“Never mind, pass on; I’m Harmless as yourself.”
I glanced at the muzzle of a gun which peered through an aperture in the trunk, and, doubted its accordance with peaceable intentions.
“Who are you?” I again demanded.
An answer in person was given; a man jumped out from the hollow and stood beside me.
“Don’t let me see you!” I cried out; “don’t put it in my power to witness against you.”
“Look at me, I am no absconder,” he replied.
I looked and saw a tall, grotesque figure, which I immediately recognised as belonging to an old man of Hobarton who gained his living by shooting small game in the neighbourhood. He doffed his opossum fur-cap, and bowed respectfully when his eyes met mine. I could not help laughing, so ridiculous had been my former fears. He seemed hurt; for, bending on his gun, he said:
“Ah, it’s no laughing matter that brings me here! Bessie’s my game to-night, — poor, fond, young crayture, to leave her father’s house, all for a cross word, which he has the right of nayture to speak to her.”
He reminded me of King Lear; his long white hair blew about on his head, as the red feather had done from the top of the trunk, and for some moments he was too absorbed in grief to speak, and when he did, it was in short, broken sentences, as though all the world should know his Bessie. I gathered that she had left him a few days ago, and that his suspicions led him to watch for her from this spot.
“That bit of a kerchief,” said he, “I stuck out from the pole, for if she passed she’d know it was mine, and meant for peace, and there was a word tied up in it begging her to come back.”
He drew the kerchief across his eyes, and in it I acknowledged the former feather. Then, wrapping it around his throat, as if preparing to settle for the night, he bade me leave him. This I objected to do, and told him he was tempting Providence by exposing himself to the damp of the bush.
“Rheumatics take the damp!” he said. Then, fixing a searching eye on me, he added: — “Have you ever lost a child? Then I have, and by worse than death. Leave me, and the only favour I beg is, don’t notice me when you meet me in town.”
“But how about poor Bessie? I must hear if you find her.”
“Ay, ay!” he nodded, and coiled himself back into his tree ere I could offer further opposition.
A few days after I saw him in Argyle Street, but forbore to remark him. With my face set steadily in front, I was about to pass by, when he made a full stop before me, took off his fur cap, and waited bareheaded till I should speak.
“Is she found?”
He seemed delighted that I pounced on the subject without preface. It convinced him that Bessie was the all in all engrossing occupation of other thoughts than his.
“She’s heard of, and I know her whereabouts. I’d rather have seen her dragged dead out of the river! A dead child ain’t half the pain of a living one gone astray. A dead child can't come back if she’d fain, therefore a living one that won’t is worse!”
A sentiment to which I could not say nay, for the testimony of ages is in its favour.
“Ah! I’m not so much a stranger in the colony,” he went on to lament, “as not to know where these things end; and if once the government brown gets upon my Bess, she’ll be none the better for it, and there’s them as will gladly make her worse, out of spite that she’s free to what they are. I tell you, sir, there ain’t been no blot on our family for six generations back, and at home, for all that I’m poor to the back-bone, my word’s as good as a bond. If my hands are seared, it’s with work, and not with dirty actions! And my children was all counted fortunes in themselves; now I’m come out here with the last just to break my heart over her!”
His breast heaved, and what more he would say was lost in a smothered sob. To turn him to a more cheerful view of the case, I said:
“Well, but we must look to the brighter side, it may not be so bad after all.”
“Not so bad! Let the worst come to the worst, or the best to the best, ain’t she forgotten her Catechism and her Bible? When I was young, I was taught to honour my father and mother. But, I tell you what it is, sir,” he lowered his voice, and spoke confidentially, “come what may, I don’t blame the girl too much, for the sin lies at our door. We’d no business, my missus and me, to leave England in our old age — ’twas pride from beginning to end. First, I could not trust the God that made me to provide for me when I got old; then, I wanted to see Bessie a lady. They told me that, out here, her bonny face would get her a rich husband, and now it’s more like—” He broke short, and then said:— “Perhaps you’ll step in and see missus, she’s in a world of trouble, and it tells hard upon her, poor soul!”
We had all this while been walking, and when we had gone a little further we came to one of those hut-looking buildings still to be seen here and there in Hobarton. The door of this hut was locked, and Munro had the key in his pocket. Seeing my surprise, he remarked: —
“’Twas by her own wish. The neighbours come twitting of her with their pity, so says missus to me, 'Lock me in, John, and then I can’t open to none of ’em.’”
We entered a wretched little room, exhibiting every token of poverty and dejection. It looked like a bereaved house, for there was neither sign of a recent fire nor of a mid-day meal, though it was past noon. All this my eye apprehended at a glance, while my attention riveted itself on an old woman who sat with her head buried in her arms, which rested on an open Bible lying before her on a small table.
“Missus,” said her husband. But she answered not; she was in a dead sleep, sleeping the heavy sleep of sorrow. “Poor soul,” whispered Munro, “I left her fretting over that text — 'The way of
transgressors is hard.’ 'Oh, John!’ says she to me, 'will Bessie’s case ever come to that?’ 'God