A few minutes later they had parted, and the boy, made happy by the coin he had been given, was returning to the farm, while the beggar, who had also reaped some profit in the last twenty-four hours, watched his late companion disappearing down the road. When he was out of sight he turned his own wheels in the direction of Brechin, and set off at a sober pace for that friendly town. He was singing to himself as he went, first because he owned the price of another bottle of whisky; secondly, because he was delighted to be rid of Flemington; and thirdly, because an inspiring idea had come to him.
His dogs, by the time they drew him into Brechin, would have done two heavy days’ work, and would deserve the comparative holiday he meant to give them. He would spend to-morrow in the town with his pipes in the company of that congenial circle always ready to spring from the gutter on his appearance. Then, after a good night’s rest, and when he should have collected a trifle, he would go on to Forfar and learn for certain whether Archie lived at Ardguys and who might be found there in his absence.
His idea was to arrive at the house with the last tidings of the young man; to give an account of the attack on the Venture, its surrender, Flemington’s injury, and his own part in befriending him. It took some time, in those days of slow communication, for public news to travel so much as across a county, but even should the tale of the ship have reached Ardguys, the news of Archie could scarcely have preceded him. He hoped to find someone—for preference an anxious mother, who would be sensible of how much he had done for her son. There would be fresh profit there.
And not only profit. There was something else for which the beggar hoped, though profit was his main object. He pictured some tender, emotional lady from whose unsuspicious heart he might draw scraps of information that would fit into his own theories. He would try the effect of Logie’s name, and there would be no harm in taking a general survey of Flemington’s surroundings and picking up any small facts about him that he could collect.
His own belief in Archie’s double dealing grew stronger as he jogged along; no doubt that shrewd and unaccountable young man was driving a stiff trade. There was little question in his mind that the contents of the letter he had put into his hands by the alder-clump had been sold to Captain James Logie, and that its immediate result had been the taking of the ship. He had learned from Archie’s ravings that there had been a question of money between himself and Logie. The part that he could make nothing of was the suggestion, conveyed by Archie in the night, that he and the judge’s brother had been fighting. “Let me go, Logie!” he had cried out in the darkness, and the blow on his forehead, which was bleeding when he found him, proved recent violence.
But though he could not explain these puzzles, nor make them tally with his belief, his theory remained. Flemington was in league with Logie. For the present he determined to keep his suspicions to himself.
[CHAPTER XVI
THE TWO ENDS OF THE LINE]
THREE days afterwards Wattie sat at the gates of Ardguys and looked between the pale yellow ash-trees at the house. There was nobody about at the moment to forbid his entrance, and he drove quietly in at a foot’s pace and approached the door. The sun shone with the clear lightness of autumn, and the leaves, which had almost finished the fitful process of falling, lay gathered in heaps by the gate, for Madam Flemington liked order. On the steep pitch of the ancient slate roof a few pigeons, white and grey, sat in pairs or walked about with spasmodic dignity. The whole made a picture, high in tone, like a water-colour, and the clean etched lines of the stripped branches gave it a sharp delicacy and threw up the tall, light walls. All these things were lost upon the beggar.