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Chapter Seven
Gathering Clouds

In spite of the declaration made by Captain Armstrong that he had identified his assailants by the heights, voices, and – dark as was the night – their features, Abel refused to be convinced. He had taken it into his head that Mary had denounced them to her former lover, and at each examination before the Old Devon magistrates he had sullenly turned away from the poor girl, who sat gazing imploringly at the dock, and hungering for a look in return.

The captain was not much hurt; that is to say, no bones were broken. Pain he had suffered to a little extent, for there was an ugly slit in one ear, but he was not in such a condition as to necessitate his limping into court, supported by a couple of servants, and generally “got up” to look like one who had been nearly beaten to death.

All this told against Abel and Bart, as well as the fact that the captain was of good birth, and one who had lately formed an alliance with a famous old county family. In addition, the prisoners were known to the bench. Both Abel and Bart had been in trouble before, and black marks were against them for wrecking and smuggling. They were no worse than their neighbours, but the law insists upon having scarecrows, and the constables did not hesitate to make every effort to hang the son of a notorious old wrecker and his boon companion.

There was not a dissentient voice. Abel Dell and Bartholomew Wrigley were both committed for trial; and Mary made quite a sensation by rising in the court as the prisoners were about to be removed, and forcing her way to where she could catch her brother’s hand.

“Abe,” she cried, passionately, “I didn’t. I didn’t, indeed. Say good-bye.”

He turned upon her fiercely, and snatched his hand away.

“Go to your captain,” he said, savagely. “I shall be out of the way now.”

An ordinary woman would have shrunk away sobbing; but as Mary was flung off, she caught at Bart’s wrist, and clung to that.

“Bart, I didn’t! I didn’t!” she whispered, hoarsely. “Tell him I wouldn’t – I couldn’t do such a thing. It isn’t true!”

Bart’s face puckered up, and he looked tenderly down in the agitated face before him.

“Well, lass,” he said, softly, “I believe – ”

“That you turned against us!” interposed Abel, savagely, for his temper, consequent upon the way matters had gone against him, was all on edge. “Come on, Bart; she’ll have her own way now.”

A constable’s hand was on each of their shoulders, and they were hurried out of court, leaving Mary standing frowning alone, the observed of all.

Her handsome face flushed, and she drew herself up proudly, as she cast a haughtily defiant look at all around, and was about to walk away when her eyes lighted upon the captain, who was seated by the magisterial bench, side by side with his richly-dressed lady.

There was a vindictive glare in Mary Dell’s eyes as she encountered the gaze of Mistress Armstrong, the lady looking upon her as a strange, dangerous kind of creature.

“Why should she not suffer as I suffer?” thought Mary. “Poor, weak, dressed-up doll that she is! I could sting her to the heart easy. How I hate her, for she has robbed me of a husband!”

But the next moment the lady withdrew her gaze with a shiver of dread from the eyes which had seemed to scorch her; and Mary’s now lit upon those of Captain Armstrong, for he was watching her curiously, and with re-awakened interest.

Mary’s face changed again its expression, as light seemed to enter her darkened soul.

“He used to love me a little. He would not be so cruel as that. I offended him, because I was so hard and – cruel he called it. He would listen to me now. I will, I will.”

She gazed at him fixedly for a moment, and then hurried from the court.

“What a dreadful-looking woman, Jemmy!” whispered Mistress Armstrong. “She quite made me shudder. Will they hang her too?”

“No, no,” he said, rising quickly and drawing a long breath. Then, recollecting himself, he sat down again as if in pain, and held out his hand to his wife, who supported him to the carriage, into which he ascended slowly.

“Sorry for you, Armstrong; deuced sorry, egad,” said the senior magistrate, coming up to the carriage door. “Can’t help feeling glad too.”

“Oh, Sir Timothy!” cried Mistress Armstrong, who was a seventeenth cousin.

“But I am, my dear,” said the old magistrate. “Glad, because it will rid us of a couple of dreadful rascals. Trial comes on in three weeks. I wouldn’t get well too soon. Judge Bentham will hang them as sure as they’re alive.”

He nodded and walked off, with his cocked hat well balanced on his periwig. Then the heavy lumbering carriage drove out of the quaint old town, with the big dumpling horses perspiring up the hills; while, as soon as they were away from the houses, Mistress Armstrong leaned back on the cushions with a sigh of relief.

“I do hope the judge will hang them,” she said. “A pair of wicked, bad, cruel ruffians, to beat and half-kill my own dear darling Jemmy as they did. Oh, the cruel, cruel creatures! I could hang them myself! Does it hurt you anywhere now, my own sweetest boy?” she added, softly, as she passed her arm caressingly round her liege lord, who gave such a savage start that she shrank into the other corner of the carriage, with the tears starting to her eyes.

“Don’t be such a confounded fool!” her “sweetest” Jemmy roared; and then he sat back scowling, for she had interrupted a sort of day-dream in which he was indulging respecting Mary Dell, whose eyes still seemed to be fixed upon his; and as his wife’s last words fell upon his ear they came just as he was wondering whether, if they met again, Mary would, in her unprotected state, prove more kind, and not so prudish as of yore.

The honeymoon had been over some time.

Chapter Eight
Mary Begins to Plan

Mary Dell was a girl of keen wits, but her education was of the sea-shore. Among her class people talked of the great folk, and men of wealth and their power – and not without excuse – for in those days bribery, corruption, and class clannishness often carried their way to the overruling of justice – the blind; and in her ignorance she thought that if she could win over Captain Armstrong to forgive her brother, the prosecution would be at an end, and all would be well.

Consequently she determined to go up to the big house by Slapton Lea, and beg Mistress Armstrong to intercede with her husband, and ask his forgiveness; so one morning soon after the committal she set off, but met the carriage with the young married couple inside – Mistress Armstrong looking piqued and pale, and the captain as if nothing were the matter.

The sight of the young wife side by side with the man who had professed to love her was too much for Mary, and she turned off the road and descended by the face of a dangerously steep cliff to the shingly shore; where, as she tramped homeward, with her feet sinking deeply in the small loose pebbles, her feeling of bitterness increased, and she felt that it would be impossible to ask that weak, foolish-looking woman with the doll’s face to take her part.

No; she would go up to the house boldly and ask to see the captain himself; and then, with the memory of his old love for her to help her cause, he would listen to her prayer, and save her brother from the risk he ran.

Then a mental cloud came over her, and she felt that she could not go up to the big house. It was not the captain’s, it was her mother’s; and it would be like going to ask a favour of her. She could not do it; and there was no need.

Captain Armstrong would come down to the shore any evening if she sent him the old signal, a scrap of dry sea-weed wrapped in paper. Scores of times she had done this when Abel had gone to sea in his boat, with Bart for companion; and Mary’s cheeks flushed at the recollection of those meetings.

Yes; she would send him the old signal by one of the fishermen’s children.

No; only if all other means failed. He was better now, and would be about. She would watch for him, and, as she called it, meet him by accident, and then plead her cause.

And so a week glided away, and there was only about one more before the judge would arrive, and Abel and his companion be brought up in the assize court. Mary had haunted every road and lane leading toward the big house, and had met the captain riding and walking, but always with Mistress Armstrong, and she could not speak before her.

There was nothing for it but to take the bold step, and after long hesitation that step was taken; the piece of sea-weed was wrapped up in paper, entrusted to a little messenger, and that evening Mary Dell left the cottage and walked round the western point towards Torcross, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unusually bright, and her heart full of care.

She was not long in reaching the well-known spot – their old trysting-place, where the coarse sand was white, and the rocks which shut in the retired tiny cove rough with limpet, barnacle, and weed.

This was the first time she had been there since James Armstrong had wearied of the prude, as he called her, and jilted her for his wealthy wife; and now the question arose; Would he come?

The evening was glorious; but one thought filled Mary’s breast – Abel shut up behind the prison bars, still obdurate, and believing her false to him, and his faithful friend.

The grey look on the face of the sea was reflected upon that of the watcher; and as the sky grew dark, so grew Mary Dell’s eyes, only that there was a lurid light now and then glowing in their depths.

“He will not come,” she said. “He hates me now as I hate him, and – ”

She stopped short, for her well-trained ear caught the sound of a pebble falling as if from a height upon the strand below, and gazing fixedly above the direction of the sound, she made out something dark moving high up on the cliff track.

Mary’s heart began to beat wildly, and she drew a long breath; but she would not let hope carry her away for a few moments till she could be certain, and then a faint cry of joy escaped her, but only to be succeeded by a chilling sensation, as something seemed to ask her why he had come.

“I’m late,” cried a well-known voice directly after. “Why, Mary, just in the old spot. It’s like old times. My darling!” He tried to clasp her in his arms, his manner displaying no trace of his injuries; but she thrust him sharply away, half surprised and yet not surprised, for she seemed now to read the man’s character to the full.

“Captain Armstrong!” she cried, hoarsely.

“Why, my dear Mary, don’t be so prudish. You are not going to carry on that old folly?”

“Captain Armstrong, don’t mistake me.”

“Mistake you! No. You are the dearest, loveliest woman I ever saw. There, don’t be huffed because I was so long. I couldn’t get away. You know – ” and he again tried to seize her.

“Captain Armstrong – ”

“Now, what nonsense! You sent for me, and I have come.”

“Yes. I sent for you because there was no other way of speaking to you alone.”

“Quite right, my darling; and what could be better than here alone? Mary, sweet, it will be dark directly.”

“Sir, I sent for you here that I might beg of you to save my brother and poor Bart.”

“Curse your brother and Bart!” said the captain, angrily. “It was not their fault that they did not kill me. They’re better out of our way.”

“Captain Armstrong – James – for our old love’s sake will you save them?”

“No,” he cried, savagely. “Yes,” he added, catching Mary’s wrist; “not for our old love’s sake, but for our new love – the love that is to come. Mary, I love you; I always did love you, and now I find I cannot live without you.”

“Captain Armstrong!”

“James – your lover. Mary, you are everything to me. Don’t struggle. How can you be so foolish? There, yes, I will. I’ll do everything. I’ll refuse to appear against them if you wish me to. I’ll get them set free; but you will not hold me off like this?”

“You will save my brother?”

“Yes.”

“And his friend?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will always be grateful to you, and pray for your happiness.”

“And be mine, Mary, my love, my own?”

“You villain! you traitor!” hissed Mary, as, taking advantage of a momentary forgetfulness, he clasped her in his arms and showered kisses on her lips, her cheeks, her hair.

But Captain Armstrong had made a mistake. It was like caressing a Cornish wrestler. There was a sharp struggle, during which he found that Mary’s thews and sinews were, softly rounded as she was, strong as those of a man. She had been accustomed to row a boat in a rough sea by the hour together, and there was additional strength given to her arm by the indignation that made her blood course hotly through her veins.

How dare he, a miserable traitor, insult her as he did?

The question made the girl’s blood seem to boil; and ere he could place another kiss upon her lips Mary had forgotten brother, friend, the trial everything but the fact that James Armstrong, Mistress Armstrong’s husband, had clasped her in his arms; and in return she clasped him tightly in hers.

They swayed here for a moment, then there, and the next the captain was lifted completely from the shingle and literally jerked sideways, to fall with a crash and strike his head against a piece of rock. Then a sickening sensation came over him and all seemed dark, while, when he recovered a few minutes later, his head was bleeding and he was alone, and afraid with his swimming head to clamber up the rough cliff path.

“The cursed jade!” he muttered, as he recovered after a time, and went cautiously back after tying up his head, “I wish I could lay her alongside her brother in the gaol.”

“Yes; I’ll save him,” he said with a mocking laugh, as he reached the top of the cliff and looked down at the faint light seen in the old wrecker’s cottage. “I’ll save him; and, in spite of all, it’ll be a strange thing if Mary Dell isn’t lost.

“Curse her, how strong she is!” he said after a pause.

“What shall I say! Humph! a slip on the path and a fall. I’m weak yet after the assault. Some one will have to plaster her dearest Jemmy’s head – a sickly fool!”

Chapter Nine
Behind Prison Bars

Mary Dell went again and again to the prison in the county town, tramping till she was footsore; but she did not see Abel, for she had to encounter double difficulties – to wit, the regulations of the authorities, and her brother’s refusal to see her.

At last, though, she compassed an interview with Bart Wrigley, and the big fellow listened to her stolidly, as he enjoyed the sound of her voice, sighing heavily from time to time.

“But even you seem at times, Bart, as if you did not believe a word I say,” she cried passionately.

“Who says I don’t?” said Bart, in a low growl. “You telled me you didn’t, my lass, and of course you didn’t. Why, I’d believe anything you told me; but as for Abel, he’s dead-set on it that you told the captain, and there’s no moving him.”

“But tell him, Bart, tell him I was angry with him for what he did – ”

“What we did,” said Bart, who was too loyal to shirk his share.

“Well, what you both did, Bart; but that I would sooner have died than betray my own brother.”

“Haw, haw! That’s a wunner,” said Bart, with a hoarse laugh. “That’s just what I did tell him.”

“You did, Bart?”

“Ay, my lass, I did; but he – ”

Bart stopped.

“Yes, Bart, what did he say?”

“Said I was a blind, thick-headed fool.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart, Bart! you are the best, and truest friend we ever had.”

“Say that again, lass, will you?” said the rough fellow.

Mary said it again with greater emphasis, and big Bart rubbed the corner of one eye with the back of his hand.

“Tell him, dear Bart, that his sister was true to him all through, and that he must believe me.”

“Ay, lass, I’ll tell him; but don’t call me ‘dear Bart’ again, ’cause I can’t bear it.”

“But you are our friend, and have always been like a brother to us.”

“Ay, lass, I tried to be, and I’ll speak to him again. Bah! you never went again us. You couldn’t. Your tongue thrashed us a bit, as you allus did, but it was for our good. And now, look here, my lass, when we’re gone – ”

“When you’re gone, Bart!” cried Mary, with her lip quivering.

“Ay, lass, when we’re gone, for I daresay they’ll hang us.”

“Bart!”

“Oh, it won’t hurt much. Not worse than being drownded, and much quicker.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart!”

“Don’t cry, my pretty one, only don’t forget us. You won’t forget Abel, of course; but – I never felt as if I could talk to you like this before – don’t forget as Bart Wrigley was werry fond on you, and that, if he’d been a fine hansum chap, ’stead of such a rough un, with his figure-head all set o’ one side, he’d ha’ stuck up and said as no one else shouldn’t have you.”

“Oh, Bart, Bart!” sobbed Mary, piteously.

“Ay, lass, that he would; but he often says to himself, ‘It wouldn’t be kind to a girl like that to hang on to her.’ So, good-bye, my pretty lady, and I’ll tell Abel as he’s the blind, thick-headed fool if he says it was you as got us into this hole.”

Bart had to wind up his unwontedly long speech very quickly, for a couple of turnkeys had entered the stone-walled room, to conduct the big fellow back to his cell, and show Mary to the outside of the prison.

“Good bye, dear Bart, dear old friend!”

“Good bye, my pretty lady!” cried the big fellow? “You called me ‘dear Bart’ again.”

“Yes, dear Bart, dear brother!” cried Mary, passionately, and, raising his big hand to her lips, she kissed it.

“Bah!” growled Bart to himself, “let ’em hang me. What do I care arter that? ‘Dear Bart – dear Bart!’ I wouldn’t care a bit if I only knowed what she’d do when we’re gone.”

Then the time glided on, and Mary heard from one and another the popular belief that the authorities, rejoicing in having at last caught two notorious smugglers and wreckers red-handed in a serious offence, were determined to make an example by punishing them with the utmost rigour of the law.

The poor girl in her loneliness had racked her brains for means of helping her brother. She had sold everything of value they possessed to pay for legal assistance, and she had, with fertile imagination, plotted means for helping Abel to escape; but even if her plans had been possible, they had been crossed by her brother’s obstinate disbelief in her truth. His last message was one which sent her to the cottage flushed and angry, for it was a cruel repetition of his old accusation, joined with a declaration that he disbelieved in her in other ways, and that this had been done in collusion with Captain Armstrong to get him and Bart out of her way.

“He’ll be sorry some day,” she said on the morning before the trial, as she sat low of spirit and alone in the little cottage.

“Poor Abel! he’s very bitter and cruel; poor – Yes, do you want me?”

“Genlum give me this to give you,” said a boy.

Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents.

They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who knew her deficiencies of education.

“It is not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a piece of sea-weed is received to-night.”

“And I used to love him and believe in him!” she cried at last passionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust.

Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail.

“Oh, Abel! – brother! – it is all my doing. I have sent you to your death!”

Chapter Ten
A Daring Trick

The laws were tremendously stringent in those days when it was considered much easier to bring an offender’s bad career to an end than to keep him at the nation’s expense, and when the stealing of a sheep was considered a crime to be punished with death, an attack upon the sacred person of one of the king’s officers by a couple of notorious law-breakers was not likely to be looked upon leniently by a judge well-known for stern sentences.

But a jury of Devon men was sitting upon the offence of Abel Dell and Bart Wrigley, and feeling disposed to deal easily with a couple of young fellows whose previous bad character was all in connection with smuggling, a crime with the said jury of a very light dye, certainly not black. Abel and Bart escaped the rope, and were sentenced to transportation to one of His Majesty’s colonies in the West Indies, there to do convict work in connection with plantations, or the making of roads, as their taskmasters might think fit.

Time glided by, and Mary Dell found that her life at home had become insupportable.

She was not long in finding that, now that she was left alone and unprotected, she was not to be free from persecution. Her contemptuous rejection of Captain Armstrong’s advances seemed to have the effect of increasing his persecution; and one evening at the end of a couple of months Mary Dell sat on one of the rocks outside the cottage door, gazing out to sea, and watching the ships sail westward, as she wondered whether those on board would ever see the brother who seemed to be all that was left to her in this world.

That particular night the thought which had been hatching in her brain ever since Abel had been sent away flew forth fully fledged and ready, and she rose from where she had been sitting in the evening sunshine, and walked into the cottage.

Mary Dell’s proceedings would have excited a smile from an observer, but the cottage stood alone. She had heard that Captain Armstrong was from home and not expected back for a week, and there was no fear of prying eyes as the sturdy, well-built girl took down a looking-glass from where it hung to a nail, and, placing it upon the table, propped it with an old jar, and then seating herself before the glass, she folded her arms, rested them upon the table, and sat for quite an hour gazing at herself in the mirror.

Womanly vanity? Not a scrap of it, but firm, intense purpose: deep thought; calm, calculating observation before taking a step that was to influence her life.

She rose after a time and walked into her brother Abel’s bed-room, where she stayed for some minutes, and then with a quick, resolute step she re-entered the cottage kitchen, thrust the few embers together that burned upon the hearth, took a pair of scissors from a box, and again seated herself before the glass.

The sun was setting, and filled the slate-floored kitchen with light which flashed back from the blurred looking-glass, and cast a curious glare in the girl’s stern countenance, with its heavy dark brows, sun-browned ruddy cheeks, and gleaming eyes.

Snip!

The sharp scissors had passed through one lock of the massive black tresses which she had shaken over her shoulders, and which then rippled to the cottage floor.

Snip!

Another cut, and two locks had fallen. Then rapidly snip, snip, snip– a curious thick, sharp snip– and the great waves of glorious hair kept falling as the bare, sun-burned, ruddy arm played here and there, and the steel blades glittered and opened and closed, as if arm, hand, and scissors formed the neck, head, and angry bill of some fierce bird attacking that well-shaped head, and at every snap took off a thick tress of hair.

It was not a long task, and when the hair had all fallen, to lie around, one glorious ring of glossy black tresses, there were only a few snips to give here and there to finish off notches and too long, untidy spots, and then the girl rose, and with a cold, hard look upon her frowning face she stooped, and stooped, and stooped, and at each rising cast a great tress of hair to where the flames leaped, and seized it, torching the locks, which writhed, and curled, and flared, and crackled as if alive, while, as if to aid the idea that she was destroying something living, a peculiarly pungent odour arose, as of burning flesh, and filled the room.

An hour later, just as the red moon rose slowly above the surface of the sea, a sturdy-looking young man, with a stout stick in one hand – the very stick which had helped to belabour Captain Armstrong – and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief beneath his arm, stepped out of the cottage, changed the key from inside to outside, closed the old door, locked it, dragged out the key, and with a sudden jerk sent it flying far out into deep water beyond the rocks, where it fell with a dull plash! followed by a peculiar hissing sound, as the waves at high water rushed back over the fine shingle at the thrower’s feet.

There was a sharp look round then; but no one was in sight; nothing to be heard but the hissing waters, and the splashing, gasping, and smacking sound, as the tide swayed in and out among the masses of stone. Then the figure turned once more to the cottage, gazed at it fixedly for a few moments, took a step or two away; but sprang back directly with an exceeding bitter cry, and kissed the rough, unpainted woodwork again and again with rapid action, and then dashed off to the foot of the cliff, and climbed rapidly to the sheep-track – the faintly-seen path that led towards Slapton Lea and the old hall, where the captain still stayed with his young wife, and then joined the west road which led to Plymouth town.

The risky part of the track was passed, and the open and down-like pastures beyond the cliffs were reached; and here, with the moon beginning to throw the shadow of the traveller far forward and in weird-looking length, the original of that shadow strode on manfully for another quarter of a mile, when all at once there was a stoppage, for another figure was seen coming from the direction of Torcross, and the moon shining full upon the face showed plainly who it was.

There was no question of identity, for that evening, after more than his customary modicum of wine, Captain James Armstrong – whose journey had been postponed – had snubbed his young wife cruelly, quarrelled with his cousin Humphrey, who had been there to dine, and then left the house, determined to go down to Mary Dell’s solitary cottage.

“I’m a fool,” he said; “I haven’t been firm enough with the handsome cat. She scratched. Well, cats have claws, and when I have taught her how to purr nicely she’ll keep them always sheathed. I’ll bring her to her senses to-night, once and for all.

“Who the devil’s this?” muttered the captain. “Humph! sailor on the tramp to Plymouth. Well, he won’t know me. I won’t turn back.”

He strode on a dozen yards and then stopped short, as the figure before him had stopped a few moments before; and then a change came over the aspect of the captain. His knees shook, his face turned wet, and his throat grew dry.

It was horrible; but there could be no mistake.

“Abel Dell!” he cried, hoarsely, as he leaped at the idea that the brother had returned in spirit, to save his sister from all harm.

“Out of my path!” rang forth in answer, the voice being loud, imperious, and fierce; and then, in a tone of intense hatred and suppressed passion, the one word – “Dog!”

As the last word rang out there was a whistling as of a stick passing through the air, a tremendous thud, and the captain fell headlong upon the rocky ground.

Then there was utter silence as the young sailor placed one foot upon the prostrate man’s chest, stamped upon it savagely, and strode on right away over the wild country bordering the sea.

The figure loomed up once in the moonlight, as the captain rose slowly upon one elbow, and gazed after it, to see that it seemed to be of supernatural proportions, and then he sank back again with a groan.

“It’s a spirit,” he said, “come back to her;” and then the poltroon fainted dead away.