"My name's Mugford," gasped the man, now struggling a little.

"And when did you get your discharge?" asked the Corporal; "and why are you hanging about the woods instead of living with your mother like an honest man? But when you're back at Plymouth they'll know you as Henry Bale fast enough, I'll warrant."

The man trembled, and begged abjectly for mercy; but the Corporal only pulled out a knife, without relaxing his hold on his throat, turned him over on his face, and cut his waistband. "Now," he said, "the best thing that you can do is to surrender and come quietly along with me.

Give me your hands." And pulling a piece of twine from his pocket he tied the man's thumbs together behind his back. Then raising him to his feet he shoved him over the rack in the hedge, and led him past Mrs. Mugford's windows, where a rushlight was burning, into the road and so to the stables at Bracefort. There he locked his prisoner into a separate loose-box with a barred window, having first tied his wrists before him, instead of his thumbs behind him; and then he sought out pen and paper and wrote; a letter to Colonel Fitzdenys, which, though it was not very long, took him much time to write, and ran as follows:--

"Honoured Col.--these are to inform you that I have the deserter Henry Bale saf under lock and kay which is all at present from your honour's most ob't humble serv't.--J. BRIMACOTT."

He put the letter into his pocket, and drawing a mattress before the door of the loose-box, went fast asleep on it till dawn, when he called a sleepy stable-boy from the rooms above and bade him ride over with the letter to Fitzdenys Court.

By eight o'clock Colonel Fitzdenys arrived at a gallop from Fitzdenys Court. Having seen and questioned the Corporal's prisoner, who made a full confession, he left a message that he would return as soon as possible, and that he would want to see Mrs. Fry and Tommy; after which he rode back again, as fast as he had come, to Kingstoke. There his business was soon finished, for when the idiot was brought up before him (which he had already arranged to be done) he was able to discharge him directly, since he himself had ascertained that the true deserter had been captured. But none the less he gave the serjeant a guinea to console him for his disappointment in having caught the wrong man.

Then he went to speak to the idiot's mother and to tell her how sorry he was for the mistake that had been made; for the two had been locked up all night in Kingstoke. She did not receive him kindly, however, for all that she said was: "It's very well to be sorry now, and I don't say, sir, that it's no fault of yours, but they've agone nigh to kill my boy with their doings;" and indeed the idiot was so weak and white that he could hardly stand. Still more distressed was she when Colonel Fitzdenys told her that she could not go yet, but that she must first visit Bracefort Hall. She tried hard to obtain his leave to go to her own place at once, but he insisted, though with all possible kindness, that she must come with him to the Hall, and that then she should be free to go where she would. So very reluctantly she got into a market-cart with her son, who sat like a lifeless thing beside her, and was driven off, while Colonel Fitzdenys cantered on before them.

When the market-cart reached the door of the Hall, Lady Eleanor was there waiting to welcome her and to thank her for all that she had done for her own children; but the woman only said coldly that she was very welcome, and seemed to have no thought but for her idiot son, who remained sunk in the same abject condition. They brought him wine, which revived him enough to set him crying a little, but he would take no notice of anything. For a moment the woman softened, when d.i.c.k and Elsie came in and thanked her prettily for the kindness that she had shown to them, and she tried to rouse her son to take notice of them.

But he only went on crying; and she was evidently much distressed.

Then the Corporal came to say that Mrs. Fry was come and had brought Tommy with her; on which Colonel Fitzdenys told the woman outright that she had been accused of bewitching the boy and depriving him of his speech. The woman's hard manner at once returned, and she laughed loud and scornfully.

"That's only their lies," she said. "How should I take away a boy's speech? they'm all agin me and my boy; that's all it is."

"Well, they say that he can't speak," said Colonel Fitzdenys. "You shall tell him to speak yourself, and then we shall be able to judge."

So Mrs. Fry was called in and told to hold her tongue, and Tommy, who had hidden himself in her skirts, was brought forward. The woman no sooner saw him than her eyes gleamed, and she said: "That's the one who throwed stones at my boy and called mun thafe. He not spake? He can spake well enough if he has a mind, I'll warrant mun."

"But his mother says that he cannot," said Colonel Fitzdenys. "See for yourself," and he led the trembling boy forward. "Tell him to speak to you."

"Spake, boy," said the woman not very amiably. "You can spake well enough, can't 'ee?"

"Yas," said Tommy nervously, to his mother's intense surprise.

"There! what did I tell 'ee?" said the woman contemptuously. "'Twas only their lies. He can spake so well as you and I."

Mrs. Fry, much taken aback, seized hold of the boy in amazement; but he begged so hard to be let go as to leave no doubt that his speech was restored; and Lady Eleanor lost no time in sending him off with his mother.

Then Lady Eleanor again thanked the idiot's mother for all that she had done for her own children, and asked what she could do for her; but the woman would accept no money nor reward, nothing but a few cakes which the children brought to her to take home for her son. Lady Eleanor offered her everything that she could think of, even to a remote cottage in the woods where she would certainly live undisturbed; but the woman only begged that she might not be asked to say where she lived nor to give any account of herself. She was quite alone with her son, she said, and lived an honest harmless life. As to Tommy Fry, she could not understand how any words of hers could have taken his speech from him; it was nonsense, and the women were fools. Finally, she said that if Lady Eleanor really wished to be kind she would let them go and not try to find them again; but she faithfully promised that if anything went wrong, she would come to her first for help.

So Lady Eleanor seeing that she was in earnest promised to do as she had said; and the woman thanked her with real grat.i.tude. Then d.i.c.k and Elsie came in again to say good-bye, and the woman, taking her son by the arm, led him away. He moved so feebly that Lady Eleanor offered her a pony for him to ride, but his mother refused, though with many thanks; so the two pa.s.sed away slowly across the park, and disappeared.

"Well, there is Tommy Fry cured at any rate," said Colonel Fitzdenys.

"And I believe that the woman spoke the truth, when she said that she did not know what she had done to him. And now I must see to this man who is locked up in the stable."

But even while he spoke the Corporal came to say that Mrs. Mugford was come, and begged to be allowed to see her Ladyship. So in the poor thing came, crying her eyes out, to confess that her son in the stable was the true deserter, and to beg her Ladyship to have mercy and not to yield him up, giving such an account of the punishment that awaited him as nearly turned Lady Eleanor sick; for those were rough days in the army.

Colonel George meanwhile stood by without uttering a word; and when Mrs. Mugford had crawled from the room, utterly broken down, and Lady Eleanor turned to him with tears in her eyes, too much moved to speak, he only shook his head.

"The fellow must be given up and sent back to his corps," he said. "He has already got an innocent man into trouble, and even if he had not I am bound in duty to send him back."

"Could you not do something to intercede for him and save him from this horrible punishment?" asked Lady Eleanor. "I should be so thankful if you would."

Colonel George hesitated. "I have no wish to harm the poor wretch," he said, "but there are other men in the same case, very likely less guilty, who have no one to intercede for them. It is a question of discipline."

"Oh, don't be so hard," pleaded Lady Eleanor, "you who are always so gentle. You, who have done so much for me, grant me this one little thing more."

Colonel George looked at the beautiful face before him, and Lady Eleanor knew that she had gained her point. "Well, well," he said at last; "I will write on his behalf, and better still I will get my father to write also, which will have more effect. But it is all wrong," he added; "it is not discipline."

"I am quite sure that it will be all right," said Lady Eleanor with great decision.

Colonel George shook his head smiling; but he and old Lord Fitzdenys wrote, as he had promised; and it may as well be said that they obtained pardon for Henry Mugford the deserter.

CHAPTER XII

The village was not a little awed by the strange turn that affairs had taken, for the two noisiest tongues in it had been silenced, Mrs. Fry's by the restoration of her Tommy's power of speech, Mrs. Mugford's by the arrest of her son. The Corporal had been vindicated and his slanderers confounded; but Lady Eleanor as usual did all that she could to make unpleasant things as little unpleasant as possible. The deserter was sent away to Plymouth so quietly that hardly any one found it out, and his disconsolate mother was somewhat comforted by Lady Eleanor's a.s.surance that everything would be done to obtain mercy for him. Moreover the Corporal declared that he would not touch the two guineas reward that he had earned, but would hand them over to Lady Eleanor to spend for the good of the parish as she should think best; which fact leaking out through the servants at the Hall did much to regain for him the goodwill that he had so unjustly lost.

Another thing also helped to restore harmony; for d.i.c.k could not leave home for school without going round to say good-bye to all his friends, and these were so numerous that there was hardly a cottage at which he did not step in, being always sure of welcome and good wishes. The farewells ended with a visit to old Sally Dart, who, feeble and crippled though she was, had prepared a great feast of hot potato-cake (which was made under her own eye by a neighbour, since she was too weak to make it herself) honey and clouted cream; while the little silver cream-jug and the six silver spoons, which the old squire and his lady had given her at her marriage, were all brought out for so great an occasion. A great meal they ate, the Corporal attacking his potato-cake and cream as heartily as d.i.c.k himself; and when all the old stories had been related for the fiftieth time, old Sally produced the greatest treasure that she owned, a little snuff-box mounted in silver, which had been made from the horn of an ox that had been roasted whole at the great election, when old Squire Bracefort had stood at the head of the poll. This she gave to d.i.c.k for his own, and then setting the boy in front of her she put his hair off his forehead and begged him that if ever any child or children of her son Jan should appear, he would be kind to them for her sake, and that he would think of this when he looked at the box. d.i.c.k promised this readily, though he was a little puzzled at her earnestness; and then she bade him good-bye and G.o.d bless him, and prayed that he might grow up to be such another man as his father had been. So the children and the Corporal returned to the Hall thoughtful and subdued, though the children hardly knew why.

Two days later, early in the morning, d.i.c.k and the Corporal drove off to meet the coach. Little Elsie stood on the steps crying silently, but d.i.c.k was so much excited at the prospect of the journey, that he held up bravely, and fluttered his handkerchief out of the window as long as the house was in sight. So Lady Eleanor and Elsie waited until the handkerchief could be seen no more, and then went in sadly together. Lessons were a heavy task that morning; and when they were over and Elsie was gone out, Lady Eleanor felt lonely and depressed and out of heart with everything. She was roused by the sound of a horse on the gravel; and presently Colonel Fitzdenys came in to say that he had seen d.i.c.k off by the coach, and that the boy was in good spirits.

Lady Eleanor never felt more thankful for his presence than on that morning; but they had not talked for very long, when a maid-servant came in with a scared face to say that the strange woman from the moor was come, and begged, if she might, to see her Ladyship directly.

So Lady Eleanor went out and Colonel George with her; and there the woman was, with her face ghastly white, her eyes wild and weary, and every line in her countenance ploughed thrice as deep as when they had last seen her. She was sitting in a chair which the frightened maid had brought to her, but rose wearily as Lady Eleanor came to her.

"Are you in trouble, my poor soul?" said Lady Eleanor, shocked at her appearance. "Tell me what has happened!" and she motioned to her to sit down again.

The woman waited for a moment and then said in a hard voice, "'Tis my boy Jan; I can't rightly tell what's wrong wi' mun"--and then she stopped, but seeing the sympathy in Lady Eleanor's eyes broke out hurriedly, "Oh, my Lady, I believe that they've a-killed mun. Since I took mun home three days agone he won't eat and won't take no notice of naught, but lieth still; and 'twas only when I left mun for a minute that he made a kind of crying and clung to me like. I had to carry mun home herefrom the day I left you."

"You carried him home?" broke in Colonel George astonished.

"Yes," said the woman simply; "'most all the way, for he soon gived out walking; and ever since he's growed weaker and weaker, till this morning at daylight he didn't take notice of me no longer, so then I was obliged to leave mun"--she stopped a minute and went on in a harder voice--"I couldn't help it; I come to ask you if you could spare mun a drop of wine or what you think might do mun good, for"--she stopped again and buried her face in her hands.

Lady Eleanor did not speak; she only laid her hand gently on the woman's shoulder, which sank down and down until she was bent double.

Colonel George at once slipped out of the room and presently returned with wine, which he gave to Lady Eleanor. The woman revived when she had drunk a little, and then Colonel George said to her: "Now, my good woman, you must let me go back with you to your son and take with me some things for him. Don't be afraid"--(for the woman was shaking her head)--"I am your friend and you may trust me to keep your secret if you have any to keep. Think, now, if I know the way, you can stay with your son and I can bring him up whatever he wants on any day that you please; and I'll bind myself not to show the way to any one, nor to come back except on the day that you choose."

The woman hesitated and looked from Colonel George to Lady Eleanor, who said: "Colonel Fitzdenys is right. You can trust him, and you will show him the way; and I must come too in case I can be of use.

Remember that you saved my children for me."

The woman still shook her head, but she was evidently wavering.

Colonel George's tone of quiet authority at last prevailed with her, and she consented to show them the way, saying gruffly that she would always prefer a soldier, who knew what he was about, to a doctor. But she refused to ride a pony which Lady Eleanor offered to her, and insisted on starting off by herself, appointing a place in a valley by the edge of the moor where she promised to meet them without fail. And with that she strode away across the park, while Lady Eleanor ordered her horse and ran to put on her habit.

The horses were soon ready, and Colonel George and Lady Eleanor started off; but it was only by a long circuit that they could ride to the appointed spot on horseback, and when they reached it the woman was already there before them. She then led them by a very rough path, which was unknown to Colonel George, to the very head of a deep combe, where the oak coppice grew thinner and thinner until at last it died out in the open moor. Among these thin trees was a rough Exmoor pony, hobbled, which the woman caught and mounted, and then led the way straight on over the hill.

"I don't understand this," said Colonel George to Lady Eleanor, "I have always been told that the ground before us was impa.s.sable. It is the bog in which most of the rivers in the moor rise. I have crossed it a mile east and west of this after deer, and the ground is bad enough there; but I had no idea that it could be crossed here."

"No," said the woman, who had evidently overheard him, "the deer don't never cross here, but I know my way across well enough."