt the change. It hurt and disappointed him sorely; coming just when he had done all he could. But he hid his chagrin, and, turning obediently away, set off without a word down the rift, and thence through the wood of yews, where the sheltering gloom was now as welcome to him as it had been before alarming. As he approached the house, however, and the immediate necessity of facing Mistress Gridley and the brothers with an unmoved countenance forced itself upon him, he paused involuntarily, trembling under the sense of sudden fear which beset him. The horrible events of the morning, the cries of the men whom he had seen cut down on the moor, his brother's danger, and the consequences of a hapless word, all rushed into his mind together, and for the moment, if the word may be used of so young a child, unmanned him. Clutching the trunk of the last tree he had to pass, he leaned against it in a very ague of terror; afraid to go forward, shaking at the very thought of going forward and facing those unfriendly eyes, yet knowing that if he would save his brother, if he would not shame his blood and breeding, he must go forward.
He leaned against it in a very ague of terror.--Page 75.
While he stood in this agony--for it was nothing less--butler Gridley, loitering about the back-door with thoughts and for a purpose of his own, espied him; and with a stealthy foot and a glance in the direction of the house, made towards him. The least observant eye must have detected the boy's terror, or seen at least that he was laboring under some strange emotion. But Gridley's eyes were not observant at all; they were only hungry. He had fasted against his will for twenty-four hours, and his plump cheeks were pallid. He had a wolf within him that demanded all his attention. He saw in the boy only a means of satisfying his craving.
"Jack!" he whispered, with his lips almost at the boy's ear and his eyes devouring his face, "I have always been good to you. I want you to do something. It is a little thing," he repeated feverishly. "It is a nothing. Just----"
He had got so far--and alas! for him, no farther--when a harsh, discordant laugh behind him caused him to straighten himself as if an unseen hand had propelled him. "Let the child alone!" Mistress Gridley cried from the door; "do you hear me? I will have no plotting and colloguing in my house! And do you, Jack, come here!"
There was a world of sarcasm in the woman's gibing tone; and it cut the butler like a knife. He crept away with a savage glare in his eyes. The boy went slowly to the door with thoughts happily diverted from the weighty issues which had a moment before overburdened him. The incident was, indeed, his salvation; for, though the woman could not fail to remark his embarrassment, she naturally set it down to the wrong cause, supposing merely that the butler had been trying to corrupt him.
"Where have you been all day?" she cried roughly, hustling him into the house--so violently that he stumbled on the threshold. "You don't deserve your food either," she continued, shaking him fiercely, "playing truant all day! But you shall have it, if only to tantalize that craven fool yonder. Where have you been, eh? You will stop at home in future, do you hear? This is your place--inside these four walls--until this business is over. You remember that, my lad, or it will be the worse for you!"
Simon Gridley and two men, whom the boy did not know, were in the kitchen, sitting dour and silent over the remains of a meal. They looked up on the boy's entrance, but took no further notice of him. The woman set food before him, scolding all the while, and then went off to her work in the back premises. The boy had little heart to eat; but presently he found occasion while Simon was talking to the two strangers (who were brothers, of the name of Edgington, ex-troopers and weavers of Bradford) to secrete part of his meal inside his jacket. Mistress Gridley, when she came back, looked sharply at what he had left; but the boy had eaten so little that her suspicions were not aroused, and she flounced away with the platter, bidding him remain indoors and sit where he was.