make myself comfortable.”
The man rose, and did not press his offer, but left the room for a supply of fuel. Alice remained in her corner.
“Sweetheart,” said the traveller, looking round and satisfying himself that they were alone: “I should sleep well if I could get one kiss from those coral lips.”
Alice hid her face with her hands.
“Do I vex you?”
“Oh no, sir.”
At this assurance the traveller rose, and approached Alice softly. He drew away her hands from her face, when she said gently, “Have you much money about you?”
“Oh, the mercenary baggage!” said the traveller to himself; and then replied aloud, “Why, pretty one? Do you sell your kisses so high then?”
Alice frowned and tossed the hair from her brow. “If you have money,” she said, in a whisper, “don’t say so to father. Don’t sleep if you can help it. I’m afraid—hush—he comes!”
The young man returned to his seat with an altered manner. And as his host entered, he for the first time surveyed him closely. The imperfect glimmer of the half-dying and single candle threw into strong lights and shades the marked, rugged, and ferocious features of the cottager; and the eye of the traveller, glancing from the face to the limbs and frame, saw that whatever of violence the mind might design, the body might well execute.
The traveller sank into a gloomy reverie. The wind howled—the rain beat—through the casement shone no solitary star—all was dark and sombre. Should he proceed alone—might he not suffer a greater danger upon that wide and desert moor—might not the host follow—assault him in the dark? He had no weapon save a stick. But within he had at least a rude resource in the large kitchen poker that was beside him. At all events it would be better to wait for the present. He might at any time, when alone, withdraw the bolt from the door, and slip out unobserved. Such was the fruit of his meditations while his host plied the fire.
“You will sleep sound to-night,” said his entertainer, smiling.
“Humph! Why, I am over-fatigued; I dare say it will be an hour or two before I fall asleep; but when I once am asleep, I sleep like a rock!”
“Come, Alice,” said her father, “let us leave the gentleman. Goodnight, sir.”
“Good night—good night,” returned the traveller, yawning.
The father and daughter disappeared through a door in the corner of the room. The guest heard them ascend the creaking stairs—all was still.
“Fool that I am,” said the traveller to himself, “will nothing teach me that I am no longer a student at Gottingen, or cure me of these pedestrian adventures? Had it not been for that girl’s big blue eyes, I should be safe at———by this time, if, indeed, the grim father had not murdered me by the road. However, we’ll baulk him yet: another half-hour, and I am on the moor: we must give him time. And in the meanwhile here is the poker. At the worst it is but one to one; but the churl is strongly built.”
Although the traveller thus endeavoured to cheer his courage, his heart beat more loudly than its wont. He kept his eyes stationed on the door by which the cottagers had vanished, and his hand on the massive poker.
While the stranger was thus employed below, Alice, instead of turning to her own narrow cell, went into her father’s room.
The cottager was seated at the foot of his bed muttering to himself, and with eyes fixed on the ground.
The girl stood before him, gazing on his face, and with her arms lightly crossed above her bosom.
“It must be worth twenty guineas,” said the host, abruptly to himself.
“What is it to you, father, what the gentleman’s watch is worth?”
The man started.
“You mean,” continued Alice, quietly, “you mean to do some injury to that young man; but you shall not.”
The cottager’s face grew black as night. “How,” he began in a loud voice, but suddenly dropped the tone into a deep growl—“how dare you talk to me so?—go to bed—go to bed.”
“No, father.”
“No?”
“I will not stir from this room until daybreak.”
“We will soon see that,” said the man, with an oath.
“Touch me, and I will alarm the gentleman, and tell him that—”
“What?”
The girl approached her father, placed her lips to his ear, and whispered, “That you intend to murder him.”
The cottager’s frame trembled from head to foot; he shut his eyes, and gasped painfully for breath. “Alice,” said he, gently, after a pause—“Alice, we are often nearly starving.”
“I am—you never!”
“Wretch, yes, if I do drink too much one day, I pinch for it the next. But go to bed, I say—I mean no harm to the young man. Think you I would twist myself a rope?—no, no; go along, go along.”
Alice’s face, which had before been earnest and almost intelligent, now relapsed into its wonted vacant stare.
“To be sure, father, they would hang you if you cut his throat. Don’t forget that;—good night;” and so saying, she walked to her own opposite chamber.
Left alone, the host pressed his hand tightly to his forehead, and remained motionless for nearly half an hour.
“If that cursed girl would but sleep,” he muttered at last, turning round, “it might be done at once. And there’s the pond behind, as deep as a well; and I might say at daybreak that the boy had bolted. He seems quite a stranger here—nobody’ll miss him. He must have plenty of blunt to give half a guinea to a guide across a common! I want money, and I won’t work—if I can help it, at least.”
While he thus soliloquised the air seemed to oppress him; he opened the window, he leant out—the rain beat upon him. He closed the window with an oath; took off his shoes, stole to the threshold, and, by the candle, which he shaded with his hand, surveyed the opposite door. It was closed. He then bent anxiously forward and listened.
“All’s quiet,” thought he, “perhaps he sleeps already. I will steal down. If Jack Walters would but come tonight, the job would be done charmingly.”
With that he crept gently down the stairs. In a corner, at the foot of the staircase, lay sundry matters, a few faggots, and a cleaver. He caught up the last. “Aha,” he muttered; “and there’s the sledge-hammer somewhere for Walters.” Leaning himself against the door, he then applied his eye to a chink which admitted a dim view of the room within, lighted fitfully by the fire.
CHAPTER II.
“What have we here?
A carrion death!”
Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 7.
It was about this time that the stranger deemed it advisable to commence his retreat. The slight and suppressed sound of voices, which at first he had heard above in the conversation of the father and child, had died away. The stillness at once encouraged and warned him. He stole to the front door, softly undid the bolt, and found the door locked, and the key missing. He had not observed that during his repast, and ere his suspicions had been aroused, his host, in replacing the bar, and relocking the entrance, had abstracted the key. His fears were now confirmed. His next thought was the window—the shutter only protected it half-way, and was easily removed; but the aperture of the lattice, which only opened in