The Hermit of Far End | Page 8

thought to
frighten you off by firin'."
The girl nodded.
"Well, as you haven't, suppose you allow that I've won and that it's up
to me to dictate terms. If my uncle were to see you--"
"I'm not comin' up to the house--don't you think it, win or no win,"
broke in Brady hastily.
The girl regarded him judicially.
"I don't think we particularly want you up at the house," she remarked.
"If you'll do as I say--empty your pockets--you may go."
The man reluctantly made as though to obey, but even while he
hesitated, he saw the girl's eyes suddenly look past him, over his
shoulder, and, turning suspiciously, he swung straight into the brawny
grip of the head keeper, who, hearing a shot fired, had deserted his
breakfast and hurried in the direction of the sound and now came up
close behind him.

"Caught this time, Brady, my man," chuckled the keeper triumphantly.
"It's gaol for you this journey, as sure's my name's Clegg. Has the
fellow been annoying you, Miss Sara?" he added, touching his hat
respectfully as he turned towards the girl, whilst with his other hand he
still retained his grip of Brady's arm.
She laughed as though suddenly amused.
"Nothing to speak of, Clegg," she replied. "And I'm afraid you mustn't
send him to prison this time. I told him if he would empty his pockets
he might go. That still holds good," she added, looking towards Brady,
who flashed her a quick look of gratitude from beneath his heavy brows
and proceeded to turn out the contents of his pockets with
commendable celerity.
But the keeper protested against the idea of releasing his prisoner.
"It's a fair cop, miss," he urged entreatingly.
"Can't help it, Clegg. I promised. So you must let him go."
The man obeyed with obvious reluctance. Then, when Brady had
hastened to make himself scarce, he turned and scrutinized the girl
curiously.
"You all right, Miss Sara? Shall I see you up to the house?"
"No, thanks, Clegg," she said. "I'm--I'm quite all right. You can go back
to your breakfast."
"Very good, miss." He touched his hat and plunged back again into the
woods.
The girl stood still, looking after him. She was rather white, but she
remained very erect and taut until the keeper had disappeared from
view. Then the tense rigidity of her figure slackened, as a stretched
wire slackens when the pull on it suddenly ceases, and she leaned
helpless against the trunk of a tree, limp and shaking, every fine- strung

nerve ajar with the strain of her recent encounter with Black Brady. As
she felt her knees giving way weakly beneath her, a dogged little smile
twisted her lips.
"You are a cool 'and, and no mistake," she whispered shakily, an
ironical gleam flickering in her eyes.
She propped herself up against the friendly tree, and, after a few
minutes, the quick throbbing of her heard steadied down and the colour
began to steal back into her lips. At length she stooped, and, picking up
her hat, which had fallen off and lay on the ground at her feet, she
proceeded to make her way through the woods in the direction of the
house.
Barrow Court, as the name implied, was situated on the brow of a hill,
sheltered from the north and easterly winds by a thick belt of pines
which half-encircled it, for ever murmuring and whispering together as
pine-trees will.
To Sara Tennant, the soft, sibilant noise was a beloved and familiar
sound. From the first moment when, as a child, she had come to live at
Barrow, the insistent murmur of the pines had held an extraordinary
fascination for her. That, and their pungent scent, seemed to be
interwoven with her whole life there, like the thread of some single
colour that persists throughout the length of a woven fabric.
She had been desperately miserable and lonely at the time of her advent
at the Court; and all through the long, wakeful vigil of her first night, it
had seemed to her vivid, childish imagination as though the big,
swaying trees, bleakly etched against the moonlit sky, had understood
her desolation and had whispered and crooned consolingly outside her
window. Since then, she had learned that the voice of the pines, like the
voice of the sea, is always pitched in a key that responds to the mood of
the listener. If you chance to be glad, then the pines will whisper of
sunshine and summer, little love idylls that one tree tells to another, but
if your heart is heavy within you, you will hear only a dirge in the hush
of their waving tops.

As Sara emerged from the shelter of the woods, her eyes instinctively
sought the great belt