Robbie did not know when the coach might leave Kendal for Lancaster; Sim was several hours in front of them, and therefore he took a hasty leave. The old woman, who lived a solitary life in the cottage, looked after the young man with eyes which seemed to say that, in spite of the instinct which prompted her to confide in Robbie, she half regretted what she had done.

CHAPTER x.x.x. A RACE AGAINST LIFE.

No sooner had Ralph discovered that the straggler from the North who lay insensible in the yard of the inn at Kendal was Simeon Stagg than he pushed through the crowd, and lifting the thin and wasted figure in his arms, ordered a servant to show him to a room within.

There in a little while sensibility returned to Sim, who was suffering from nothing more serious than exhaustion and the excitement by which it had been in part occasioned.

When in the first moment of consciousness he opened his eyes and met the eyes of Ralph, who was bending above him, he exhibited no sign of surprise. With a gesture indicative of irritation he brushed his long and bony hand over his face, as though trying to shut out a vision that had more than once before haunted and tormented him. But when he realized the reality of the presence of the man whom he had followed over many weary miles, whose face had followed him in his dreams,--when it was borne in upon his scattered sense that Ralph Ray was actually here at his side, holding his hand and speaking to him in the deep tones which he knew so well,--then the poor worn wayfarer could no longer control the emotion that surged upwards from his heart.

It was a wild, disjointed, inconsequential tale which Sim thereupon told, which he had come all this way to tell, and which now revealed its full import to the eager listener in spite of the narrator's eagerness rather than by means of it. Amid spasms of feeling, however, the story came at length to an end; and gathering up the threads of it for himself, and arranging them in what seemed to him their natural sequence, Ralph understood all that it was essential to understand of his own position and the peril of those who were dear to him. That he was to be outlawed, and that his estate was to be confiscated; that his mother, who still lived, was, with his brother and Rotha, to be turned into the road,--this injustice was only too imminent.

"In a fortnight--was it so?" he asked. "In a fortnight they were to be back? A fortnight from what day?"

"Sat.u.r.day," said Sim; "that's to say, a week come Sat.u.r.day next."

"And this is Tuesday; ten full days between," said Ralph, walking with drooping head across the room; "I must leave immediately for the North. Heigh!" opening a window, and hailing the ostler who at the moment went past, "when does your next coach start for the North?"

"At nine o'clock, sir."

"Nine to-night? So late? Have you nothing before--no wagon--nothing?"

"Nothing before, sir; 'cept--leastways--no, nothing before. Ye see, it waits for the coach from Lancaster, and takes on its pa.s.sengers."

"John, John," cried the landlady, who had overheard the conversation from a neighboring window, "mayhap the gentleman would like to take a pair of horses a stage or two an he's in a hurry."

"Have you a horse that can cover thirty miles to-day?" said Ralph.

"That we have, yer honor, and mair ner ya horse."

"Where will the coach be at six to-morrow?"

"At Penrith, I reckon," said the ostler, lifting his cap, and scratching his head with the air of one who was a good deal uncertain alike of his arithmetic and his geography.

"How long do they reckon the whole journey?"

"Twelve hours, I've heeard--that's if nothing hinders; weather, nor the like."

"Get your horse ready at once, my lad, and then take me to your landlady."

"You'll not leave me behind, Ralph," said Sim when Ralph had shut back the cas.e.m.e.nt.

"You're very weak, old friend; it will be best for you to sleep here to-day, and take to-night's Carlisle coach as far back as Mardale. It will be early morning when the coach gets there, and at daybreak you can walk over the Stye Pa.s.s to Shoulthwaite."

"I dare not, I dare not; no, no, don't leave me here." Sim's importunity was irresistible, and Ralph yielded more out of pity than by persuasion. A second horse was ordered, and in less than half an hour the travellers, fortified by a meal, were riding side by side on the high road from Kendal to the North.

Sim was not yet so far recovered from his exhaustion but that the exertion of riding--at any time a serious undertaking to him--was quick in producing symptoms of collapse. But he held on to his purpose of accompanying Ralph on his northward journey with a tenacity which was unshaken either by his companion's glances of solicitude or yet by the broad mouthed merriment of the rustics, who obviously found it amusing to watch the contortions of an ill-graced, weak, and spiritless rider, and to fire off at him as he pa.s.sed the sallies of an elephantine humor.

When the pair started away from Kendal, Sim had clearly no thought but that their destination was to be Wythburn. It was therefore with some surprise and no little concern that he observed that Ralph took the road to the right which led to Penrith and the northeast, when they arrived at that angle of the highway outside the town where two turnpikes met, and one went off to Wythburn and the Northwest.

"I should have reckoned that the nighest way home was through Staveley," Sim said with hesitation.

"We can turn to the left at Mardale," said Ralph, and pushed on without further explanation. "Do you say that mother has never once spoken?" he asked, drawing up at one moment to give Sim a little breathing s.p.a.ce.

"Never once, Ralph--mute as the grave, she is--poor body."

"And Rotha--Rotha--"

"Yes, the la.s.s is with her, she is."

"G.o.d bless her in this world and the next!"

Then the two pushed on again, with a silence between them that was more touching than speech. They rode long and fast this spell, and when they drew up once more, Ralph turned in his saddle and saw that the ruins that stood at the top of the Kendal Scar were already far behind them.

"It's a right good thing that you've given up your solitary life on the fells, Sim. It wilt cheer me a deal, old friend, to think you'll always live with the folks at Shoulthwaite." Ralph spoke as if he himself had never to return. Sim felt this before Ralph had realized the implication of his words.

"It's hard for a hermit to be a good man," continued Ralph; "he begins with being miserable and ends with being selfish and superst.i.tious, and perhaps mad. Have you never marked it?"

"Maybe so, Ralph; maybe so. It's like it's because the world's bitter cruel that so many are buryin' theirsels afore they're dead."

"Then it's because they expect too much of the world," said Ralph. "We should take the world on easier terms. Fallible humanity must have its weaknesses and poor human life its disasters, and where these are mighty and inevitable, what folly is greater than to fly from them or to truckle to them, to make terms with them? Our duty is simply to endure them, to endure them--that's it, old friend."

There was no answer that Sim could make to this. Ralph was speaking to the companion who rode by his side; but in fact he seemed to be addressing himself.

"And to see a man buy a reprieve from Death!" he continued. "Never do that--never? Did you ever think of it, Sim, that what happens is always the best?"

"It scarce looks like it, Ralph; that it don't."

"Then it's because you don't look long enough. In the end, it is _always_ the best that happens. Truth and the right are the last on the field; it always has been so, and always will be; it only needs that you should wait to the close of the battle to see _that_."

There would have been a sublime solemnity in these rude words of a rude man of action if Sim had divined that they were in fact the meditations of one who believed himself to be already under the shadow of his death.

The horses broke again into a canter, and it was long before the reins of the riders brought them to another pause. The day was bitterly cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff.

It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead. Gradually the heavy atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind blew smartly from the east.

"A snowstorm is coming, Sim. Look yonder; how thick it hangs over the Gray Crag sheer ahead! We must push on, or we'll be overtaken."

"How long will it be coming?" asked Sim.

"Five hours full, perhaps longer," said Ralph; "we may reach Penrith before that time."

"Penrith!"

Sim's tone was one of equal surprise and fear.