“Sir,” says I, “I am here to defend you, and I present you with my very humble duty.”
But something seemed to twitch his poor old face as I spoke, and he fell back on his bed. “Oh,” says my cousin, “leave us, sir, leave us, and send Barbara to me quick!” And so John and I bundled out of the chamber, sore bewildered.
III.
During the remaining hours of that night our enemies gave us no more trouble than the mere observing of their movements. It appeared to me from what I could make out, as I went from one man to another, that they remained in the stable, and were of an uncommon quietness. “Hatching their plans, no doubt,” says I, and was not unthankful that things wore their present complexion. I had no great love of fighting in the dark, and I considered, moreover, that our chances were better in the daytime, when we could use our eyes to some advantage, than in such a night as that when we could scarce see aught at twenty yards’ distance. However, though they made no further motion towards attacking us, I saw to it that a strict watch was kept, and moved from post to post constantly, lest any of my sentinels should forget themselves and fall asleep. So the night passed, and in a somewhat sombre and melancholy fashion, for there was a mournful wind without, and in my uncle’s chamber the old man himself lay grievously sick and in constant need of Mistress Alison’s ministrations.
About six o’clock in the morning, a grey light being then apparent in the eastward heaven above Went Hill, I found John and Humphrey Stirk with their chins resting on their muskets, and their mouths as wide agape as young blackbirds are when the old bird comes home with a worm in her beak. “Ha!” says I. “By your faces, lads, ’tis high time you were relieved. Away with you to the kitchen, and bid Barbara see to food and drink for you while I keep guard. We are ill-mannered, but you shall have an hour’s relief while there’s a chance,” I says, bundling them off, and feeling that it were scurvy behaviour to treat volunteers less considerately. So they thanked me and withdrew, and having been on my legs all night I sat me down near the window and stared at the grey sky outside. “Faith!” says I, yawning, “here’s a pretty state of things that I have come into. Look upon thyself, Dick,” I says, “as a dead man, over whom they have already said ‘Ashes to ashes.’ For thou wilt certainly be shot if thou stayest here, and hanged if thou dost escape. However, there’s no use in repining nor in reflecting. Shot or hanged, what matter a century hence?”
And yet, as I sat there, I could not help but reflect, though I can with great honesty say that I did not repine. I think it must have been my liking for philosophic questionings that made me reflect in the fashion I did, for, in sooth, all my thoughts turned to the curious manner in which one small event or trifling circumstance had led to another, until at last I was landed in a very quagmire of serious result. But there I flew away at another tangent, and began to ask myself whether there is any event or action so trifling or unimportant as not to have any effect on our happiness or misery. Certainly the events of the twenty-four hours then drawing to a close had seemed small in themselves, and were yet productive of results the most serious. If my horse had not fallen dead by the wayside I should not have stayed to think under the trees at Barnsdale, and if I had not stayed there I should not have thought of Reuben Trippett’s farmstead and in due course gone there, and if I had not gone there I should never have heard of Anthony Dacre’s plot, and if I had remained in ignorance of that I should certainly not have been sitting in my uncle’s manor-house that morning waiting for daybreak, and feeling myself already a lost man. “Alas!” I sighs, coming at last to a definite opinion, “’tis most true that no event is so trifling as to be wholly unimportant. There is naught so sure as that one thing leads to another—the mischief is that we never know what that other is going to be.”
I think I had gotten into this state of mind during my patrol of the house during the night. At first my thoughts had perforce been directed to the immediate necessities of the hour; but as things grew quiet, I could not help thinking about my own peculiar predicament. And the more I thought, the more certain was I of the result of my present proceedings. “Thou art a dead man!” says I to myself, shaking my head mournfully. “There is not a shadow of doubt about that. As dead as if old Tobias had turned his first shovelful——”
But at that moment—and it was a truly welcome relief, for I was, indeed, waxing melancholy—the door of my uncle’s chamber opens gently, and out into the corridor steps Mistress Alison. She shut the door behind her with a pretty care, and seeing me in the grey light, came softly in my direction.
“Good morning to you, cousin,” says I, rising from my chair and approaching her. “I trust my uncle is somewhat recovered by this time?”