Noughts and Crosses | Page 8

murdered.
There was a shrewd wind blowing, and I shivered all over; but the cold
at my heart was worse, and my hate of the man who had set it there
grew with every step. I thought of the four months and more which
parted the two lives of Gabriel Foot, and what I should make of the
new one. I had my chance again--a chance gained for me beyond hope
by that counsel but for whom I should be sleeping to-night in the
condemned cell; a chance, and a good chance, but for that same cursed
lawyer. Ugh! how cold it was, and how I hated him for it!
There was a little whitewashed cottage on the edge of the moorland just
after the hedgerows ceased--the last house before the barren heath
began, standing a full three hundred yards from any other dwelling. Its
front faced the road, and at the back an outhouse and a wretched garden
jutted out on the waste land. There was a light in each of its windows
tonight, and as I passed down the road I heard the dismal music of a
flute.
Perhaps it was this that jogged my thoughts and woke them up to my
present pass. At any rate, I had not gone more than twenty yards before
I turned and made for the door. The people might give me a night's
lodging in the outhouse; at any rate, they would not refuse a crust to
stay the fast which I had not broken since the morning. I tapped gently
with my knuckles on the door, and listened.

I waited five minutes, and no one answered. The flute still continued its
melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for the air
(a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept breaking off suddenly and
repeating itself. But the performer had patience, and the sound never
ceased for more than two seconds at a time. Besides this, nothing could
be heard. The blinds were drawn in all the windows. The glow of the
candles through them was cheerful enough, but nothing could be seen
of the house inside. I knocked a second time, and a third, with the same
result. Finally, tired of this, I pushed open the low gate which led into
the garden behind, and stole round to the back of the cottage.
Here, too, the window on the ground floor was lit up behind its blinds,
but that of the room above was shuttered. There was a hole in the
shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and a thin
shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried itself in a ragged
yew-tree at the end of the garden. From the loudness of the sounds I
judged this to be the room where the flute-playing was going on. The
crackling of my footsteps on the thin soil did not disturb the performer,
so I gathered a handful of earth and pitched it up against the pane. The
flute stopped for a minute or so, but just as I was expecting to see the
shutter open, went on again: this time the air was "Pretty Polly Oliver."
I crept back again, and began to hammer more loudly at the door.
"Come," said I, "whoever this may be inside, I'll see for myself at any
rate," and with that I lifted the latch and gave the door a heavy kick. It
flew open quite easily (it had not even been locked), and I found myself
in a low kitchen. The room was empty, but the relics of supper lay on
the deal table, and the remains of what must have been a noble fire
were still smouldering on the hearthstone. A crazy, rusty blunderbuss
hung over the fireplace. This, with a couple of rough chairs, a broken
bacon-rack, and a small side-table, completed the furniture of the place.
No; for as I sat down to make a meal off the remnants of supper,
something lying on the lime-ash floor beneath this side-table caught my
eye. I stepped forward and picked it up.
It was a barrister's wig.
"This is a queer business," thought I; and I laid it on the table opposite

me as I went on with my supper. It was a "gossan" wig, as we call it in
our parts; a wig grown yellow and rusty with age and wear. It looked so
sly and wicked as it lay there, and brought back the events of the day so
sharply that a queer dread took me of being discovered with it. I pulled
out my pistol, loaded it (they had given me back both the powder and
pistol found on me when I was taken), and laid it beside my plate. This