"I am going away, Maisie," I said.

"Going away, sir?" she repeated anxiously, as she came bashfully forward.

"I won't be back again, Maisie. I am going for good."

She looked up at me in dumb disquiet.

"Maisie, Lady Rosemary Granton will be here this week-end."

"Yes, sir!" she answered. "I am to have the honour of looking after her rooms."

I laid my hand gently on her shoulder.

"I want you to do something for me, Maisie. I want you to give her this letter,--see that she gets it when she is alone. It is more important to her than you can ever dream of. She must have it within a few hours of her arrival. No one else must set eyes on it between now and then. Do you understand, Maisie?"

"Oh, yes, sir! You can trust me for that."

"I know I can, Maisie. You are a good girl."

I gave her the letter and she placed it in the safest, the most secret, place she knew,--her bosom. Then her eyes scanned me over.

"Oh! sir," she cried, in sudden alarm, "you are hurt. You are bleeding."

I put my hand to my cheek, but then I remembered I had already wiped away the few drops of blood from there with my handkerchief.

"Your arm, sir," she pointed.

"Oh!--just a scratch, Maisie."

"Won't you let me bind it for you, sir, before you go?" she pleaded.

"It isn't worth the trouble, Maisie."

Tears came to those pretty eyes of hers; so, to please her, I consented.

"All right," I cried, "but hurry, for I have no more business in here now than a thief would have."

She did not understand my meaning, but she left me and was back in a moment with a basin of hot water, a sponge, balsam and bandages.

I slipped off my coat and rolled up my sleeve, then, as Maisie's gentle fingers sponged away the congealed blood and soothed the throb, I began to discover, from the intense relief, how painful had been the hurt, mere superficial thing as it was.

She poured on some balsam and bound up the cut; all gentleness, all tenderness, like a mother over her babe.

"There is a little jag here, Maisie, that aches outrageously now that the other has been lulled to sleep." I pointed to my breast.

She undid my shirt, and, as she surveyed the damage, she cried out in anxiety.

It was a raw, jagged, angry-looking wound, but nothing to occasion concern.

She dealt with it as she had done the other, then she drew the edges of the cut together, binding them in place with strips of sticking plaster. When it was all over, I slipped into my jacket, swung my knapsack across my shoulders, took my golf-bag under my left arm,--and I was ready.

Maisie wiped her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n.

"Never mind, little woman," I sympathised.

"Must you really go away, sir?" she sobbed.

"Yes!--I must. Good-bye, little girl."

I kissed her on the trembling curve of her red, pouting lips, then I went down the stairs, leaving her weeping quietly on the landing.

As I turned at the front door for one last look at the inside of the old home, which I might never see again, I saw the servants carrying Harry from the armoury. I could hear his voice swearing and complaining in almost healthy vigour, so I was pleasantly confirmed in what I already had surmised,--his hurt was as temporary as the flat of a good, trusty, highland broad-sword could make it.

CHAPTER V

Tommy Flynn, The Harlford Bruiser

I hurried down the avenue to where it joined the dusty roadway.

I stood for a few moments in indecision. To my left, down in the hollow, the way led through the village. To my right, it stretched far on the level until it narrowed to a grey point piercing a semi-circle of green; but I knew that miles beyond, at the end of that grey line, was the busy town of Grangeborough, with its thronging people, its railways and its steamships. That was the direction for me.

I waved my hand to sleepy little Brammerton and I swung to the right, for Grangeborough and the sea.

Soon the internal tumult, caused by what I had just gone through, began to subside, and my spirits rose attune to the glories of the afternoon.

Little I cared what my lot was destined to be--a prince in a palace or a tramp under a hedge. Although, to say truth, the tramp's existence held for me the greater fascination.

I was young, my lungs were sound and my heart beat well. I was big and endowed with greater strength than is allotted the average man.

Glad to be done with pomp, show and convention, my life was now my very own to plan and make, or to warp and spoil, as fancy, fortune and fate decreed.

I hankered for the undisturbed quiet of some small village by the sea, with work enough,--but no more,--to keep body nourished and covered; with books in plenty and my pipe well filled; with an open door to welcome the sunshine, the scented breeze, the salted spray from the ocean and my congenial fellow-man.

But, if I should be led in the paths of grubbing men, 'mid bustle, strife and quarrel, where the strong and the crafty alone survived, where the weaklings were thrust aside, I was ready and willing to take my place, to take my chance, to pit brawn against brawn, brain against brain, to strike blow for blow, to fail or to succeed, to live or die, as the G.o.ds might decree.

As I filled my lungs, I felt as if I had relieved myself of some great burden in cutting myself adrift from Brammerton,--dear old spot as it was. And I whistled and hummed as I trudged along, trying to reach the point of grey at the rim of the semi-circle of green. On, on I went, on my seemingly unending endeavour. But I knew that ultimately the road would end, although merely to open up another and yet another path over which I would have to travel in the long journey of life which lay before me.

As I kept on, I saw the sun go down in a display of blood-red pyrotechnics. I heard the chatter of the birds in the hedgerows as they settled to rest. Now and again, I pa.s.sed a tired toiler, with bent head and dragging feet,--his drudgery over for the day, but weighted with the knowledge that it must begin all over again on the morrow and on each succeeding morrow till the crash of his doom.

The night breeze came up and darkness gathered round me. A few hours more, and the twinkling lights of Grangeborough came into view. They were welcome lights to me, for the pangs of a healthy hunger were clamouring to be appeased.

As it had been with the country some hours before, so was it now with Grangeborough. The town was settling down for the night. It was late.

Most of the shops were closing, or already closed. Business was over for the day. People hurried homeward like shadows.

I looked about me for a place to dine, but failed, at first, in my quest. Down toward the docks there were brighter lights and correspondingly deeper darknesses. I went along a broad thoroughfare, turned down a narrower one until I found myself among lanes and alleys, jostled by drunken sailors and accosted by wanton women, as they staggered, blinking, from the brightly lighted saloons.