Part 14 (1/2)
There was another pause.
”Robbie,” Ralph said at length, ”would you, if I wished it, say no more about all this?”
”I've said nothing till now, and I need say nothing more.”
”Sim will be as silent--if I ask him. There is my poor mother, my lad; she can't live long, and why should she be stricken down? Her dear old head is bowed low enough already.”
”I promise you, Ralph,” said Robbie. He had turned half aside, and was speaking falteringly. He remembered one whose head had been bowed lower still--one whose heart had been sick for his own misdeeds, and now the gra.s.s was over her.
”Then that is agreed.”
”Ralph, there's something I should have said before, but I was afeared to say it. Who would have believed the word of a drunkard? That's what I was, G.o.d forgive me! Besides, it would have done no good to say it, that I can see, and most likely some harm.”
”What was it?”
”Didn't they say they found Wilson lying fifty yards below the river?”
”They did; fifty yards to the south of the bridge.”
”It was as far to the north that I left him. I'm sure of it. I was sobered by what happened. I could swear it in heaven, Ralph. It was full fifty yards on the down side of the bridge from the smithy.”
”Think again, my lad; it's a serious thing that you say.”
”I've thought of it too much. It has tormented me day and night.
There's no use in trying to persuade myself I must be wrong. Fifty yards on the down side of the beck from the smithy--that was the place, Ralph.”
The dalesman looked grave. Then a light crossed his face as if a wave of hope had pa.s.sed through him. Sim had said he was leaning against the bridge. All that Angus could have done must have been done to the north of it. Was it possible, after all, that Angus had not killed Wilson by that fall?
”You say that for the moment, when you touched him, you thought Wilson was not dead?”
”It's true, I thought so.”
Sim had thought the same.
”Did you see any one else that night?”
”No.”
”Nor hear other footsteps?”
”No, none but my own at last--none.”
It was no clew. Unconsciously Ralph put his hand to his breast and touched the paper that he had placed there. No, there was no hope. The shadow that had fallen had fallen forever.
”Perhaps the man recovered enough to walk a hundred yards, and then fell dead. Perhaps he had struggled to reach home?”
”He would be going the wrong way for that, Ralph.”
”True, true; it's very strange, very, if it is as you say. He was fifty yards beyond the smithy--north of it?”