Syd Belton Part 11

"Yes, I heared; but he has got to ketch me first. Ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready, Pan."

"Get up here then."

"Why?"

"You can get out along one of these big branches, and drop out into the road."

"No, no, come down, and let's go by the gate."

"And come upon my father waiting with a rope's-end? Why, when he's wild he lets out anyhow, and in the dark you'd get it as much as me. This way."

Syd listened, and heard the boy creep actively along the bough and drop down on the other side of the fence.

"Catch," he whispered. "Ready?"

"Yes."

He threw over his bundle, and then swung himself up into the tree, got astride the big bough, and was working himself along, when a sound close at hand made him stop short to listen.

It was intensely dark where he sat beneath the thickly-leaved tree, and all was quite still. But he felt sure that he had heard some one approaching, and just as he had made up his mind to get further along, Pan's voice reached him from the other side of the paling--

"Come on."

Hoping that he might have been mistaken, Syd changed his position, so that he hung over the bough, and had just begun to edge along, when there was a quick rustling behind him, and the breaking down of shrubs, as if a man was forcing himself through, and the next minute he felt one of his legs seized.

"My father!" thought Syd, and a cold chill of dread, shame, and misery ran through him as he lay across the bough, silent and motionless, but clinging to it with all his might.

"Got ye, have I, Pan-y-mar?" growled a husky voice. "Now then, let go, and come and take it in your room, or I'll lay on here."

The first sound of that voice sent a warm glow through Syd, and thawed his frozen faculties.

Exulting in the idea that it was only the old boatswain, he drew himself all together as he held on with his arms to the bough, and then he kicked out with all his might; the attack being so unexpected, that as Barney received both feet in his chest, he loosened his hold, grasped wildly at the air to save himself, and then came down in a sitting position with sufficient force to evoke a groan; while by the time he had recovered himself sufficiently to rise and get to the fence, he could hear the rapid beat of steps in the distance.

"Why, there must be some one with him," growled Barney. "All right, my boy, on'y wait a bit. You'll come crawling round the cottage 'fore you're many hours older, and I'll lay that there rope's-end in the tub.

It'll make it lie closer and heavier round your back. Oh!"

He had taken a step to go back out of the shrubbery to the path, when an acute pain ran up his spine, and made him limp along to the gardener's cottage at the bottom of the grounds, grumbling to himself, and realising that men of sixty can't fall so lightly as those who are forty years younger.

"But never mind, I'll make him pay for the lot. He shan't play tricks with me. Lor', I wish I was going to sea again, and had that boy under me; I'd make him--Oh, murder! he's a'most broke my back."

CHAPTER FIVE.

As Syd kicked himself free of Barney's grasp he heard the heavy fall, but he stopped for no more. A couple of vigorous sidewise movements took him clear of the fence, a couple more beyond the ditch, and before Barney had begun to think of getting up Syd had whispered to his companion the magic words--

"Your father!"

The next minute, hand in hand, and keeping step, the two boys were running hard along the road leading away into the country, thinking of only one thing, and that--how great a distance they could put between them and the Heronry.

Fear lent them wings, for in imagination they saw the old boatswain running off to the house, spreading the alarm, and Captain Belton ordering the servants out in pursuit, determined to hunt them down and bring them back to punishment.

Their swift run, in spite of their will, soon settled down into a steady trot, and at the end of a couple of miles this had become a sharp walk.

Every hair was wet with perspiration, and as they stopped from time to time to listen, their hearts beat heavily, and their breath came in a laboured way.

"Hear anything?" said Sydney at last.

"No; they've given it up," replied Pan. "Father can't run far now."

"Think they'll get out the horses, Pan?"

"Dunno. If they do we shall hear 'em plain enough, and we can take to the woods. They'll never ketch us now. Arn't you glad you've come?"

Sydney did not answer, for if he had replied he would have told the truth, and he did not wish to tell the truth then, because it would have been humiliating.

For there they were tramping along the dark road going west, with the stars s.h.i.+ning down brightly, and, save the distant barking of a dog, all most mournfully still.

Pan made another attempt at conversation.

"Won't my father be wild because he arn't got me to hit?"

Syd was too deep in his own thoughts to reply, for he was picturing the library at the Heronry, and his father and uncle talking together after returning from a vain pursuit. He could picture their florid faces and s.h.i.+ning silvery hair by the light of the wax candles. He even seemed to see how many broad wrinkles there were in his father's forehead as he stood frowning; and then something seemed to be asking the boy what he was doing there.

"Getting tired, Master Syd?" said Pan, after a long pause, filled by the _beat beat_ of their footsteps.

But still there was no answer. The latter question took too much study, and suggested other questions in its unanswerable-ness.

Where was he going? and why was he going? and why had he chosen this road, which led toward the great forest with its endless trees and bogs?

Sydney could not answer these questions, and by way of relieving the buzzing worry in his own brain, he turned to Pan and became a questioner.

"Where are we going to sleep to-night?"

"Eh?"

"Where are we going to sleep to-night?"

Pan took off his hat and scratched his head.

"I never thought of that," he said.

"We can't go on walking all night."

"Can't we?"

"Of course we can't. We shall have to knock at some cottage, and ask them to give us a bed."