Mrs. Dodd sighed--"She goes from one thing to another, but always returns to one idea; that he is a victim, not a traitor.""Well, tell her in one hour the money shall be in the house.""The money! What does she care?""Well, say we shall know all about Alfred by eleven o'clock.""My dear friend, be prudent," said Mrs. Dodd. "I feel alarmed: you were speaking almost in a whisper when I came in.""Y' are very obsairvant: but dawnt be uneasy; we are three to one. Just go and comfort Miss Julee with my message.""Ah, that I will," she said.
She was no sooner gone than they all stole out into the night, and a pitch dark night it was; but Green had a powerful dark lantern to use if necessary.
They waited, Green at the gate of Musgrove Cottage, the other two a little way up the road.
Ten o'clock struck. Some minutes passed without the expected signal from Green; and Edward and Sampson began to shiver. For it was very cold and dark, and in the next place they were honest men going to take the law into their own hands and the law sometimes calls that breaking the law.
"Confound him!" muttered Sampson; "if he does not soon come I shall run away. It is bitterly cold."Presently footsteps were heard approaching; but no signal: it proved to be only a fellow in a smock-frock rolling home from the public-house.
Just as his footsteps died away a low hoot like a plaintive owl was heard, and they knew their game was afoot.
Presently, tramp, tramp, came the slow and stately march of him they had hunted down.
He came very slowly, like one lost in meditation: and these amateur policemen's hearts beat louder and louder, as he drew nearer and nearer.
At last in the blackness of the night a shadowy outline was visible;another tramp or two, it was upon them.
Now the cautious Mr. Green had stipulated that the pocketbook should first be felt for, and, if not there, the matter should go no farther. So Edward made a stumble and fell against Mr. Hardie and felt his left breast: the pocket-book was there:--"Yes," he whispered: and Mr. Hardie, in the act of remonstrating at his clumsiness, was pinned behind, and his arms strapped with wonderful rapidity and dexterity. Then first he seemed to awake to his hunger, and uttered a stentorian cry of terror, that rang through the night and made two of his three captors tremble.
"Cut that" said Green sternly, "or you'll get into trouble."Mr. Hardie lowered his voice directly: "Do not kill me, do not hurt me,"he murmured; "I am but a poor man now. Take my little money; it is in my waistcoat pocket; but spare my life. You see I don't resist.""Come, stash your gab, my lad," said Green contemptuously, addressing him just as he would any other of the birds he was accustomed to capture.
"It's not your stiff that is wanted, but Captain Dodd's.""Captain Dodd's?" cried the prisoner with a wonderful assumption of innocence.
"Ay, the pocket-book," said Green; "here, this! this!" He tapped on the pocket-book, and instantly the prisoner uttered a cry of agony, and sprang into the road with an agility no one would have thought possible but Edward and Green soon caught him, and, the Doctor joining, they held him, and Green tore his coat open.
The pocket-book was not there. He tore open his waistcoat; it was not in the waistcoat: but it was sewed to his very shirt on the outside.
Green wrenched it away, and bidding the other two go behind the prisoner and look over his shoulder, unseen themselves, slipped the shade of his lantern.
Mr. Hardie had now ceased to struggle and to exclaim; he stood sullen, mute, desperate; while an agitated face peered eagerly over each of his shoulders at the open pocket-book in Green's hands, on which the lantern now poured a narrow but vivid stream of light.
