The Torch and Other Tales | Page 7

them. Then young Ford went to his beat and wondered as he walked at such a fine reformation, and felt proud of himself to think he'd had a hand in it. Yet, though seldom it came uppermost in his thoughts, by some chance, the ancient, awful look on Teddy's face rose to his mind that Christmas Eve. Joseph had a theory, sure founded on Scripture, and he stoutly believed that the poacher had harboured a devil in him in the past.
"Yet now without a doubt it has been cast out," thought Joseph, "and no man will ever see it look out of his eyes no more, because it have gone, thank God."
His duty done he went home to rest; but the man's sleep was broken just after peep-o'-day by the awfullest scream ever he heard.
His child it was. Joey slept in a little room alongside his parents and, of course, Minnie was up to him like a flash of lightning, with Joseph after her. He said at a later time that 'Santa Claus' had got in his dreams and he had suffered all night from a great uneasiness; but he was sleeping sound enough when, just after six o'clock, the child screamed and screamed again. And still he screamed when his mother got to him and his father followed after, stopping only to light a candle.
Poor Joey was out of bed with his mother's arms round him when his father got there; and on the bed lay Teddy's box of sweets scattered over the cover-lid, with the Christmas stocking dragged up also, but its contents not yet explored. The sweeties came first, and Joey had opened them and now he screamed and pointed and screamed again, but for the moment couldn't speak. He pointed into one corner of his little cubby-hole, and then the tears came flooding his cheeks and he stopped screaming and clung to his mother and wept as if his heart would break.
Ford, policeman-like, saw it all instanter, and a curtain seemed to lift off his soul, and there glared the eyes of 'Santa Claus' into his mind's eyes. In a second he put two and two together and understood why, deep in his brain that night, had hidden such a feeling of stark care.
"Have you touched they sweets?" he asked, shaking the little boy to make him attend. "Speak for your life, Joey! Have you ate one?"
Still the child couldn't collect himself. He screamed again when his father shook him, and it was clear some fearful thing had overtook him; but his grief didn't rise from no pain of body, and in truth the answer to Joseph's question lay before his eyes, if he'd but understood the truth. No scream would Joey have screamed, nor tear shed, if he'd helped himself from the box; but 'twas a case when a big heart saved a little body, for Joey had put another creature before himself and the first sweetie out of the gift had went to his pup. 'Twas chocolates 'Santa Claus' had left, and when the dog's jaws closed upon his little master's gift, he gave one jump and leapt off the bed and was stone dead in three seconds before the child got to him.
All that the parents presently learned from the shaking babe, and the moment Joseph grasped the truth, he left his wife to praise God and got on his clothes and ran without ceasing to Teddy Pegram's house. And in no Christmas temper did he run neither, for he'd have well liked, in his fury, to rob the hangman of a job. The size of the intended crime swept over him in all its horror as he measured the past and remembered all that the poacher had said and done; and his feet very near gave under him to think of what a fellow creature can harbour hid from every other human eye.
But he wasn't overmuch surprised to find Teddy Pegram didn't answer the door, nor yet to discover the place was all unlocked. He doubted not that his awful enemy had departed overnight, and it came out presently that the last at Little Silver to see Pegram was Ford himself on the previous evening.
So he left it at that, then, and went home and joined his wife in blessing the Maker for His mercy and calming the sorrows and terrors of their little lad.
An unrestful Christmas for the local police, and the countryside was soon busy over Teddy Pegram, while next day the box of chocolates received attention and was found so full of venom as the poisoner could pack 'em.
A nine days' wonder and no more, for though the police was so placed they could soon learn a lot they didn't know about the would-be murderer, the wretch himself escaped