"Criticise freely," he said. "I value your criticism and you understand poetry. Not that this is a poem--merely an epitaph; but it may easily be improved, I doubt not."

He put on his gla.s.ses and read:

"'Ended his mingled joy and strife, Here lies the dust of Peter Grim.

Though life was very kind to him, He proved not very kind to life.'"

Estelle applauded.

"Perfect," she said. "You must have it carved on his tombstone."

"I think it meets the case. I may have been prejudiced in my affection for him, owing to his affection for me. He came to me at the age of five weeks, and his att.i.tude to me from the first was devoted."

"Cats have such cajoling ways."

"He was not himself honest, yet, I think, saw the value of honesty in others. Plain dealers are a temptation to rogues and none, as a rule, is a better judge of an honest man than a dishonest cat."

"He wasn't quite a rogue, was he?"

"He knew that I am respected, and he traded on my reputation. His life has been spared on more than one occasion for my sake."

"On the whole he was not a very model cat, I'm afraid," said Estelle.

"Yes, that is just what he was: a model--cat."

They went out to look at the grave again, and something hurried away through the bushes as they did so.

"Friends, or possibly enemies," suggested Mr. Churchouse, but Estelle, sharper-eyed, saw Abel disappear. She also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from Peter's mound.

"Oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said.

"What a hard-hearted boy! Are there no means of winning him?"

They spoke of Abel and his mother.

"We all regretted her decision to stop. It would have been better if she had gone away."

"Raymond saw her some time ago."

"So she told me; and so did he. Misfortune seems to dog the situation, for I believe Sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that meeting. Then she changed. Apparently she misunderstood him."

"Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina angry--the last thing he meant to do. He's sorry now that he spoke. She thought he was considering himself, and he really was thinking for Abel."

"We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge her to let Abel be sent to a boarding-school. That will be a great advantage every way."

So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the channels of evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle had determined this misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. He had long contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond Ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. Inverted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his mother's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him so in a malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure his enemy was to honour his mother. And the time had come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night.

He told himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. He ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds.

The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he always came to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly.

The roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. From far away down the valley came the song of the sea, where a brisk, westerly wind threw the waves on the shingle.

A feeling of awe numbed him, but it was not powerful enough to arrest his purpose. His plans had been matured for many days.

He meant to burn down the Mill.

Nothing was easier and a match in the inflammable material, of which the hackler's shop was usually full, must quickly involve the ma.s.s of the buildings.

It was fitting that where he had been impregnated by Mr. Baggs with much lawless opinion, Abel should give expression to his evil purpose. From the tar-pitched work-room of the hackler, fire would very quickly leap to the main building against which it stood, and might, indeed, under the strong wind, involve the stores also and John Best's dwelling between them. But it was fated otherwise. A very small incident served to prevent a considerable catastrophe, and when Abel broke the window of the hackling room, turned the hasp, raised it, and got in, a man lay awake in pain not thirty yards distant. The lad lighted a candle, which he had brought with him, and it was then, while he collected a heap of long hemp and prepared to set it on fire, that John Best, in torture from toothache, went downstairs for a mouthful of brandy.

Upon the staircase he pa.s.sed a window and, glancing through it, he saw a light in the hackling shop. It was not the moon and meant a presence there that needed instant explanation. Mr. Best forgot his toothache, called his sailor son, who happened to be holiday-making at home, and hastened as swiftly and silently as possible over the bridge to the Mill. John Best the younger, an agile man of thirty, may be said to have saved the situation, for he was far quicker than his father could be and managed to antic.i.p.ate the disaster by moments. Half a minute more might have made all the difference, for the heap of loose hemp and stricks once ignited, no power on earth could have saved a considerable conflagration; but the culprit had his back turned to the window and was still busily piling the tow when Best and his son looked in upon him, and the sailor was already half through the window before Abel perceived him. The youngster dashed for his candle, but he was too late, a pair of strong hands gripped his neck roughly enough, and he fainted from the shock.

They took him out as he had gone in, for the door was locked and Levi Baggs had the key. Then the sailor went back to his home, dressed himself and started for a policeman, while Mr. Best kept guard over Abel.

When he came to his senses, the boy found himself in the moonlight with a dozen turns of stout fisherman's twine round his hands and ankles The foreman stood over him, and now that the house was roused, his wife had brought John a pair of trousers and a great coat, for he was in his night shirt.

"You'll catch your death," she said.

"It's only by G.o.d's mercy we didn't all catch our death," he answered.

"Here's Sabina Dinnett's boy plotted to destroy the works, and we've yet to find whether he's the tool of others, or has done the deed on his own."

"On my own I did it," declared Abel; "and I'll do it yet."

"You shut your mouth, you imp of Satan!" cried the exasperated man. "Not a word, you scamp. You've done for yourself now, and everybody knew you'd come to it, sooner or later."

In half an hour Abel was locked up, and when Mr. Baggs heard next morning concerning the events of the night, he expressed the utmost surprise and indignation.

"Young dog! And after the friend I've been to him. Blood will tell.

That's his lawless father coming out in the wretch," he said.

CHAPTER IX

THE FUTURE OF ABEL

Issues beyond human sight or calculation lay involved in the thing that Abel Dinnett had done. He had cast down a challenge to society, and everything depended on how society answered that challenge. Not only did the child's own future turn on what must follow, but vital matters for those who were called to act hung on their line of action. That, however, they could not know. The tremendous significance of the sinner's future training and the result of what must now happen to him lay far beyond their prescience.

It became an immediate question whether Abel might, or might not, be saved from the punishment he had deserved. Beyond that rose another problem, not less important, and his father doubted whether, for the child's own sake, it would be well to intervene. Waldron strongly agreed with him; but Estelle did not, and she used her great influence on the side of intervention. Miss Ironsyde and Ernest Churchouse were also of her opinion. Indeed, all concerned, save his mother and Arthur Waldron, begged Raymond to interfere, if possible.

He did not decide immediately.

"The boy will be sent to a reformatory for five years if I do nothing,"

he told Estelle, "and that's probably the very best thing on earth that can happen to him. It will put the fear of G.o.d into him and possibly obliterate his hate of me. He's bad all through, I'm afraid."

"No he isn't--far from it. That's the point," she argued. "These things are a legacy--a hateful legacy from his grandmother. Mister Churchouse knows him far better than anybody else, and he says there is great sensibility and power of feeling in him. He's tender to animals."

"That's not much good if he's going to be tough to me. Tell me why his mother doesn't come to me about him."