Minnie Sweetland had no time to lose, for well she understood that the police would not wait her pleasure. It behoved her, if possible, instantly to prove her husband’s innocence, and, in order to do so, certain witnesses and a magistrate, before whom they could testify upon oath, were necessary. On the night of the catastrophe, before she slept, Daniel’s wife was permitted to see Mrs Prowse, the widow who had attended to Rix Parkinson during his last hours; and this woman, familiar with the truth, promised to do all that was right before the following day. Finally, the wife obtained a physician’s solemn promise that the police should not take her husband until Sir Reginald Vivian was familiar with the circumstances; then, knowing that Dan was safe, she slept. But her repose proved fitful and broken by pain. Thankfully she welcomed dawn and gladly prepared for an ordeal now hastening upon her.

At eleven o’clock a magistrate, with Sir Reginald Vivian, Henry Vivian, Mrs Prowse, her son, Samuel Prowse, and a shorthand writer entered the room where Minnie lay. Nurses were also in attendance, and before Mrs Sweetland told her story, Daniel and the physician of the hospital appeared.

Then the wife made her statement. She spoke calmly and clearly; there was no hesitation in her voice; and those present were able to confirm her account in every particular.

“When Titus Sim told me that poor Rix Parkinson was going to die and wanted to see me before he went, I was ready to visit him at once. Mr Sim said that he believed that Rix Parkinson could prove my husband innocent. It was understood also that there must be a witness of what was said. And Mr Sim was to be that witness. I have never trusted him; so I thought it would be well if there was another witness. I told Mrs Prowse about it, and she agreed with me that it might be safer. I had already spoken to Sam Prowse here. He was always a friend to my Daniel, and I trusted him. As he lived next door to Mr Parkinson, it was easy to have him there. His mother took Samuel into the sick man’s room while Mr Parkinson slept. He was hidden in a hanging cupboard, and heard every word that passed. Afterwards, when we had gone, and the sufferer was asleep again, his mother let him out. None knew about it excepting Mrs Prowse and Samuel and me. Samuel wrote down from memory everything that Rix Parkinson said. You can compare what he wrote with what I am going to tell you. I have not seen Sam Prowse since that day, and I do not know what he wrote.”

Minnie then told the story of all that the dead man had confessed, and young Prowse confirmed it. His mother also explained how she had concealed him in the room of the dying man. Minnie went on to tell of Sim’s offer of marriage and his threat when she refused him. Daniel next told his story, related that he had revealed himself to Sim, and that Sim, inflamed by passion, had returned truth for truth and laid bare his own plot to destroy his old friend and marry the widow. Of this statement, however, there was no witness; but, viewed in the light of Sim’s subsequent actions, it appeared in the highest degree credible. That Sim was the dead poacher’s accomplice also seemed certain. Minnie mentioned the broken pipe found by her after the poaching raid at Flint Stone Quarry, and the horn button, which she had picked up in Middlecott Lower Hundred. She had kept both articles, and, after sewing on another button for him, was positive that the button found at Middlecott belonged to Sim’s legging, by reason of its unusual pattern and notched edge. To the button Sir Reginald attached no importance, since Sim had been early upon the scene of the murder in the wood: but the pipe was serious evidence.

Titus Sim himself proved not well enough to be interrogated at this stage of affairs; but a week later he left the hospital under arrest, and, on the same day, Sweetland also departed. The footman confessed to nothing; but his wife’s testimony proved sufficient to free Daniel and prove him innocent. A very genuine triumph therefore awaited the young man. Even Mr Corder from Plymouth wrote and congratulated him; and in the streets the small boys crowded behind him and shouted “Hurrah!”

His father now wearied the world with Dan’s praises; his mother spent half her time on her knees thanking God, and the other half running after her son. But, thanks to Henry Vivian and Sir Reginald, something more solid than popularity awaited Daniel. The knight, who counted little of first importance but the life and prosperity of his son and heir, amazed even Daniel’s mother by his attitude towards young Sweetland.

He sent for the hero of the moment, and a curious scene took place between them, the drift of which was hidden from Daniel until some weeks afterwards. Upon this occasion Sweetland, off whose face Jesse Hagan’s dye had scarcely as yet departed, found the master of Middlecott and the village schoolmaster awaiting him. On the study table were pens, ink and paper, statements of accounts, and various more or less complicated memoranda.

“Now, Dan,” said Sir Reginald, “I’m a man of few words, and hate to waste them. Therefore the meaning of this business can very well be left to take care of itself. To explain it now might be to do an unnecessary thing; so I’ll explain afterwards, if explanations are called for. This is Mr Bright, the master of the Board School. You know him already, and he tells me you were a sharp pupil and good at figures, though abominably lazy. I hope he’s right for your own sake, so far as the mathematics are concerned. During the next two hours or more Mr Bright is going to put you through your facings and see what you are good for. Do your best. Upon receiving his report, you shall hear from me. When the examination is ended, some supper will be served for you both.”

Sir Reginald retired and for three hours Dan and his old schoolmaster wrestled with figures. After midnight the young man went home to Minnie with his head spinning.

A week later the mystery was solved and Sweetland received a letter from Middlecott which much surprised him. It was an autograph communication from Sir Reginald himself.

“My gratitude, young man,” he wrote, “is already familiar to you. Under Heaven you were instrumental in saving my son’s life, and that alone ensures for you my active regard and interest while I myself live. The only question in my mind, since your acquittal, has been to find out how best I may advance your welfare: and at the instance of my son, whose brain is quicker than my own, I agreed to offer you a very onerous and responsible appointment—on one condition. The work requires a clear head and some knowledge of figures. Experience might also have been reasonably demanded but this I waived. You have already shown qualities of mental readiness, nerve and ability which, had they been exercised upon worthy instead of highly improper pursuits, might have excited admiration instead of suspicion. But your unruly past is forgotten and forgiven before the knowledge that you saved Henry Vivian’s life. Therefore, since Mr Bright reports that your attainments, though not splendid, are quite respectable, and that your remarkable facility for learning will soon make you master of the art of bookkeeping by double entry, I have determined to offer you the post of assistant overseer at my sugar estates in the island of Tobago. Consult with your wife whether she will entertain this proposal. The climate is healthy but exceedingly hot. My son will return to the West Indies for a short time in the autumn; you will follow if you agree to do so; and the nature of your duties will then be made clear to you. The necessary practical experience can only be acquired on the spot; but I trust you to learn quickly, and I believe that the measure of your knowledge will swiftly increase to the measure of your gratitude when you receive this offer. But you must not be too much obliged. I am under an obligation to you of the mightiest description, and not the least of an old man’s diminishing ambitions is to see you and your courageous and noble-minded wife happily embarked upon a worthy and a prosperous career.”

“Minnie!” bawled Daniel, “listen to this here! Of course ’tis settled. To think of you seeing the world! ‘Exceedingly hot,’ he says. But I lay ’twon’t half be so hot as ’twas last time I was there!”

“If you’d let me read your letter, dear heart, I should know a thought clearer what you was talking about, and how to advise,” answered Mrs Sweetland.

There came a merry night at the “White Hart,” and the bar hummed with conversation and laughter. Not a few friends were present; not a few were missing.

“Have a drink along o’ me, Matthew?” said Mr Beer. “You’ll ax why I’m in this shop instead of behind my own counter; but the missus is to home, an’ I told her that after saying ‘good-bye’ to Dan and Minnie, I should make a night of it along with a few of the best. Well, they be gone after the sun. You bore yourself very stiff at the station. If he’d been my boy, I should have blubbered—such a soft fool am I. But I’m afraid your missus felt it cruel.”

“She’ll be all right,” said Matthew Sweetland. “Think of the glory of it! Man’s work he’ve gone to do. An’ no rough job neither. Figures! It dries my old woman’s eyes when I put it to her how uplifted he be. Hundreds of pounds will pass through his hands! They trust him, an’ well they may trust him.”

“And do you trust him yet?” croaked Gaffer Hext from his corner.

The gamekeeper laughed.

“’Tis a fair hit,” he answered. “But I’ve owned up afore all men that I wronged Daniel, an’ humbly axed my own son’s pardon for doubting him. If he can forgive me, you chaps did ought to. Come to think of it, ’tis no business of yourn, when all’s said.”

Mr Bartley and the young man Samuel Prowse were discussing a recent trial.

“In my wide experience of evil-doers,” said the policeman, “I never met his match for far-reaching cunning. Such a straight Bible face too—looked you in the eyeball like honesty’s self! And all the time no better’n a nest of snakes in his heart. From a professional view, ’tis a thing to be proud of, perhaps—I mean, to have the wickedest criminal ever knowed in the west country come from among us. ’Tis a sort of fame, I suppose.”

“Your business have turned your head, Bartley,” declared Mr Hext. “’Tis a thing to be shamed of, not proud of—a blot upon us—that such a outrageous rip should appear here in this peaceful an’ honest town.”

“He wasn’t Devonshire, however,” explained Prowse. “The man comed from over the border, I believe.”

“Somerset’s welcome to him,” said Sweetland. “Anyway he’s out of mischief for five years. Maybe Portland Prison will drive the fear of God into the man; but I’m not hopeful.”

“’Twas a near touch they didn’t fetch him in mad,” explained Bartley. “The chap who defended him tried terrible hard to do it; and he based his plea ’pon the fact that, even after he was bowled out, Titus Sim wouldn’t confess and wouldn’t support that last dying speech of Parkinson’s.

“But he did afterwards,” Sam Prowse reminded them. “He confessed after that he’d been Parkinson’s accomplice all along.”

“Yes, after he’d got his five years and knew the worst,” returned Mr Bartley. “He wasn’t mad, though he certainly had a great gift of loving a woman, which may be a sort of madness.”

“There were strong qualities in the man,” declared Gaffer Hext; “but once let the devil in, he’ll soon mix the ingredients of our natures and turn all sour, however good the material.”

“They found four hundred and seventy-three pounds, ten and eightpence to his name in the bank,” said Johnny Beer. “Fifty pounds more than I began wedded life with. A very saving man; the last of the big poachers, you might say. There’ll be none so great an’ skilled as him an’ Rix Parkinson in the future.”

“I hope you’m right, Johnny, with all my soul,” answered Mr Sweetland.

“To think of they two young brave hearts on the rolling deep!” mused Mr Bartley. “I wonder if the ocean be fretful to-night?”

“What was you writing in your pocket-book, Johnny, just after we gave ’em three cheers an’ the train steamed out o’ the station this morning?” asked Samuel Prowse.

“Why, be sure ’twas verses,” answered Mr Bartley. “At a rare time like that, ’tis well known the rhyme rolls out of Beer like perspiration off a man’s brow at harvesting. Come, Johnny, wasn’t you turning a verse about it?”

“If truth must be told, I was,” confessed the publican. “Upon such great occasions the fit takes me, like drink will take another. I must rhyme or be ill. ’Twas the same in the courthouse, while us was waiting for the verdict. And though I ban’t the best judge, my wife said of the poetry I done to Exeter assizes at the trial of Sim, that it read like print an’ made her go goose-flesh down the spine. We all know she’s weak where I’m concerned, but notwithstanding few have got more sense than her; and strangely enough, the rhyme about Titus Sim’s sentence and trial be in my pocket this minute by a lucky accident. If anybody would like—?”

“Nothing upon that grim subject to-night, Johnny,” said Matthew Sweetland; “but if you’ve got the stuff you turned out at the station, and if it’s merry, us’ll hear it patiently, I make no doubt.”

Mr Beer was disappointed; but the company supported Daniel’s father.

“As you like, of course; but I haven’t polished it up, you know. Many of my best verses I’ve often been knowed to write over twice. My wife will bear witness of it. But as for merry rhymes, I do think I’m better at solemn ones. There’s more sting to ’em. Mirth an’ joy an’ an extra glass to the health of a lass, an’ so on, be all very well; but they read tame unless you was on the spot yourself an’ knowed how it tasted. Nothing on God’s earth be so uninteresting reading as the account of other folks at a revel, if you wasn’t there. But with tragic matters, the creepiness be very refreshing, an’ the fact you wasn’t there adds to the pleasure. The very heart of comfortable tragedy be to look on at other people in a hell of a mess, while you’m all right, with your pint an’ your pipe drawing easy.”

“Merry verses or none, however,” declared Gaffer Hext. “What Sweetland says be proper. Ban’t a comely thing to gloat over a man when he’s down. Sim have got five years—an’ that’s prose; an’ ’tis more than any man can do to make it poetry. So let’s have what you’ve writ to-day of Minnie Sweetland an’ Dan—that or nought.”

Johnny pulled forth his rhyme.

“I’m in your hands,” he said. “The polish be lacking, but the rhymes is there I believe. ’Tis pretty generally granted to me that, whatever be the quality when I pen verses, the quantity’s generous and the rhymes come regular.”

“Not a doubt of it, an’ you’d be a famous man if you was better knowed,” declared Mr Sweetland.

“For that matter, they as near as damn it printed a rhyme of mine in the Newton Trumpet awhile back,” answered Johnny. “I heard two months afterward, from a young man as works there, that if they hadn’t lost the poetry, ’twas as like as not they’d have put it in the paper.”

“A near shave without a doubt,” assented Prowse; “’tis any odds but they’ll print the next.”

“Order for Johnny Beer!” cried Mr Bartley.

Then the poet opened his pocket-book, smiled round about the company, and read:—

“You must understand me, neighbours, ’tis not worked up to concert pitch as yet; but such as ’tis, there ’tis.”

Everybody shouted congratulations. Some stamped their feet; some rapped their mugs on the bar and on the table.

“’Tis a very fine rhyme an’ meets the whole case both in this world and the next. I’m sure,” said Mr Sweetland, “it does you credit, Beer, an’ I thank you for it.”

“Specially that part about the foreign land they’ve gone to,” declared Mr Bartley. “To hear you talk about palm-trees as if you’d walked under ’em all your life! Be blessed if I can’t see the place rise up in my mind like a picture.”

“Sir Reginald Vivian would thank you for a copy, I reckon,” continued Prowse. “He did shake hands with ’em both. He was almost the last to do it. I heard his final words to Dan. ‘An’ you tell my son that the sooner he’s home again the better, because I can’t get on at all without him.’ They was his very words.”

The conversation showed a tendency to drift from Johnny’s verses. But he brought it back again.

“If you ax me what I like best myself,” he said, “’tis the first two lines. I never wrote a better matched pair.”

“So they be then. ’Tis a very great gift, Johnny, and the parish ought to be prouder of you than ’tis,” concluded Mr Sweetland. “I must ax you for that bit of writing, if you please,” he added, “for my old woman’s like to have a very snuffly night of it, and these here rhymes of yours will cheer up her lonely heart better than spirits.”

Mr Beer handed over the paper.

“For such a high purpose, you’m welcome to ’em,” he replied.

That night the sea was black and troubled. Under the obscured glimmer of a waning moon, the Royal Mail Packet Orinoco pushed down Channel, while a man and his wife stood upon deck with all the sounds of a great steamer in their ears. They looked upon the waters and saw white foam speeding in ghostly sheets astern and great bodies of darkness heave upwards along the bulwarks, then sink back hissing into the vague. Across the sky, flying with the low cloud-drift, gleamed brief sparks and stars that shot upward from the funnels; and below, the round windows of the engine-room flashed like great eyes upon the night. But forward was no twinkle or glimmer of light to distract the keen eyes there. The steamer was keeping double watches. A rushing and a wailing wind filled the upper air; fingers invisible played strange music on the harps of the shrouds; steam roared; deep sounds rose from the engine-room; the steering gear jolted and grated harshly. Now for a moment it was silent; now it chattered on again, like a violent, voluble, and intermittent voice. From time to time came the clang of a bell to mark other ships ahead, to port, or starboard: and through all sounded the throb, throb, throbbing of the ship’s pulse, where her propeller thundered.

Off the Start a light-house lamp flashed friendly farewell. It shone, sank into darkness, then smiled out again across the labouring waters.

“How does my own little wife like these here strange sights and sounds?” asked the man.

“Sea an’ land are all one to me,” she answered, “so long as your dear arm be where it is.”

COLSTON AND COY., LTD., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.