Cobwebs and Cables. Stretton Hesba

bare, uncovered casement troubled him, and from time to time he turned his eyes uneasily toward it. But what need could there be of a curtain, when they were a mile away from any habitation, and where no road crossed the moor, except the rugged green pathway, worn into deep ruts by old Marlowe's own wagon? Yet as if touched by some vague sympathy with him, Phebe rose, and pinned one of her large rough working-aprons across it.

      "Phebe," he said, as she stepped softly back to her seat, "you and I have been friends a long time; and your father and I have been friends all my life. Do you recollect me staying here a whole week when I was a school-boy?"

      "Yes," she answered, her eyes glistening in the dusky light; "but for you I should have known nothing, only what work had to be done for father. You taught me my alphabet that week, and the hymns I have said every night since then before I go to sleep. You helped me to teach myself painting; and if I ever paint a picture worth looking at it will be your doing."

      "No, no; you are a born artist, Phebe Marlowe," he said, "though perhaps the world may never know it. But being such friends as you say, I will trust you. Do you think me worthy of trust, true and honest as a man should be, Phebe?"

      "As true and honest as the day," she cried, with eager emphasis.

      "And a Christian?" he added, in a lower voice.

      "Yes," she answered, "I do not know a Christian if you are not one."

      "That is the sting of it," he groaned; "true, and honest, and a Christian! And yet, Phebe, if I were taken by the police to-night, or if I be taken by them to-morrow, I shall be lodged in Riversborough jail, and tried before a jury of my towns-people at the assizes next month."

      "No, it is impossible!" she cried, stretching out her brown, hard-working hand, and laying it on his white and shapely one, which had never known toil.

      "You would not send me to jail," he said, "I know that well enough. But I deserve it, my poor girl. They would find me guilty and sentence me to a convict prison. I saw Dartmoor prison on my wedding journey with Felicita, Heaven help me! She liked the wild, solitary moor, with its great tors and its desolate stillness, and one day we went near to the prison. Those grim walls seemed to take possession of me; I felt oppressed and crushed by them. I could not forget them for days after, even with Felicita by my side."

      His voice trembled as he spoke, and a quiver ran through his whole frame, which seemed to thrill through Phebe's; but she only pressed her pitiful hand more closely on his.

      "I might have escaped last night," he went on, "but I stumbled over a poor girl in the street, dying. A young girl, no older than you, without a penny or a friend; a sinner too like myself; and I could not leave her there alone. Only in finding help for her I lost my chance. The train to London was gone, and there was no other till ten this morning. I expected Mr. Clifford to be at the bank to-day; if I had only known he would not be there I could have got away then. But I came here, why I hardly know. You could not hide me for long if you would; but there was no one else to help me."

      "But what have you done, sir?" she asked, with a tremulous, long-drawn sigh.

      "Done?" he repeated; "ay! there's the question. I wonder if I can be honest and true now with only Phebe Marlowe listening. I could have told my mother, perhaps, if it had been of any use; but I would die rather than tell Felicita. Done, Phebe! I've appropriated securities trusted to my keeping, pledging some and selling others for my own use. I've stolen £10,000."

      "And you could be sent to prison for it?" she said, in a low voice, glancing uneasily round as if she fancied she would be overheard.

      "For I don't know how many years," he answered.

      "It would kill Mrs. Sefton," she said. "Oh! how could you do it?"

      "It was for Felicita I did it," he replied absently; "for my Felicita only."

      For a few minutes Phebe's brain was busy, but not yet with the most sorrowful thoughts. There could be no shadow of doubt in her mind that this dearest friend of hers, sitting beside her in the twilight, was guilty of the crime he had confessed. But she could not as yet dwell upon the crime. He was in imminent peril; and his peril threatened the welfare of nearly all whom she loved. Ruin and infamy for him meant ruin and infamy for them all. She must save him if possible.

      "Phebe," he said, breaking the dreary silence, "I ought to tell you one thing more. The money your father left with me—the savings of his life—six hundred pounds—it is all gone. He intrusted it to me, and made his will, appointing me your guardian; such confidence he had in me. I have made both him and you penniless."

      "I think nothing of that," she answered. "What should I ever have been but for you? A dull, ignorant country girl, living a life little higher than my sheep and cattle. We are rich enough, my father and me. This cottage, and the fields about it, are our own. But I must go and tell father."

      "Must he be told?" asked Roland Sefton anxiously.

      "We've no secrets," she replied; "and there's no fear of him, you know. He would see if I was in trouble; and I shall be in trouble," she added, in a sorrowful voice.

      She opened the cottage door, and going out left him alone. It was a familiar place to him; but hitherto it had been only the haunt of happy holidays, from the time when he had been a school-boy until his last autumn's shooting of grouse and woodcock on the wide moors. Old Marlowe had been one of his earliest friends, and Phebe had been something like a humble younger sister to him. If any one in the world could be depended upon to help him, outside his own family, it must be old Marlowe and his daughter.

      And yet, when she left him, his first impulse was to rise and flee while yet there was time—before old Marlowe knew his secret. Phebe was a girl, living as girls do, in a region of sentiment and feeling, hardly understanding a crime against property. A girl like her had no idea of what his responsibility and his guilt were, money ranking so low in her estimate of life. But old Marlowe would look at it quite differently. His own careful earnings, scraped together by untiring industry and ceaseless self-denial, were lost—stolen by the man he had trusted implicitly. For Roland Sefton did not spare himself any reproaches; he did not attempt to hide or palliate his sin. There were other securities for small sums, like old Marlowe's, gone like his, and ruin would overtake half a dozen poor families, though the bulk of the loss would fall upon his senior partner, who was a hard man, of unbending sternness and integrity. If old Marlowe proved a man of the same inflexible stamp, he was lost.

      But he sat still, waiting and listening. Round that lonely cottage, as he well knew, the wind swept from whatever quarter it was blowing; sighing softly, or wailing, moaning, or roaring past it, as ceaselessly as the sound of waves against a fisherman's hut on the sea-coast. It was crying and sobbing now, rising at intervals into a shriek, as if to warn him of coming peril. He went to the window and met the black face of the night, hiding everything from his eye. Neither moon nor star gleamed in the sky. But even if old Marlowe was merciful he could not stay there, but must go out, as he had done last night from his own home, lashed like a dog from every familiar hearth by an unseen hand and a heavy scourge.

      Phebe had not lingered, though she seemed long away. As she drew near the little workshop she saw the wagon half-laden with some church furniture her father had been carving, and with which he and she were to start at daybreak for a village about twenty miles off. She heard the light tap of his carving tools as she opened the door, and found him finishing the wings of a spread-eagle. He had pushed back the paper cap he wore from his forehead, which was deeply furrowed, and shaded by a few straggling tufts of gray hair. He took no notice of her entrance until she touched his arm with her hand; and then he looked at her with eyes, blue like her own, but growing dim with age, and full of the pitiful, uncomplaining gaze of one who is deaf and dumb. But his face brightened and his smile was cheerful, as he began to talk eagerly with his fingers, throwing in many gestures to aid his slow speech. Phebe, too, smiled and gesticulated in silent answer, before she told him her errand.

      "The carving is finished, father," she said. "Could we not start at once, and be at Upchurch before five to-morrow morning?"

      "Twenty miles; eight hours; easily,"