Louise uttered a low moan.

"Ah, it's bad for you, my dear," said Uncle Luke, whose manner seemed quite changed. "You come with me, and let me take you home. We don't want mother trouble on our hands."

"No, no," she said firmly, "I cannot leave him."

"But you will be ill, child."

"I cannot leave him, uncle," she said again; and going back to her father, she locked her fingers about his arm.

"Hi! hoi! look out!" came from a distance; and it was answered directly by a voice not a hundred yards away.

A thrill of excitement shot through the little group as they heard now the tramp of feet.

"I knew it," whispered Uncle Luke. "He's making for the harbour now."

"Ah!" gasped Vine, as he almost dragged Louise over the rugged stones.

"Stop where you are," said Uncle Luke, excitedly; and he placed something to his lips and gave a low shrill whistle.

It was answered instantly from the other side of the harbour.

"Leslie's on the look-out. Yes, and the men with the boat," he whispered, excitedly, as another low whistle was heard.

Then there was a few moment's silence as if people were listening, followed by steps once more, and a quick voice exclaimed from out of the darkness:

"Seen him?"

Neither of the group answered, and a man stepped up to them and flashed the light of a lantern quickly over them before closing it again.

"That's you, is it?" he said. "I'll have a word with you by-and-by; but look here, I call upon you two men in the Queen's name to help me to take him. If you help him to get away, it's felony, so you may take the consequences. You haven't got to do with your local police now."

The man turned away and walked swiftly back toward the town, the darkness seeming to swallow him up. He paused for a few moments at the edge of the harbour, to throw the light of his lantern across the water.

"The London man," said Uncle Luke, unconcernedly. "Well, G.o.d save the Queen, but I'm sure she don't want us to help to capture our poor boy."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

"OH! ABSALOM, MY SON, MY SON."

Harry Vine had but one thought as he dashed out of his father's house, and that was to escape--far away to some other country where neither he nor his crime were known--to some place where, with the slate of his past life wiped clean, he might begin anew, and endeavour to show to his father, to his sister, perhaps to Madelaine Van Heldre, that he was not all bad. How he would try, he told himself. Only let him get aboard one of the fishing luggers, and after confiding in some one or other of his old friends, the bluff fishermen who had often given him a sail or a day's fishing, beg of him to take him across to Jersey or Saint Malo; anywhere, so as to avoid the terrible exposure of the law--anywhere to be free.

"I'd sooner die than be taken," he said to himself as he sped on downward at a rapid rate.

The way to the harbour seemed clear, and, though the officer was pursuing him, Harry had the advantage of the darkness, and the local knowledge of the intricate ways of the little town, so that he felt no fear of being able to reach the harbour and some boat. He was reckoning without his host. His host, or would-be host, was the detective sergeant who had gone about his business in a business-like manner, so that when Harry Vine was congratulating himself upon the ease with which he was able to escape, one of the local policeman started from his post right in the fugitive's way, nearly succeeding in catching him by the arm, an attention Harry avoided by doubling down one of the little alleys of the place. Over and over again he tried to steal down to the harbour, but so sure as he left his hiding place in one of the dark lanes or among the fishermen's stores he heard steps before him, and with the feeling that the whole town had now risen up against him, and that the first person he encountered would seize and hold him until the arrival of the police, he crept back, bathed with cold perspiration, to wait what seemed to be an interminable time before he ventured again.

His last hiding place was a wooden shed not far from the water-side--a place of old ropes and sails, and with a loft stored full of carefully dried nets, put away till the shoals of fish for which they were needed visited the sh.o.r.e. Here in profound ignorance of what had been done on his behalf, he threw himself down on a heap of tarred canvas to try and devise some certain means of escape. He had a vague intention of getting the fishermen to help him; but after thinking of several, he could not decide which of the st.u.r.dy fellows would stand by such a culprit as he. And as he lay there the bitter regrets for the past began to attack him.

"Louise--sister," he muttered to himself. "I must have been mad. And I lie here groaning like the coward I am," he said fiercely, as, thrusting back all thoughts of the past with the intention of beginning afresh, he stole out once more into the dark night, meaning to get to the harbour, and, failing a better means, to take some small sailing-boat, and to trust to his own skill to get safely across.

The place was far more quiet now; and, avoiding the larger lanes, he threaded his way through pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage among the net-stores and boat-houses till he reached the main street, along which he was walking noiselessly when a heavy regular pace ahead checked him, and, turning shortly round, he made for the first narrow back lane, reached it, and turned trembling as he recognised that it was the familiar path leading by the back of Van Heldre's, the way he knew so well.

Hurrying on, he had nearly reached the bottom, when he became aware of the fact that there was a policeman waiting. He turned sharply back, after nearly walking into the arms of one of his enemies, and was nearly at the top once more, when he found that the man whom he had tried to avoid was there too waiting.

"I'm caught," he said bitterly, as he paused midway. "Shall I dash for liberty? No," he said bitterly; "better give up."

He raised his hand to guide himself silently along, when he shivered, for it touched a gate which yielded, and as the steps advanced from front and rear, he stepped down. Fate in her irony had decided that, to avoid arrest, he should take refuge in the premises of the man he had injured. The steps came nearer, and trembling with horror the fugitive glanced upward to see that two windows were illumined, and there was light enough to show that the door leading into the corridor was open.

He shrank from it, and was then driven to enter and stand inside, listening, for the steps stopped outside, the door yielded, and a voice said:

"Couldn't have been him. He wouldn't have gone there."

The gate swung gently to, and the fugitive began to breathe more freely, for after a low whispered conversation, it was evident that the watchers were about to separate, when there was a loud cough which Harry knew only too well; and to his horror he saw faintly in at the end of the pa.s.sage his figure more plain by a light in the hall, the short stooping figure of Crampton coming towards him. To have stepped out into the yard would have been into the light, where the old man must have seen him; and, obeying his first instinct, Harry crouched down, and as Crampton advanced, backed slowly along the corridor till farther progress was stayed by the outer door of the office. Harry sank down in the corner, a dark shapeless heap to any one who had approached, and with heart throbbing, he waited.

"He is coming into the office," he thought.

But as the old man reached the opening into the yard he paused. There was a faint rustling, then a flash and a match flared out illuminating the old clerk's stern countenance, and it seemed as the tiny splint burned that discovery must take place now. But Crampton was intent upon the business which had brought him there. He had stolen out from his self-appointed task of watching over the house to have his nightly pipe, and for fully an hour, Harry Vine crouched in the corner by the office door, seeing over and over again the horrors of the past, and trembling as he waited for the fresh discovery, while old Crampton softly paced the little yard, smoking pipe after pipe.

That hour seemed as if it would never end, and at last in despair Harry was about to rise, when he heard Madelaine's voice, gently calling to the old man.

"Hah!" he said softly; "a bad habit, Miss Madelaine, but it seems to soothe me now."

Would he fasten the door and gate, and complete the horror of Harry's position by making him a prisoner? The young man crouched there trembling, for Crampton recrossed the yard, and there was the sound of two bolts being shot. Then he regained the gla.s.s door, and was about to close that.

"No," said Madelaine softly; "the night is so hot. Leave that open, Mr Crampton."

"Yes, my dear; yes, my dear," sighed the old man. "I shall be in the little room, and no one is likely to come here now."

Gone at last, and trembling so in his wild excitement that he could hardly stir, Harry Vine literally crept along the corridor, rose up and ran across the yard with the horrible sensation that the old clerk's hand was about to descend upon his shoulder. The two bolts were shot back with a loud snap, the gate was flung open; and, reckless now, he dashed out and down the narrow lane.

"He could bear no more," he said. "The harbour and a boat." He now ran rapidly, determined to end the terrible suspense, and for the first few moments, he felt that his task would be easy; then he heard a warning shout, and in his dread took refuge in the first alley leading down to the harbour.

Steps pa.s.sed, and he emerged at the lower end, gained the main street by returning through another of the alleys by which, after the fashion of Yarmouth, the little town was scored.

"Five minutes will take me there now," he panted; and, forcing himself to walk, he was hurrying on when a shout told him that his enemies were well upon the alert. With the horrible sense of being hunted, he dashed on, blindly now, reckless as to which way he went, so long as he reached the water-side. As he ran, he was about to strike down to the left where the landing steps lay; and had he reached them there was a boat and men waiting, but the London detective had discovered that and was on the alert.

Harry almost ran into his arms, but with a cry of rage he doubled back and ran for the sh.o.r.e, where he might set pursuit at defiance by hiding in the rocks below the cliff. But another man sprang up in his way, and in his despair he ran off to his left again, right along the great pier, towards the point.

"We've got him now," shouted a voice behind as Harry rushed out, just conscious of a shriek as he brushed by a group of figures, hardly seen in the darkness. He heard, too, some confused words in which "boat" and "escape" seemed to be mingled. But in his excitement he could only think of those behind, as there came the patter of his pursuers' feet on the rough stones.

There was a shrill whistle from the other side of the harbour, followed by a hail, and the splash of oars in the darkness, while a low "ahoy!"

came from off the point.

"Yes," muttered the officer between his teeth, "you're a nice party down here, but I've got my man."

What followed was the work of moments. Harry ran on till the rugged nature of the point compelled him to walk, then step cautiously from rock to rock. The harbour was on one side, the tide rushing in on the other; before him the end of the point, with its deep water and eddying currents, which no swimmer could stem, and behind him the London officer with the local police close up.

There was a boat, too, in the harbour, and the fugitive had heard the whistle, and cries. He saw the light of the lugger out ahead, and to him, in his mad horror of capture, they meant enemies--enemies on every hand.