_ CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. TROUBLE GROWS
The next fortnight was passed in a state of misery, which made Dick Winthorpe feel as if he had ceased to be a boy, and had suddenly become a grown-up man.
He wanted to do what was right. He wished for the man who had shot his father in this cowardly way to be brought to justice; but he was not sure that Farmer Tallington was the guilty man, and he shrank from denouncing the parent of his companion from childhood, and his father's old friend.
Mr Marston came over again and tried him sorely. But the more Dick Winthorpe thought, the more he grew determined that he would not speak unless he felt quite sure.
It was one day at the end of the fortnight that Mr Marston tried him again, and Dick told him that his father would soon be able to speak for himself, and till then he would not say a word.
Mr Marston left him angrily, feeling bitterly annoyed with the lad, but, in spite of himself, admiring his firmness.
Dick stood in the road gazing after him sadly, and was about to retrace his steps to the old house, to which his father had been carefully borne, when, happening to glance in the direction of the track leading to the town, he caught sight of Tom coming along slowly.
Dick turned sullenly away, but Tom ran before him.
"Stop a minute," he cried; "let you and me have a talk. I don't want to be bad friends, Dick."
"Neither do I," said the latter sadly.
"But you keep trying to be."
"No, I do not. You try to make me angry with you every time we meet."
"That's not true. I want to have you do your duty and tell all you know. Father says you ought, as you know who it was."
"Have you told your father, then?"
"Yes, I told him to-day, and he said you ought to do your duty and speak."
"Your father said that?"
"Yes: and why don't you--like a man."
Dick's brow grew all corrugated as if Black Care were sitting upon the roof of his head and squeezing the skin down into wrinkles.
"Come, speak out, and don't be such a miserable coward. Father says you don't speak because you are afraid that whoever did it may shoot you."
Dick's brow grew more puckered than ever.
"Now, then, let you and me go over and see Mr Marston and tell him everything at once."
Dick looked at the speaker with a feeling of anger against him for his obstinate perseverance that was almost vicious.
"Now, are you coming?"
"No, I am not."
"Then I've done with you," cried Tom angrily. "Father says that a lad who knows who attacked his parent in that way, and will not speak out, is a coward and a cur, and that's what you are, Dick Winthorpe."
"Tom Tallington," cried Dick, with his eyes flashing, "you are a fool."
"Say that again," said Tom menacingly.
"You are a fool and an idiot, and not worth speaking to again."
_Whack_!
That is the nearest way of spelling the back-handed blow which Tom Tallington delivered in his old school-fellow's face, while the straightforward blow which was the result of Dick Winthorpe's fist darting out to the full stretch of his arm sounded like an echo; and the next moment Tom was lying upon the ground.
There was no cowardice in Tom Tallington's nature. Springing up he made at Dick, and the former friends were directly after engaged in delivering furious blows, whose result must have been rather serious for both; but before they had had time to do much mischief, each of the lads was gripped on the shoulder by a giant hand, and they were forced apart, and held beyond striking distance quivering with rage, and each seeing nothing but the adversary at whom he longed to get.
"Hey, lads, and I thowt you two was such friends!" cried the herald of peace, who had sung truce in so forcible and convincing a way.
"Let go, Hicky! He struck me."
"Yes; let me get at him," cried Tom. "He knocked me down."
"And I'll do it again a dozen times," panted Dick. "Let go, Hicky, I tell you!"
"Nay, nay, nay, lads, I wean't let go, and you sha'n't neither of you fight any more. I'm ashamed of you, Mester Dick, with your poor father lying theer 'most dead, and the missus a-nigh wherritted to death wi' trouble."
"But he struck me," panted Dick.
"And I'll do it again," cried Tom.
"If you do, young Tom Tallington, I'll just pick you up by the scruff and the breeches and pitch you into the mere, to get out as you may; so now then."
Tom uttered a low growl which was more like that of a dog than a human being; and after an ineffectual attempt to get at Dick, he dragged himself away to kneel down at the first clear pool to bathe his bleeding nose.
"Theer, now, I'll let you go," said Hickathrift, "and I'm straange and glad I was i' time to stop you. Think o' you two mates falling out and fighting like a couple o' dogs! Why, I should as soon hev expected to see me and my missus fight. Mester Dick, I'm 'bout 'shamed o' yow."
"I'm ashamed of myself, Hicky, and I feel as if I was never going to be happy again," cried Dick.
"Nay, nay, lad, don't talk like that," said the big wheelwright. "Why, doctor says he's sewer that he can bring squire reight again, and what more do you want?"
"To see the man punished who shot him, Hicky," cried Dick passionately.
"Ay, I'd like to see that, or hev the punishing of him," said Hickathrift, stretching out a great fist. "It's one o' they big shacks [idle scoundrels, from Irish _shaughraun_] yonder up at the dree-ern. I'm going to find him out yet, and when I do--Theer, go and wesh thy faace."
Dick was going sadly away when a word from Hickathrift arrested him; and turning, it was to see that the big fellow was looking at him reproachfully, and holding out a hand for him to grasp.
"Ay, that's better, lad," said the wheelwright smiling. "Good-bye, lad, and don't feight again!"
The result of this encounter was that Dick found himself without a companion, and he went day by day bitterly about thinking how hard it was that he should be suspected and ill-treated for trying to spare Tom the agony of having his father denounced and dragged off to jail.
Constables came and made investigations in the loose way of the time; but they discovered nothing, and after a while they departed to do duty elsewhere; but only to come back at the end of a week to re-investigate the state of affairs, for a large low building occupied by about twenty of the drainers was, one windy night, set on fire, and its drowsy occupants had a narrow escape from death.
But there was no discovery made, the constables setting it down to accident, saying that the men must have been smoking; and once more the fen was left to its own resources.
Mr Winthorpe grew rapidly better after the first fortnight, and Dick watched his convalescence with no little anxiety, for he expected to hear him accuse Farmer Tallington of being his attempted murderer. But Dick had no cause for fear. The squire told Mr Marston that he had seen a light on the mere, and dreading that it might mean an attempt to burn down some barn, he had gone out to watch, and he had just made out the shape of a punt on the water when he saw a flash, felt the shock, and fell helpless and insensible among the reeds.
This was as near an account as he could give of the affair, for the injury seemed to have confused him, and he knew little of what had taken place before, nothing of what had since occurred.
"But your life has been spared, Mr Winthorpe," said Marston; "and some day I hope we shall know that your assailant and mine has received his due."
"Ay," said the squire; "we must find him out, for fear he should spoil our plans, for we are not beaten yet."
"Beaten! no, squire," said the engineer; "we are getting on faster than ever, and the success of the project is assured." _