I only wanted to get to London. I had that foolish belief that the Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides, I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I so much feared.
Presently I came to another little village, rather larger than the last. There was an inn in the main street (the "Blue Boar"), so I went into the inn-parlour, and looked about me. One or two men were talking earnestly, in low voices, to a sad-faced, weary-looking woman behind the bar. She looked up at me rather sharply as I entered, and the men turned round and stared at me, made a few more remarks to the woman, and went quickly out. I looked at the woman, scratched my left ear with my left little finger, and bit my lower lip. She caught her breath sharply and turned quite white; evidently she knew that sign extremely well.
"What is it?" she said, "what's the news? There's been fighting. Where's Dick?"
I said I didn't know where Dick was, but that there had been fighting, sure enough; and the preventives had been beaten off.
"Ah," she said, "and the stuff? Did they get the stuff off?"
I said I believed that it had got off safely.
"I believe everybody's bewitched to-day," she said, bursting into tears. "Oh, Dick, come back to me. Come back to me. Oh, why did I ever marry a man like you?"
She cried bitterly for a few minutes. Then she asked me a lot of questions about the fight. One question she repeated many times: "Was there a grey horse in the second string?"
But this I could not answer certainly. All the time that we were talking, she was crying and laughing by turns. Whenever a person entered (even if it were only the milkman) she turned white and shook, as though expecting the police.
"It's the palpitation," she would explain. "That and the sizzums."
Then she would go on laughing and crying by turns until some one else came in.
Presently the landlady looked at me rather hard. "Here," she said, "you are not one of them. You've run away from home, you have. What are you doing here?"
I said that I was on my way to London.
"To London," she said. "What's a boy like you going to London for? How are you going?"
I said that I was going to walk there, to see the Lord Mayor.
"To—see—the—Lord Mayor," she repeated. "Is the boy daft, or what?"
I blushed, and hung my head, for I did not like to be laughed at.
"What are you going to see the Lord Mayor for?" she asked with a smile.
I answered that he would send me home to my friends, as he was always generous to people in distress. She laughed very heartily when I had said this: but still, not unkindly. Then she asked me a lot of questions about my joining the smugglers, about my friends at home (particularly if they were well off), and about the money I had to carry me to London. When I had told her everything, she said,—"Well, why don't you write to your friends from here? Surely that's a more sensible plan than going to London—why, London's seventy miles. Write to your friends from here. They will get the letter in three or four days. They will be here within a week from now. That's a wiser thing to do than going to London. Why, you'd die in a ditch before you got half-way."
"I shouldn't," I answered hotly.
"Well, if you didn't you'd get taken up. It's all the same," she answered. "You stop here and write to your friends. I will see that the letter goes all right. I suppose," she continued, "I suppose your friends wouldn't let me be a loser by you? They'd pay for what you ate and that?"
"Yes," I said, "of course they will."
"What's your name?" she said sharply.
I told her.
"Oh," she said. "Jim—Jim Davis. Let's see that shirt of yours, to see if it's got your name on. I been taken in once or twice before. One has to look alive, keeping an inn."
Luckily my name was upon my shirt and stockings, so that she accepted my story without further talk, especially as the contents of my package showed her that I told her the truth about the lugger.
"I don't know what Dick will say," she said. "But now you come up, and I'll dress your head. You'll have to lie low, remember. It won't do for a smuggler like you to be seen about here. So till your friends come, you'll keep pretty dark, remember."
She led me upstairs to plaster my wound. Then she put me into a little bedroom on one of the upper floors, and told me to stay there till she called me. There were one or two books upon the shelf, including a funny one with woodcuts, a collection of tales and ballads, such as the pedlers used to sell in those days. With this book, and with a piece of paper and a pencil, I passed the morning more happily than I can say.
My head felt quite easy after it had been dressed and bandaged. My troubles were nearly over, I thought. In a week my friends would be there to fetch me away. In three days they would get my letter and hear all about my adventures; so as I wrote I almost sang aloud; I was so happy at the thought of my sorrows being ended. Mrs Dick (I never learned her real name till some years afterwards) brought me some bread and cheese at midday. As I ate, she sealed and addressed my letter for me, and took it over to the post-house, so that the postman could carry it to meet the mail, as it drove past from Rye towards London.
After my midday meal I felt strangely weary; perhaps all my excitements had been too much for me. When Mrs Dick came back to say that she had posted my letter I was almost asleep; but her manner was so strange that it roused me. She could hardly speak from anxiety and terror.
"Oh," she cried, "they have raised the whole country. My Dick'll be taken. He will. He will. They're riding all through the land arresting everybody. And they're going to hang them all, they say, as soon as they can give them their trials."
She cried and cried as though her heart would break. I did what I could to comfort her, but still she cried hysterically, and for all that afternoon she sobbed and laughed in the little upper bedroom, only going out at rare intervals, to peep into the bar, where her servant served the guests.
Towards five o'clock, the servant came running upstairs to say that a lot of the smugglers had been taken. "A whole boatload," the girl said, so that now it would "all come out, and master would be hanged." Mrs Dick told her not to talk in that way of her master, but to find out if any of the men had peached.
When the girl had gone she seemed to collect herself. She became a different woman in a minute.
"Well, if he's taken," she said, "they'll be here. That's very sure. They'll search the premises. They mustn't find you here, Mr Jim. If they find you, they'll question you, and you know too much by a long way."
"Shall I go?" I asked. "I'm willing to clear out, if you wish."
"Go?" she said. "Go? I will turn no poor boy out into the road. I have a boy of my own, somewhere walking the world. No, I'll put you in the drawing-room. Come with me, and don't make a noise."
She led me downstairs to the foot of the lowest staircase, which was rather broad, with high steps of stout old oak.
"Look," she said, as she stepped away from me—I suppose to touch some secret spring—"this is the drawing-room."
As she spoke, the two lowest stairs suddenly rolled back upon a sort of hinge, showing a little room, not much bigger than a couple of barrels, arranged underneath them. There were blankets and a mattress upon the floor of this little room, besides several packages like those which I had seen in the lugger.