The Finger of Fate. Майн Рид

property both were in abundance.

      The General’s gamekeeper, when taken to task, admitted that, during the breeding season, he had found several pheasants’ nests rifled of their eggs. He could not account for it. There was no one ever seen in the covers, except occasionally the keepers from the neighbouring estate. But of course they would not do such a thing as steal eggs.

      “Indeed,” thought Henry Harding, “I’m not so sure of that. On the contrary, it appears to be the only way to account for our scarcity of game.”

      He communicated these thoughts to his father; and Whibley’s keepers were forbidden the range. It was deemed discourteous, and widened the breach between the ci-devant soldier and the retired stockbroker.

      Another breeding season came round, and the young Hardings were at home for the Easter holidays. It was at this time of the year that the chief damage appeared to have been done to the game on the estate.

      No amount of winter poaching can cause such havoc in a preserve, as that arising from the destruction, or abstraction, of the eggs. A farmer’s boy may do greater damage in one day than the most incorrigible gang of poachers in a month, with all their nets, traps, guns, and other appliances to boot.

      Knowing this, the Harding covers were this year still more carefully watched—additional men being employed. A goodly number of nests was noted, and a better produce expected.

      But although the future seemed fair, Henry Harding was not satisfied with the past. He chafed at his disappointment on the two preceding seasons, and was determined on discovering the cause. For this purpose he adopted an expedient.

      On a certain day a holiday was given to the keepers on the Harding estate, which included the watchers as well. It was fixed for the date of some races, held about ten miles off. The General’s drag was granted for taking them to the race-course. The holiday was promised a week in advance; so that the fact might become known to the keepers of the adjoining estate.

      The race day came; the drag rattled off, loaded with half a score of men in coats of velveteen. They were the keepers and watchers. For that day the Harding preserves were left to take care of themselves—a fine opportunity for poachers.

      So a stranger might have thought, but not Henry Harding. Just before the drag drove off, he was seen to enter the covers, carrying a Malacca cane, and take his way towards their farther side, where they were bounded by the estate of the stockbroker. He walked quietly, almost stealthily, through the copses. A poacher could not have proceeded with greater caution. Between the two preserves there was a strip of common land—the waste already alluded to as having caused contention. Near its edge stood an ancient elm, swathed in ivy. In its first fork, amidst the green festoons, Henry Harding ensconced himself; took a cigar out of his case; lit it; and commenced smoking.

      The position he had chosen was excellent for his purpose. On one side it commanded a view of the waste. No one could cross from Whibley to Harding without being seen. On the other, it overlooked a broad expanse of the Harding covers—known to be a favourite haunt of pheasants, and one of their noted places of nesting.

      The watcher kept his perch for a considerable time, without discovering anything to reward him for his vigilance. He smoked one cigar, then another, and was half-way through the third. His patience was becoming exhausted, to say nothing of the irksomeness of his seat on the corrugated elm. He began to think that his suspicions—hitherto directed against Doggy Dick—were without foundation. He even reasoned about their injustice. After all, Doggy might not be so bad as he had deemed him.

      Speak of the fiend, and he is near; think of him, and he is not far off. So was it in the case of Doggy Dick. As the stump of Henry’s third cigar was burnt within an inch of his teeth, Whibley’s head keeper hove in sight. He was first seen standing on the edge of the Whibley cover, his ill-favoured face protruding stealthily through a screen of “witheys.” In this position he stood for some time, reconnoitring the ground. Then, stepping out, silent and cat-like, he made his way across the neutral territory, and plunged into the Harding preserves.

      Henry scanned him with the eye of a lynx, or detective. There was now the prospect of something to reward him for his long watching, and the strain of sitting upon the elm.

      As was expected, Doggy took his way across the open expanse, where several nests had been “noted.” He still kept to his cat-like tread—crouching, and now and then looking suspiciously around him.

      This did not hinder him from flushing a pheasant. One rose with a sonorous whirr; while another went fluttering along the sward as if both its wings had been broken.

      The hen looked as if Doggy might have covered her with his hat, or killed her with a stick. He did not attempt to do either; but, bending over the forsaken nest, he took out the eggs, and carefully deposited them in his game-bag!

      Out of the same bag he took something, which Henry saw him scatter over the ground in the neighbourhood of the nest. This done, he walked on in search of another.

      “Come,” thought Henry, “one brood is enough to be sacrificed in this sort of way—enough for my purpose.”

      Throwing away the stump of his cigar, he dropped down from the tree, and rushed after the nest-robber.

      Doggy saw him, and attempted to escape to the Whibley covers. But before he could cross the fence, the fingers of his pursuer were tightly clutched upon the collar of his velveteen coat; and he came to the ground, crushing the eggs within his game-bag. This being turned inside out, the spilt yolks and shattered shells gave proof of the plunder he had committed.

      Henry Harding was at this time a strapping youth, with strength and spirit inherited from his soldier father. Moreover, he was acting with right on his side.

      The keeper had neither his weight nor his inches, and was further enfeebled by his sense of wrong-doing. Under these circumstances, he saw the absurdity of making resistance. He made none; but permitted the irate youth to cudgel him with the Malacca cane until every bone in his body seemed about to be shattered like the egg-shells late carried in his game-bag.

      “Now, you thief!” cried young Harding, when his passion was nearly spent. “You can go back to Mr Whibley’s covers, and hatch whatever plot may suit you and your snob of a master, but no more of my pheasants’ eggs.”

      Doggy did not dare to make reply, lest it should tempt a fresh application of the cudgel. Clambering over the fence, he hobbled back across the common, and hid himself among the hazels of the Whibley preserves.

      Turning towards the plundered nest, Henry Harding examined the ground in its proximity. He discovered a scattering of buckwheat, that had been steeped in some sweet-smelling liquid. It was the same he had seen Doggy distribute over the sward.

      He collected a quantity in his kerchief, and carried it home. On analysis it proved to be poison!

      Though there was no trial instituted, the story, with all its details, soon became known in the neighbourhood. Doggy Dick knew better than to bring an action for assault; and the Hardings were satisfied with the punishment that had been already administered to their disgraced keeper.

      As for the retired stockbroker, he had no alternative but discharge his ill-conditioned servant, who from that time became notorious as the most adroit poacher in the parish.

      The submissiveness with which he had received the castigation administered by Henry Harding seemed afterwards to have been a source of regret to him: for in future encounters of a similar kind he proved himself a desperate and dangerous assailant—so dangerous that, in a conflict with one of General Harding’s watchers, occurring about a year from that time, he inflicted a severe wound upon the man, resulting in his death. He saved his own neck from the halter by making his escape out of the country; and though traced to Boulogne, and thence to Marseilles—in the company of some jockeys who were taking English horses to Italy—he finally eluded justice by hiding himself in some corner of that classic land, then covered by a network of petty states; most of them not only obstructive to justice, but corrupt in their administration.