"You carry it with a high hand, Mistress Carew," said the Parson, losing the command he had tried to keep over a temper only too apt to rise beyond control. "You might have learned before now 'tis a waste of time to ride the great horse with me. I have the power, aye! and more than half the mind, to bring you down from your saddle there, in that tuft of heather, on your knees. You may smile--you look parlous handsome when you smile--but I'm not one to speak out of my turn, I tell ye. I know _everything_, and I've got his life in my hand!"

Of all her fair and n.o.ble qualities, a woman's hypocrisy is sometimes the fairest and the n.o.blest. Unlike the rougher s.e.x, it is when she is most unselfish that she seems most artful to deceive. Had her power been equal to her will, Nelly Carew's natural inclination, and indeed her earnest desire, had been to strike this man down, and trample him under Cowslip's hoofs, not perhaps to death, but to bodily injury and degradation, yet she commanded herself with an effort beyond all praise, and smiled sweetly in his face, while she observed--

"Something has put you out to-day, Master Gale. I suppose that is why you want to quarrel with your best friends. You never spoke to _me_ so sharp before. Is it Ca.s.sock's fault, or mine, or whose, that your good nag could not keep up with that grey horse on the open moor? The creature seemed to have the wings of a bird. If that's all, sure 'tis no disgrace to be beaten when a man does his best."

Though her tone seemed easy and unconstrained, she felt cruelly anxious, and resolved at any cost to learn how far Abner Gale's enmity was to be feared on her lover's behalf.

"The grey horse is a good one, I'll not deny," said the Parson. "Too good for his master and his master's trade, though the beast has saved the man from hanging many a time and oft. I'm surprised at your grandfather, Mistress Nelly. I'm more surprised at yourself, that you can consort with such a jail-bird. He is a disgrace to us all, coming here to Porlock as though he could find no better place to hide in from the hue and cry."

"Do you mean Master Garnet?" exclaimed Nelly, with flashing eyes, while she stifled a sob of wrath and fear that rose from her heart.

"I mean Galloping Jack, the highwayman," answered Gale, "a villain who should have swung, by rights, at Tyburn, last autumn, whom I devoutly hope to see hanged before the fifth of November next!"

"You showed me his dying speech and confession yourself," answered the girl, with tight-set lips that kept down some overmastering emotion by sheer force of will. "Come, Master Gale, you know as well as I do that John Garnet is no common thief with a black vizard and a speedy horse, no mere moonlight robber to stop a coach for plunder on the king's highway. He has done something worse than that. Out with it; you used to have no secrets from your friends. Tell me what it is!"

Parson Gale was in the habit of declaring that a man who told a lie should possess a good memory. He wished he had stuck more consistently to this maxim, and had not, by his forgetfulness, thus laid his own statement open to denial. The wisest course, he thought, would be to take the bull by the horns.

"I only hoped to shame you out of your fancy, Mistress Nelly," said he, with a transparent affectation of friendliness and sincerity. "I know this man has a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of a famous highwayman for disguise. He is no more Galloping Jack than I am. He is Master John Garnet, _plain_ John Garnet, as I have heard them call him, in ridicule, I fancy, of his waiting-maid's face and mop of curling hair. Wanted for robbing his Majesty's Government. Wanted for high treason. Wanted for murder done in Covent Garden, brought home to him by evidence no court of justice can gainsay, and as sure to swing, on one, and all of these counts, as I hope I am to get home to supper this blessed night!"

She had grown paler and paler with every accusation in the catalogue of her lover's crimes. She looked as if she must have fallen fainting from the saddle, yet never for an instant did she lose her presence of mind, nor forego her resolution to save John Garnet how she could!

"I can't bring myself to believe it is as bad as you say," she answered carelessly. "But I thought there was something unusual about the gentleman, I'll not deny. 'Tis grandfather who will miss him if he comes to harm. Grandfather took to him, you know, as he never took to a stranger before. You must have seen that yourself."

"And _you_, Mistress Nelly," said the Parson, bringing his weary horse nearer the white pony's side, "did not _you_ take to this stranger too, and for the sake of a new face flout the old friends who had loved you all your life?"

"La! Master Gale," was the feminine reply, "you talk of loves and likings as though we could put them on and off like our hose and farthingales. Sure you never thought me one to forget an old friend for the sake of a new face, comely though it be?"

"And you do not really care for this bedizened Jack-a-napes?" he exclaimed, while his voice shook with an emotion that betrayed how deeply the admission touched his feelings.

"I love him!" answered Nelly, watching her listener as the steersman watches an angry sky. "Yes, I love him--for grandfather's sake!"

Even in the anxiety and agitation of the moment, even through all the scorn and loathing she felt for the attentions of her unwelcome admirer, it could not but gratify her vanity to mark the changes that pa.s.sed over his rough, weather-worn face with every word she uttered, every inflection of her voice. She had only suspected the Parson loved her when she first discovered her own love for John Garnet. She was sure of it now, and could almost have found it in her heart to pity him, for the utter hopelessness of his suit; but this was no time to indulge in such weakness. Abner Gale's affection was a powerful engine, and she must use it to save John Garnet's life.

Looking very beautiful, and trusting to her beauty as man trusts to his intellect, the brute to its strength and speed, she glanced her blue eyes shyly in his face, and added, after a becoming little pause of hesitation, "Why--Why should all this interest _you_, Master Gale?"

"Because I love you!" he exclaimed. "Love you, Nelly Carew, more than anything and everything in earth or heaven! I'm old and rough, I know--not fit to black the shoes on your pretty feet. I've been a brawler and a sot, and--and--worse than that, drinking and roystering at feasts and revels, while all the time my heart was sore for the sweetest la.s.s in Devon, to think I wasn't good enough, nor comely enough, so much as to kiss the tips of her fingers, nor to sip with her on the same cup.

But I'd be a different man if you was only to hold up your hand. It would be no trouble to leave liquor and wrestling-bouts, fairs, and fiddlings, roaring lads and saucy wenches, at your bidding. Nay, more than that, Mistress Nelly, I could go back from the great oath I swore, if you did but hold up your finger, and forgive my bitterest enemy for your sake!"

"Why should you _have_ enemies, you that are so frank and hearty?" asked Nelly, fairly alarmed at the strength of the feelings she had aroused, while determined to profit by them at any cost.

The Parson reined in his horse, and unconsciously she followed his example.

"The man John Garnet," said he, in a deep, hoa.r.s.e voice, "took my brother's life--stabbed him in the dark, Mistress Nelly, without friends or witnesses, and that man I have sworn never to leave till with my own eyes I see him laid in a murderer's grave. To-day an accursed chance delivered him out of my hand, when my knife was almost at his throat.

The next time he shall not escape so well. d.i.c.k Boss and I, with a few stout lads to help, mean having him safe in Taunton Gaol before the week is out. And this is the gallant, pretty Mistress Nelly, I was fool enough to think had made such way in your good graces as to supplant your old friend Abner Gale!"

How she hated him, sitting there, square and resolute, on his horse! The unwelcome suitor, the implacable enemy, the avenger thirsting for the blood of one whom she only loved more madly, more devotedly, because of his danger and his need! Her blue eyes burned with unaccustomed fire, her cheek glowed with a deep, angry crimson, and Parson Gale, marking her emotion, believed it was called forth by affection for himself!

He looked at her in speechless admiration for the s.p.a.ce of a full minute, then he burst out with a sob:

"Have pity on me, Mistress Nelly, have pity on me! I love you so! I love you so!"

She had reviewed the whole position, taken in every detail of the situation during this eventful pause, and made her crowning manoeuvre with the skill of that subtlest of all tacticians--a woman at her wit's end!

"It's very easy to talk!" she observed, demurely, "but I was always one that liked to see a man prove his words. If you--you _really_ cared for me, you would do what I ask, wouldn't you, Master Gale? and never want to know the reason why!"

"Ask it!" exclaimed the Parson, "and if I say no, beautiful Mistress Nelly, then say no to _me_, when I plead for something dearer and more precious than the light of day and the very air I breathe!"

She knew too well the compact implied by so enthusiastic an a.s.sent, but hesitated not for a single instant.

"You will spare Master Garnet," she said, in a steady, monotonous voice, "and give him time to get clear out of the country, for my--my grandfather's sake."

"On one condition!"

"On _any_ condition," she murmured, and the brown moors, the evening sky, seemed to spin round so fast that she turned faint and giddy in the whirl.

There was no question of deception, no loop-hole for mental reservation and eventual escape. In the balance hung her lover's safety against her own utter destruction. Could there be a doubt into which scale would be flung the deciding weight of a woman's self-sacrificing devotion, a woman's uncalculating love?

"You will be my wife, Mistress Nelly Carew, if I pledge myself to let this man go free?" said the Parson, in slow, distinct syllables, while a grin of triumph, none the less hateful for the affection it expressed, rendered his face more hideous than ever in her eyes.

"I will be your wife, Master Abner Gale, if you pledge yourself to let this man go free!" she repeated, in clear, incisive tones that seemed the echo of his own.

"And you promise never to speak to him nor see him again?"

"And I promise never to see him, nor speak to him again!"

"It's a bargain."

"It's a bargain."

Then they shook hands, and although Abner Gale would fain have ratified this strange betrothal with a kiss, there was something in Nelly's face that absolutely cowed him, and he forbore.

They soon separated where their respective paths diverged. The Parson made his way over the moor, wondering that he did not feel more elated with his triumph, while Nelly rode home alone, looking into vacancy with a white face and fixed, tearless eyes, that seemed to express neither sorrow nor impatience, nor fear, but only mute wonder, and an uncomplaining, apathetic despair.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SELF-SACRIFICE.

"Weather-wise--fool otherwise," is a West-country proverb that by no means applied to Red Rube. The harbourer, who had taken a judicious view of John Garnet's position, and gave him sensible advice under the circ.u.mstances, proved also a reliable prophet, even in so uncertain a prediction as the quarter from which the wind would blow. It remained, as he expected, in the north, and a keen frost setting in on the night of the great chase from Cloutsham-Ball, gave promise of an earlier winter than was either expected or desired in the fertile coombes of West Somerset and North Devon. The honest yeomen-farmers looked grave and shook their heads. There were apples yet ungathered in late orchards, oats standing in sheaves on bare hill-farms; the cold weather would bring the stags on, too, and put an end to their favourite sport.

n.o.body wanted to begin winter in October, while old people dreaded the effects of an unseasonably low temperature, or neighbours who were a few years, or even a few months, older than themselves.

More than one venerable inhabitant of Porlock, noting his shrunken form and feeble gait, was heard to express a fear that, with the close of autumn, it would "go hard with Master Carew," and the veteran himself, though he kept his opinion from Nelly, little hoped to see the buds and blossoms of another spring. He felt that Death was coming like a giant on the mountains, casting his shadow before him as he advanced with swift and noiseless strides, nor, but for the leaving of his grandchild, did it seem so hard to follow the host of friends and comrades who had preceded him to the unknown country beyond the deep, dark, narrow stream. A brave man is seldom deceived in such matters. Old Carew, taking to his bed, gaunt and weary, an hour before Nelly came home, knew he would never leave it again alive.

Guiding Cowslip deftly down the hill into Porlock, the girl believed her cup of misery was full. She told herself it could not hold another drop.

Severed from the love of her life at a single blow, dealt by her own hand--bound to the man she loathed and feared and hated, by her own promise--pledged never to see nor speak to John Garnet again--forbidden even to warn him that he must fly! No! Honour or dishonour, she would _not_ hold to this part of the contract! He must learn the truth from her own lips, and then, though he should heap curses on her perfidy, she would bid him farewell for ever, and live out, as best she might, the life of misery and desolation she had chosen for his sake!