The Story of Francis Cludde

by Stanley John Weyman

"To sink the body," he replied. "We cannot bury it in the marsh, and if we could it were trouble thrown away. We must have a stone."

"What is to be done?" I asked, leaning on my oar and shivering, as much in impatience as nervousness. "Must we go back?"

"No, we are not far from the causeway now," he answered, with Dutch coolness. "There are some big stones, I fancy, by the end of the bridge. If not, there are some lying among the cottages just across the bridge. Your eyes are younger than mine, so you had better go. I will pull on, and land you."

I assented, and the boat's course being changed a point or two, three minutes' rowing laid her bows on the mud, some fifty yards from the landward bend of the bridge, and just in the shadow of the causeway. I sprang ashore and clambered up. "Hist!" he cried, warning me as I was about to start on my errand. "Go about it quietly, Master Francis. The people will probably be in bed. But be secret."

I nodded and moved off, as warily as he could desire. I spent a minute or two peering about the causeway, but I found nothing that would serve our purpose. There was no course left then but to cross the planks, and seek what I wanted in the hamlet. Remembering how the timbers had creaked and clattered when I went over them in the daylight, I stole across on tiptoe. I fancied I had seen a pile of stones near one of the posts at that end, but I could not find them now, and after groping about a while--for this part was at the moment in darkness--I crept cautiously past the first hovel, peering to right and left as I went. I did not like to confess to myself that I was afraid to be alone in the dark, but that was nearly the truth. I was feverishly anxious to find what I wanted and return to my companion.

Suddenly I paused and held my breath. A slight sound had fallen on my ears, nervously ready to catch the slightest. I paused and listened. Yes, there it was again; a whispering of cautious voices close by me, within a few feet of me. I could see no one. But a moment's thought told me that the speakers were hidden by the farther corner of the cottage abreast of which I stood. The sound of human voices, the assurance of living companionship, steadied my nerves, and to some extent rid me of my folly. I took a step to one side, so as to be more completely in the shadow cast by the reed-thatched eaves, and then softly advanced until I commanded a view of the whisperers.

They were two, a man and a woman. And the woman was of all people Dymphna! She had her back to me, but she stood in the moonlight, and I knew her hood in a moment. The man--surely the man was Van Tree then, if the woman was Dymphna? I stared. I felt sure it must be Van Tree. It was wonderful enough that Dymphna should so far have regained nerve and composure as to rise and come out to meet him. But in that case her conduct, though strange, was explicable. If not, however, if the man were not Van Tree----

Well, he certainly was not. Stare as I might, rub my eyes as I might, I could not alter the man's figure, which was of the tallest, whereas I have said that the young Dutchman was short. This man's face, too, though it was obscured as he bent over the girl by his cloak, which was pulled high up about his throat, was swarthy; swarthy and beardless, I made out. More, his cap had a feather, and even as he stood still I thought I read the soldier in his attitude. The soldier and the Spaniard!

What did it mean? On what strange combination had I lit? Dymphna and a Spaniard! Impossible. Yet a thousand doubts and thoughts ran riot in my brain, a thousand conjectures jostled one another to get uppermost. What was I to do? What ought I to do? Go nearer to them, as near as possible, and listen and learn the truth? Or steal back the way I had come, and fetch Master Lindstrom? But first, was it certain that the girl was there of her own free will? Yes, the question was answered as soon as put. The man laid his hand gently on her shoulder. She did not draw back.

Confident of this, and consequently of Dymphna's bodily safety, I hesitated, and was beginning to consider whether the best course might not be to withdraw and say nothing, leaving the question of future proceedings to be decided after I had spoken to her on the morrow, when a movement diverted my thoughts. The man at last raised his head. The moonlight fell cold and bright on his face, displaying every feature as clearly as if it had been day. And though I had only once seen his face before, I knew it again.