The Torch and Other Tales | Page 8

'em that time. But a very interesting thing threw light, and when Teddy's cottage came to be hunted over, though not a stick offered to show who he might be, or where he might have sped, some fingerprints was took by the police and they got a good picture off an empty bottle in a cupboard and another off a frying-pan. And so it got to be understood that 'Santa Claus' was a famous criminal, who had come to Little Silver straight from seven years of penal servitude for manslaughter and had a record so long as from Newgate to Prince town. And he was sixty-three years old, or so they thought.
They traced him back to London and lost him there; but five years afterwards Hiram Linklater, for that was his famous name, swung in earnest for murder of a woman in the Peak of Derbyshire. Always for rural districts he was and a great one for the wonders of nature. He told the chaplain of his adventures at Little Silver, and expressed penitence afore he dropped. He also said that nothing in his whole career had given him more pleasure than to hear how his Christmas Eve effort down in Devonshire had miscarried after all. And he pointed out how, by the will of God, his own gift to the little boy had saved him!
And he was said to have made a brave end; which no doubt ain't as difficult as people imagine.
'Tis the like of Hiram Linklater I reckon, as keep up the sentiment of approval for capital punishment; because even in the softest head, it must be granted that a baby-poisoner is the sort that's better under the earth than on it.

No. II
THE RETURNED NATIVE
Of course, every human being did ought to be interesting to their fellow creatures, and yet, such is the weakness of human nature, that we all know folk so cruel dull in mind and body that an instinct rises in us to flee from 'em at sight and never go where there's a chance of running across 'em. It ain't Christian, but everybody knows such deadly characters none the less, and you might say without straining charity, that Mrs. Pedlar was such a one.
Being a widow she had that triumphant fact to show how somebody had found her interesting enough to wed, and there's no doubt, by God's all-seeing goodness, the dull people do find each other out and comfort one another.
Jane Pedlar couldn't have been particular dreadful to Noah Pedlar else he wouldn't have married her and stopped with her, for they was thirty years wed before he dropped, and though she was too dull to have any childer, or ever larn to cook a mutton chop so as a man could eat it with pleasure, yet she held him. He didn't leave much money, because he never earned much, yet he did a pretty good stroke for Jane before he died, and got his employer, Farmer Bewes, to let Jane bide safe in her cottage for her lifetime.
There weren't nothing written between master and man; but Nicholas Bewes, who owned the place, came to see Noah Pedlar on his death-bed, and when Noah put up a petition for Mrs. Pedlar to be allowed to bide rent free to her end, Bewes, who was a bit on the sentimental side and minded that the old chap had worked for him and his father before him for more than half a century, promised that Jane might have the use of the house for her life.
Noah Pedlar had never rose to be farmer's right-hand man or anything like that. He was a humble creature, faithful unto death, but no use away from hedge-tacking and such rough jobs; yet he'd done his duty according to his limits, however narrow they might be, and so he got his way on his death-bed, and, in the sudden surprise that such a landmark as Noah was going home, Farmer Bewes gave his promise.
But that was twenty year agone, and Nicholas Bewes had grown oldish himself now, and Jane was thought to be nearer eighty than seventy by her neighbours. Friends she had not, except for Mrs. Cobley; but there's no doubt, though a much younger woman, Mary Cobley had a sort of feeling for Jane; and there was Milly Boon also--Jane's orphan niece, who lived along with her and kept house for her. She was a good friend too.
The adventure began, you may say, when a returned native came back to Little Silver, and 'twas Mary Cobley's son Jack who did so.
He'd gone to sea when he was fifteen, but kept in touch with his folk and left the sea and found work in the West Indies and bided there for five-and-twenty years. And now he came back,