"There is scarce water enough for us, sir; they are neap tides at present, and in half an hour the sands will begin to show all over there. We have to go in onto the farther side--that is, where the channel is. You see those craft at anchor; there is the landing, just in front of the low roof you see over the bank. That is the 'Lobster Smack,' and a very comfortable house it is; and you can get as good a gla.s.s of beer there as anywhere on the river."

As they turned into the creek they saw two constables on the top of the bank, and at the head of the steps stood a gentleman talking with a coastguard officer.

"That is my friend, Mr. Bostock," Mr. Pettigrew said. "He told me that, if he could manage it, he would drive over himself with the two constables. I am glad that he has been able to do so; his presence will strengthen our hands."

A coast guard boat, with four sailors in it, was lying close to the steps, and the officer came down with Mr. Bostock, followed by the two constables. The magistrate greeted Mr. Pettigrew and took his place in the boat beside him, after being introduced to the two ladies and the Colonel. The officer with the two constables stepped into the coastguard boat, which rowed on ahead of the other.

"I could not resist the temptation of coming over to see the end of this singular affair, of which I heard from Mr. Pettigrew," Mr. Bostock said to Hilda. "The officer of the coastguard is going on, partly to show us the way to the house, and partly because it will be a good opportunity for him to search the place thoroughly for smuggled goods. He tells me that the barge is up the creek now; it went up yesterday evening. So we may find the fellow at home."

"Now, my men," Colonel Bulstrode said to the boatmen, "we have got to follow that boat. You will have plenty of time for beer when you get there, and a good lunch besides. So pull your hardest; we have not got very far to go. Can either of you men row?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I AM A MAGISTRATE OF THE COUNTY OF ESs.e.x."--_Page 289._]

"I can pull a bit," Roberts said, and, aided by the sail and the three oars, the boat went along at a fair rate through the water, the coastguard boat keeping a short distance ahead of them. After a quarter of an hour's rowing the bargeman's house came in view. The revenue officer pointed to it.

"Now, row your hardest, men," Colonel Bulstrode said; "we have but a hundred yards further to go."

The two boats rowed up to the bank together; Mr. Bostock sprang out, as did the constables and sailors, and ran up the bank, the others following at once. As they appeared on the bank a boy working in the garden gave a shrill whistle; a man immediately appeared at the door and looked surprised at the appearance of the party. He stepped back a foot, and then, as if changing his mind, came out and closed the door after him.

"I am a magistrate of the County of Ess.e.x," Mr. Bostock said, "and I have come to see a warrant executed for the search of your house for a child named Walter Rivington, who is believed to be concealed here, and who has been stolen from the care of his guardians."

"I know nothing of any child of that name," the man replied, "but I have a child here that I am taking care of for a gentleman in London; I have had him here for just a year, and no one has made any inquiries about him. You are welcome to enter and see if he is the one you are in search of. If he is, all that I can say is that I know nothing about his being stolen, and shall be very sorry to lose him."

He stood aside, and the two constables entered, followed closely by Hilda. The latter gave a cry of joy, for seated on the ground, playing with a box of soldiers, was Walter. She would hardly have known him anywhere else. His curls had been cut short, his face was brown and tanned, and his clothes, although scrupulously clean, were such as would be worn by any bargeman's boy at that age. The child looked up as they entered. Hilda ran to him, and caught him up in her arms.

"Don't you know me, Walter? Don't you remember Cousin Hilda?"

"Yes, I remember you," the child said, now returning her embrace. "You used to tell me stories and take me out in a carriage for drives. Where have you been so long? And where is grandpapa? Oh, here is Netta!" and as Hilda put him down he ran to her, for during the four months spent in the country she had been his chief playmate.

"I have learned to swim, Netta. Uncle Bill has taught me himself; and he is going to take me out in his barge some day."

The woman, who had come in with her arms covered with lather, from the little washhouse adjoining the house, now came forward.

"I hope, miss, that there is nothing wrong," she said to Hilda. "We have done our best for the little boy, and I have come to care for him just as if he had been my own; and if you are going to take him away I shall miss him dreadful, for he is a dear little fellow," and she burst into tears.

Walter struggled from Netta's arms, and ran to the woman, and, pulling her by the ap.r.o.n, said:

"Don't cry, Aunt Betsy; Jack is not going away from you. Jack will stay here; he likes going in a barge better than riding in a carriage."

"Well, Miss Covington," Mr. Bostock said, "the recognition appears to be complete on both sides; now what is the next step? Do you give this man into custody for unlawfully concealing this child and aiding and abetting in his abduction?"

"Will you wait a minute while I speak to Mr. Pettigrew?" she said; and they went out of the house together.

"Well, what do you think, Mr. Pettigrew?"

"I have been thinking it over all the way as we came down," the lawyer said. "Of course, we have no shadow of proof that this man was aware who the child was, and, in fact, if he had seen the placards offering altogether fifteen hundred pounds for his recovery, we must certainly a.s.sume that he would have given him up; for however well he may have been paid for taking charge of him, the offer would have been too tempting for a man of that kind to have resisted. No doubt he had strong suspicions, but you can hardly say that it amounted to guilty knowledge that the child had been abducted. If Walter had been ill-treated I should have said at once, 'Give him into custody'; but this does not seem to have been the case."

"No; they have evidently been very kind to him. I am so grateful for that that I should be sorry to do the man any harm."

"That is not the only point," the lawyer went on. "It is evident that the other people very seldom come down here, and from what you heard, in future Simcoe is going to write. If we arrest this man the others will know at once that the game is up. Now, if you will take the child away quietly, we can tell the man that he shall not be prosecuted, providing that he takes no steps whatever to inform his employers that the child is gone; even if one of them came down here to see the child, the wife must say that he is away on the barge. Anyhow, we shall have ample time to decide upon what steps to take against Simcoe, and can lay hands upon him whenever we choose; whereas, if he got an inkling that we had discovered the child, he and his a.s.sociate would probably disappear at once, and we might have lots of trouble to find them."

"Yes, I think that would be a very good plan, Mr. Pettigrew. I will ask him and his wife to come out."

"That will be the best way, my dear. We could hardly discuss the matter before Bostock."

Hilda went in. As soon as she spoke to the man and his wife Mr. Bostock said, "If you want a conference, Miss Covington, I will go out and leave you to talk matters over."

He and the two constables withdrew, and Mr. Pettigrew came in.

"Now, my man," he began, "you must see that you have placed yourself in a very awkward position. You are found taking care of a child that has been stolen, and for whose recovery large rewards have been offered all over the country. It is like the case of a man found hiding stolen goods. He would be called upon to account for their being in his possession. Now, it is hardly possible that you can have been ignorant that this child was stolen. You may not have been told so in words, but you cannot have helped having suspicions. From what the child no doubt said when he first came here, you must have been sure that he had been brought up in luxury. No doubt he spoke of rides in a carriage, of servants, his nurse, and so on. However, Miss Covington is one of the child's guardians, and I am the other, and we are most reluctant to give you in charge. It is evident, from the behavior of the child, and from the affection that he shows to yourself and your wife, that you have treated him very kindly since he has been here, and these toys I see about show that you have done your best to make him happy."

"That we have, sir," the man said. "Betsy and I took to him from the first. We have no children of our own, none living at least, and we have made as much of him as if he had been one of our own--perhaps more. We have often talked it over, and both thought that we were not doing the fair thing by him, and were, perhaps, keeping him out of his own. I did not like having anything to do with it at first, but I had had some business with the man who gave him to me, and when he asked me to undertake the job it did not seem to me so serious an affair as it has done since. I am heartily sorry that we have had any hand in it; not only because we have done the child harm, but because it seems that we are going to lose him now that we have come to care for him as if he was our own."

"Of course you played only a minor part in the business, Nibson. We quite understand that, and it is the men who have carried out this abduction that we want to catch. Do you know the name of the man who brought the child to you?"

"I don't, sir. He knows where to find me, but I have no more idea than a child unborn who he is or where he lives. When he writes to me, which he generally does before he comes down, which may be two or three times a month, or may be once in six months, he signs himself Smith. I don't suppose that is his right name, but I say fairly that if I knew it, and where he lived, I would not peach upon him. He has always been straight with me in the business I have done with him, and I would rather take six months for this affair than say anything against him."

"We are not asking you at present to say anything against him, and he is not the princ.i.p.al man in this business. I believe he is only acting as agent for another more dangerous rascal than himself. We are not prepared at the present moment to arrest the chief scoundrel. Before we do that we must obtain evidence that will render his conviction a certainty. We have reason to believe that this man that you know will not come down for some time, and that you will receive the money for the child's keep by post; but if we abstain altogether from prosecuting you in this matter, you must give us your word that you will not take any steps whatever to let them know that the child is no longer with you. He says that you promised to take him out in your barge. Well, if by any chance this man--not your man, but the other--comes down here, and wants to see the child, you or your wife will lead him to believe that he is on board your barge. It will also be necessary that, if we do arrest them, you should enter as a witness to prove that the man handed the child over to you. You could let it be seen that you are an unwilling witness, but the evidence of the handing over of the child will be an absolute necessity."

"All right, sir, I will undertake that. There is no fear of my letting him know that the child has gone, for I don't know where to write him; and if he or the other should come down, if I am here I shall have no difficulty in keeping it from him that the child has gone, for my man has never set foot in this house. He just meets me on the road near Pitsea, says what he has to say, and gives me what he has to give me, and then drives off again. Of course, if I am summoned as a witness, I know that the law can make me go. I remember now that when he gave me the child he said he was doing it to oblige a friend of his, and he may be able to prove that he had nothing to do with carrying it off."

"That is as it may be," the lawyer said dryly. "However, we are quite content with your promise."

"And I thank you most heartily, you and your wife," Hilda Covington said warmly, "for your kindness to the child. It would have made me very happy all this time if I could have known that he was in such good hands, but I pictured him shut up in some vile den in London, ill treated, and half starved. He has grown very much since he has been with you, and looks a great deal more boyish than he did."

"Yes, he plays a good deal with my barge boy, who has taken to him just as we have."

"Well, your kindness will not be forgotten nor unrewarded, Mr. Nibson."

"I'm sure we don't want any reward, miss; we have been well paid. But even if we hadn't been paid at all after the first month, we should have gone on keeping him just the same."

"Now, Walter," Hilda said, "we want you to come home with us; we have all been wanting you very badly. Nurse and Tom Roberts have been in a terrible way, and so has Dr. Leeds. You remember him, don't you? He was very kind to you all the time that you were down in the country."

The child nodded. "I should like to see Tom Roberts and nurse, but I don't want to go away. I am going out in the barge soon."

"Well, dear, I dare say that we shall be able to arrange for you to come down sometimes, and to go out in it, especially as you have learned to swim. We are going away now in a boat."

"I often go out in the boat," Walter pouted. "I go with Joshua; he is a nice boy, Joshua is, and I like him."

"Well, dear, we will see what we can do for Joshua."

"You are sure that I shall come back and go out in the barge?"

"Quite sure, dear; and perhaps I will go out with you, too."

"Yes, you must go, like a good boy," Mrs. Nibson said. "You know, dear, that I shall always love you, and shall be very, very glad if the ladies can spare you to come down to see me sometimes. You won't forget me, will you?"

"No, Aunt Betsy, I shall never forget you; I promise you that," the child said. "And I don't want to go away from you at all, only Cousin Hilda says I must."