CHAPTER XIX

The night was warm with the new-fallen snow, though the stars sparkled coldly.  A fleet of South-westerly rainclouds had been met in mid-sky by a sharp puff from due North, and the moisture had descended like a woven shroud, covering all the land, the house-tops, and the trees.

Young Harry Boulby was at sea, and this still weather was just what a mother’s heart wished for him.  The widow looked through her bed-room window and listened, as if the absolute stillness must beget a sudden cry.  The thought of her boy made her heart revert to Robert.  She was thinking of Robert when the muffled sound of a horse at speed caused her to look up the street, and she saw one coming—­a horse without a rider.  The next minute he was out of sight.

Mrs. Boulby stood terrified.  The silence of the night hanging everywhere seemed to call on her for proof that she had beheld a real earthly spectacle, and the dead thump of the hooves on the snow-floor in passing struck a chill through her as being phantom-like.  But she had seen a saddle on the horse, and the stirrups flying, and the horse looked affrighted.  The scene was too earthly in its suggestion of a tale of blood.  What if the horse were Robert’s?  She tried to laugh at her womanly fearfulness, and had almost to suppress a scream in doing so.  There was no help for it but to believe her brandy as good and efficacious as her guests did, so she went downstairs and took a fortifying draught; after which her blood travelled faster, and the event galloped swiftly into the recesses of time, and she slept.

While the morning was still black, and the streets without a sign of life, she was aroused by a dream of some one knocking at her grave-stone.  “Ah, that brandy!” she sighed.  “This is what a poor woman has to pay for custom!” Which we may interpret as the remorseful morning confession of a guilt she had been the victim of over night.  She knew that good brandy did not give bad dreams, and was self-convicted.  Strange were her sensations when the knocking continued; and presently she heard a voice in the naked street below call in a moan, “Mother!”

“My darling!” she answered, divided in her guess at its being Harry or Robert.

A glance from the open window showed Robert leaning in the quaint old porch, with his head bound by a handkerchief; but he had no strength to reply to a question at that distance, and when she let him in he made two steps and dropped forward on the floor.

Lying there, he plucked at her skirts.  She was shouting for help, but with her ready apprehension of the pride in his character, she knew what was meant by his broken whisper before she put her ear to his lips, and she was silent, miserable sight as was his feeble efforts to rise on an elbow that would not straighten.

His head was streaming with blood, and the stain was on his neck and chest.  He had one helpless arm; his clothes were torn as from a fierce struggle.