CHAPTER X.
A SCOUTING ADVENTURE.
General Smith, having now partially recovered, was mustering hisforces and arranging his plans of campaign. He had spoken no hastyword when he boasted that he knew the secret haunt of the robbers.For, some time before, during a brief but glorious career as a pirate,he had been brought into connection with Nipper Donnan, the strongestbutcher's boy of the town, and the ringleader in all mischief,together with Joe Craig, Nosie Cuthbertson, and Billy M'Robert, hisready followers.
Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as NipperDonnan's band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects ofattack had hastened a rupture, and the affair of the castle was butthe last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was alwayssimmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation.For when Hugh John found that his father's orchards, his father'scovers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than thefarmers' yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the townstreets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflectedthat one day all these things would belong to himself. He would sharewith Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they wouldbelong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarianbut sufficient.
Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, HughJohn was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at thecastle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of theComanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to thepossession of the Castle of Windy Standard.
It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of hiswindow and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wanderingthrough the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it werelistlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake criedin the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching ofa tooth. A white owl passed the window with an almost noiseless whiffof fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell ofthe dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown grass. It alwayswent to his head a little, and was the only thing which made himregret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted tobe an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher--even agamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable.
Hugh John got out of the window slowly, leaving Sir Toady Lion asleepand the door into Prissy's room wide open. He dropped easily andlightly upon the roof of the wash-house, and, steadying himself uponthe tiles, he slid down till he heard Caesar, the black Newfoundland,stir in his kennel. Then he called him softly, so that he might notbark. He could not take him with him to-night, for though Caesar waslittle more than a puppy his step was like that of a cow, and whenreleased he went blundering end on through the woods like a festiveavalanche. Hugh John's father, for reasons of his own, persisted incalling him "The Potwalloping Elephant."
So, having assured himself that Caesar would not bark, the boy droppedto the ground, taking the roof of the dog-kennel on the way. Caesarstirred, rolled himself round, and came out breathing hard, andthump-thumping Hugh John's legs with his thick tail, with distinctlyaudible blows.
Then when he understood that he was not to be taken, he sat down atthe extremity of his chain and regarded his master wistfully throughthe gloom with his head upon one side; and as Hugh John took his waydown the avenue, Caesar moaned a little, intoning his sense of injuryand disappointment as the parson does a litany.
At the first turn of the road Hugh John had just time to dart asideinto the green, acrid-scented, leathery-leaved shrubbery, where he laycrouched with his hands on his knees and his head thrust forward,while Tom the keeper went slowly by with his arm about JaneHousemaid's waist.
"WAIT TILL THE NEXT TIME YOU WON'T LEND ME THE FERRET,TOM CANNON! O-HO, JANE HOUSEMAID, WILL YOU TELL MY FATHER THE NEXTTIME I TAKE YOUR DUST SCOOP?"]
"Aha!" chuckled Hugh John; "wait till the next time you won't lend methe ferret, Tom Cannon! O-ho, Jane Housemaid, will you tell my fatherthe next time I take your dust scoop out to the sand-hole to help digtrenches? I think not!"
And Hugh John hugged himself in his pleasure at having a new weaponso admirably double-barrelled. He looked upon the follies of love, asmanifested in the servants' hall and upon the outskirts of thevillage, as so much excellent material by which a wise man would notfail to profit. Janet Sheepshanks was very severe on suchdelinquencies, and his father--well, Hugh John felt that Tom Cannonwould not wish to appear before his master in such a connection. Hehad a vague remembrance of a certain look he had once seen on hisfather's face when Allan Chestney, the head-keeper, came out from Mr.Picton Smith's workroom with these words ringing in his ear, "Now,sir, you will do as I tell you, or I will give you a character--_but_,such a character as you will carry through the world with you, andwhich will be buried with you when you die."
Allan was now married to Jemima, who had once been cook at the houseof Windy Standard. Hugh John went over to their cottage often to eather delicious cakes; and when Allan came in from the woods, his wifeordered him to take off his dirty boots before he entered her cleankitchen. Then Allan Chestney would re-enter and play submissively andfurtively with Patty Pans, their two-year-old child, shifting hischair obediently whenever Cook Jemima told him. But all the same, HughJohn felt dimly that these things would not have happened, save forthe look on his father's face when Allan Chestney went in to see himthat day in the grim pine-boarded workroom.
So, much lightened in his mind by his discovery, Hugh John took hisway down the avenue. At the foot of it, and before he came to thelocked white gate and the cottage of Betty, he turned aside through acopse, over a little green patch of sward on which his feet slidsmooth as velvet. A hare sat on the edge of this, with her fore-feetin the air. She was for the moment so astonished at Hugh John'sappearance that it was an appreciable period of time before sheturned, and with a quick, sidelong rush disappeared into the wood. Hecould hear the soughing rush of the river below him, which tookdifferent keys according to the thickness of the tree copses whichwere folded about it; now singing gaily through the thin birches androwans; anon humming more hoarsely through the alders; again rustlingand whispering mysteriously through the grey shivery poplars; and,last of all, coming up, dull and sullen, through the heavy oak woods,whose broad leaves cover all noises underneath them as a blanketmuffles speech.
Hugh John skirted the river till he came to the stepping-stones, whichhe crossed with easy confidence. He knew them--high, low, Jack, andgame, like the roofs of his father's outhouses. He could just aseasily have gone across blindfold.
Then he made his way over the wide, yellowish-grey spaces of thecastle island, avoiding the copses of willow and dwarf birch, and thesandy-bottomed "bunkers," which ever and anon gleamed up before himlike big tawny eyes out of the dusky grey-green of the short grass.After a little the walls of the old castle rose grimly before him, andhe could hear the starlings scolding one another sleepily high up inthe crevices. A black-cap piped wistfully among the sedges of thewatermarsh. Hugh John had often heard that the ruin was haunted, andcertainly he always held his breath as he passed it. But now he was onduty, and, if need had been, he would that night have descended to thedeepest dungeon, and faced a full Banquo-board of blood-bolteredghosts.
The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith Page 11