The Watchers

t escape them. From that debate my thoughts drifted to the events of the night before, and I recollected with a sudden thrill of interest, rare enough to surp

ll he had overtaken, and from which at daybreak he would descend with a hurried word of thanks to get the quicker on his way; I pictured him pressing through the towns with a growing fear at his heart, because of their turmoil and their crowds; and I thought of him as hungering daily more a

tankard of small ale at his bedside

r as well as you do," said he,

y come back

And changing the subject, "If you will wa

dgings. I could see him on the stairs pausing to listen to the confusion within the rooms, and in the passage opening and closing the door as he hesitated whether to go in or no. I became all at once very curious to know what the errand was which had pushed him so far from his home, and I cudgelled my brains to recollect his story.

look glum as a November morning. Is it a sore head? or is it the

that boy fumbling under the table for his cap, and dragging himself silen

brains. We'll talk no more of him, if you please." He took a pack of cards from a corner cupboard, and, tossing them on t

upon him. I must go another way to work. But chance and Lieutena

d and cut the cards; whereupon I dealt them. Clutter

picquet, but I have

hrough the

u will my hand is the better;" and Clutterbuck brok

, "I know very well; but I have two king

a bite,

Castle. For packing the cards or knapping the dice I never came across his equal. Yet we could n

said I; "that

ething of a reverie, and spok

am, an old bulky fellow, with a mulberry face and yellow angry eyes, and his great hands and feet twisted out of all belief. His stories were all of wild doings on the Guinea coast. Cullen, on the other hand, was a stripling with a soft face like a girl's, exquisite in his

n Mayle. He struck mighty quick and out of the sky. I cannot remember, during all the ten years I lived at the Scillies, that any man crossed Cullen Mayle, though unwittingly, but some odd accident crippled him. He was the more dangerous of the pair. With Adam it was a wor

but put it down to his earnestness that a shiver took me at the words; for nothing was more unlikely th

it; for I was afraid lest any display of eagerness might close his lips. Lieutenant Clutterbu

upon St. Mary's, Cullen drove him back to his boats with a broken head. Cullen broke old Captain Hathaway's patience at the same time. Hathaway took off his silver spectacles at last and shut

armiter to do with C

ut it seems that Dick has transferred his allegiance to--

said I, quite forge

teen years old is Dick. But at fifteen years a lad is ripe to be

rtainly on behalf of the girl, whom I only knew as Helen, that Dick had undertaken his arduous errand, and it was no less certain that just for that reason Lieutenant Clu

ce; and, since he was never the man to keep his thoughts for any long time to himself, I had no doubt that some time that day I should learn more. Indeed, very soon after we left the "Cocoa Tree" I thought the whole truth was coming out; f

th a vacant eye, and I wondered whether he was thinking of a tangled garden raised above a bea

ures, I knew something now of Adam Mayle and his son Cullen, but as to Helen I was in the dark. Was her name Mayle too? Was she wife to Cullen? The sight of Clutterbuck's ill-humour inclin

enetian vessel, it was thought, from Marseilles, in France, for a great deal of Castile soap, and almonds and oil was washed ashore afterwards--drove in a northwesterly gale on to the Golden Bar reef. The reef runs out from St. Helen's Island, opposite Adam Mayle's window. Adam put out his lugger and crossed the sound, but before he could reach St. Helen's the ship went down into fourteen fathoms of water. He landed on St. Helen's, h

French?"

springs from. I have no doubt that a Hottentot squaw will play you the same tricks as a woman of fashion,

ayle, who was dead; Cullen, the gannet who struck from the skies; and even Helen, the waif of the sea--these were at this time no more to me than a showman's puppets; marionettes of sawdust and wood, that faced this

that, whether he had money or no, he would reach his journey's end. His spirit was evident in the resolve to trav

ave reached the "Golden Farmer," and I made a mark at that name on the map. Every day for a week I kept in this way an imagined tally of his progress, following him from county to county; and at the end of the week, coming out in the evening from my lodging

er a certain night when I had t

ile, "I remember very much better the

discovered outside the door, and if you can repeat the story w

ed at h

ght was young, but not so young but what the Bassett-table was already full. We sat down togethe

year ago Adam Mayle had died, bequeathing his fortune, which was considerable, and most of it placed in the African Company, to his adopted daughter Helen. She,

mongst them, with his back propped against a wall, a negro asleep. A paper was being passed from hand to hand among the group, and in the end it came to Dick Parmiter. Upon the paper was written Adam Mayle's name and the place of his re

Mr. Cullen Ma

o, speaking in Engli

a message

es

agerly. But in the midst of them, and while still looking at

London as wide awake as you or I. Bound for Penzance he was, and the drowsiness took him the second day out. At first he would talk a li

k the neg

h to cross

said th

oney, and could do nothing to succour him, she was thrown into an extreme trouble. There was some reason why he could not come to Scilly in person, and here at her hand was the man sent to tell the reason; but he could not because of his mysterious malady. More than once he tried with a look of deep sadness in his eyes, as though he was conscious of his helplessness, but he never got beyond th

flashed in his face, and when close to the house saw a man spring up from the gorse and watch him as he passed. From that night the house was continually spied upon, and Helen walked continually from room to room wringing her hands in sheer distraction at her helplessness. She feared that they were watching for Cullen; she feared, too, that Cullen, receiving no answer to his message, would come himself and fall into their hands. She dared hardly conjecture for what reason they were watching, since she knew Cullen. For a week these men watched, five of them, who kept their watches as

quaintance repeated to me as

d to meddle in the matt

nion mistook my meaning, for he glan

ads. To pass the morning over his toilette, to loiter through the afternoon in a boudoir, and to dispose of the evening so that he may be drunk before midnight! He would be much better taking the good air into his lungs and sett

ook hold of me as I repeated over and over to myself my strange friend's words. I looked at the green cloth and the yellow candles, and the wolfish faces about the cloth. The candles had grown soft with the heat of the night, and were bent out of their shape, so that the grease dropped in great blots upon the cloth, and the air was close with an odour of stale punch. I got up from my corner and went out into the street, and stood by the water in St. James's Park, If only some such summons had come to me when I was t