Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/91

 paddock, surrounded with pollard willows: the water reflecting them upon its surface, as also a little patch of sky which it gets sight of somehow, between the branches. It is a comfortable and innocent little place this, with a small wood close by, with a haystack near the gate, and stay—what is this? There are figures here—two men—how plainly I see them! But what are they doing? They are in violent movement. Are they fighting, wrestling, struggling? It is so. A struggle is going on between them, and one of the two—he wears a bright red cap—has the best of it. He has his antagonist, who seems to be weak and makes but faint resistance, by the throat; he strikes fiercely at the wretched man's head with a thick stick or club he holds, and pressing on him sorely, beats him fiercely to the ground. The man who has the best of it—there is something more of red about him besides his cap; is it his beard?—does not spare the fallen man, but beats him still about the head—a gray head surely—with his club. Horrible sight to look on. I would give anything to tear myself away from the telescope or at least to close my eyes, and shut out the sickening spectacle. But the butchery is nearly over. The gray-haired man continues yet to struggle and resist, but only for a little while. In a very short time the contest, as I plainly see, will be over. The conquered man, making one more supreme effort, rises nearly to his feet, receives another crushing blow, falls suddenly to the ground, and is still. Merciful Heaven! what is this! Who are these two men? Do I know them? It cannot be that that is my dear old friend lying helpless on the ground, and that the other is the man whom I took note of, just now, in the rectory garden. It cannot be that this deed, of which I have been a witness—inactive, powerless to help or save—is a MURDER!

I felt for a moment as if all presence of mind, and power of action, had deserted me. What was I to do? That was all that I could say, over and over again, as I sat still gazing through the telescope with an instinctive feeling that I must not lose one single incident of the scene before me. All that happened I must see. I recalled my senses by a mighty effort, and reasoned as men do in a crisis. What was to be done? The place where this horrible deed was being committed was so far off—about three quarters of a mile as the crow flies, more than a mile by any road I knew of—that there could be no possibility of my getting there in time to be of the slightest use. The end, if it had not come already—and I felt certain that it had—must most surely have come before I could traverse that distance. There was but one way now in which I could be of any service, and that was in securing the detection of the murderer. I must remain at my post and watch his every movement, besides endeavouring to render myself certain, so far as the glass would enable me to be so, concerning his appearance and dress. So there I sat, helpless and spell-bound, but watching with devouring eyes. There was a sudden stillness where there had been before so much of struggling and movement. The blows had ceased to fall now. The deed was accomplished, and there was no more need for them. The man himself, the murderer, was still, and I made sure of his identity. There was the red hair, there was the red beard, there was the scarlet cap lying on the ground, there was the canvas frock with the patch in front. There was no doubt. Alas! was there any doubt either about that other figure lying on the grass beside him? The light-coloured summer coat which he had worn when I last saw him, the white hairs. It was nearly too much to bear, but a savage craving for vengeance came to my aid, and braced up my energies I dispelled by an effort of the will a dimness which came before my eyes, and straining them more intensely than ever, saw the man with the red cap start up, as if suddenly conscious that he was losing time, and set himself to work to rifle the body of his victim. As far as I could see, he was engaged in emptying the poor old man's pockets, and once I thought I saw the gleam of something golden; but this might have been fancy. At all events he continued for some time to turn the body over and over, and then, having, I suppose, satisfied himself with what he had secured, he got up, and dragging the corpse after him, made his way to the little wood close by, and entering it, disappeared from sight. And now, indeed, a crisis had arrived when it was difficult in the extreme to know how to act. What if that disappearance were final? What if he should get out of the wood at the further extremity and I should see him no more?

It was a breathless moment. I continued to watch, and hardly breathed. At last, and when I was becoming desperate with uncertainty, I saw something move again. The trees were parted, and at the same place where the murderer had entered the wood, bearing with him the body of my old friend, he now reappeared, alone. He stood a moment as if undecided, and then came out, looking behind him first, and then arranging the disturbed boughs as though to make the place look as if no one had passed that way. That done, he stood still for a moment, looking about him as if in search of something, and then he moved across—how unconscious of the pursuer on his track, the telescope following his every step, unseen and unsuspected!—to where at the corner of the meadow there was, as I have mentioned, a little pond with pollard willows round about its margin. He stooped and took up some object lying beside the pond. What was it? There was something green about it. Was it old Mr. Irwin's butterfly net? I could not see with certainty, but no doubt it was, and no doubt the poor old gentleman had wandered away from the footpath, which was near at hand, in pursuit of some entomological specimen.

The man with the red cap threw this object into the water. Then taking off his canvas frock, he began to wash the front of it, stained