“Your captain, once more.”

Thomas Wildfang sat up on the side of the bed, and spoke his next words cautiously in Turlington’s ear.

“Another man in the way?”

“Yes.”

The giant shook his bald, bestial head dolefully.  “Too late.  I’m past the job.  Look here.”

He held up his hand, and showed it trembling incessantly.  “I’m an old man,” he said, and let his hand drop heavily again on the bed beside him.

Turlington looked at the door, and whispered back,

“The man is as old as you are.  And the money is worth having.”

“How much?”

“A hundred pounds.”

The eyes of Thomas Wildfang fastened greedily on Turlington’s face.  “Let’s hear,” he said.  “Softly, captain.  Let’s hear.”

* * * * * * * * *

When the women came back with the clothes, Turlington had left the room.  Their promised reward lay waiting for them on the table, and Thomas Wildfang was eager to dress himself and be gone.  They could get but one answer from him to every question they put.  He had business in hand, which was not to be delayed.  They would see him again in a day or two, with money in his purse.  With that assurance he took his cudgel from the corner of the room, and stalked out swiftly by the back door of the house into the night.

ELEVENTH SCENE.

Outside the House

The evening was chilly, but not cold for the time of year.  There was no moon.  The stars were out, and the wind was quiet.  Upon the whole, the inhabitants of the little Somersetshire village of Baxdale agreed that it was as fine a Christmas-eve as they could remember for some years past.

Toward eight in the evening the one small street of the village was empty, except at that part of it which was occupied by the public-house.  For the most part, people gathered round their firesides, with an eye to their suppers, and watched the process of cooking comfortably indoors.  The old bare, gray church, situated at some little distance from the village, looked a lonelier object than usual in the dim starlight.  The vicarage, nestling close under the shadow of the church-tower, threw no illumination of fire-light or candle-light on the dreary scene.  The clergyman’s shutters fitted well, and the clergyman’s curtains were closely drawn.  The one ray of light that cheered the wintry darkness streamed from the unguarded window of a lonely house, separated from the vicarage by the whole length of the church-yard.  A man stood at the window, holding back the shutter, and looking out attentively over the dim void of the burial-ground.  The man was Richard Turlington.  The room in which he was watching was a room in his own house.

A momentary spark of light flashed up, as from a kindled match, in the burial-ground.  Turlington instantly left the empty room in which he had been watching.  Passing down the back garden of the house, and crossing a narrow lane at the bottom of it, he opened a gate in a low stone wall beyond, and entered the church-yard.  The shadowy figure of a man of great stature, lurking among the graves, advanced to meet him.  Midway in the dark and lonely place the two stopped and consulted together in whispers.  Turlington spoke first.