# The Kid (Marriott Watson)

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 39, 1913-14, pp. 118-126. Accompanying illustrations by Fred Pegram omitted.
The Kid
By H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON.
BY the time the returning hounds reached Fallow's Copse, dusk was spreading across the country and snow was falling. The day had been grey, livid even, and several of the Saxton Hunt had glanced up to the sky and foretold the fall. It held snow and darkness, as at other times it held light and sweetness. The winter lay sour upon the world, and at Fallow's Copse declared itself visibly, tangibly. The flakes descended fast, in a regular patter, soft as moths at first, and then plashing, as they felt their way, on face and hand. The runs had been long, difficult, and ardent, and the Master rode in silence, as did most of the party. Occasionally the voice of the huntsman or whip was heard calling on individual hounds, who themselves limped along bedraggled and tired. In the copse the winter gloaming had settled drearily, and the brushwood mingled gloomily with the darkness. Aslant fell the snow, and Captain Sievwright, the Master, jerked up the collar of his coat to protect his neck. He was a big man of five-and-forty, clean-shaved and rather dark of complexion, with an emphasised jowl. He pulled up his horse as he heard his name. It was a woman's voice that came to him from behind.
"Shan't we go this way, Master? It's shorter."
"That Mrs. Bledsoe?" he asked. "Can't see anything in this blessed gloom. What way's that?"
"It's the off track by Sharp's Farm," answered Mrs. Bledsoe, as she joined him, her horse reeking and steaming.
"By George, I missed it! How the deuce was that, I wonder? " asked Sievwright.
"It's as murky as—as a fog," said Stacey Meadows, amending what he had designed to say out of consideration for the ladies.
There were five in the party outside the whip and huntsman, and they were all staying at Elhurst Grange, which was Sievwright's ancestral house.
"I ought to know every foot of this way blindfold," said Sievwright, "but I'll be hanged if I am sure now. Are you certain that's the way down by the farm, Mrs. Bledsoe?"
"Yes," said the lady.
The Master wheeled. "Never saw such weather," he muttered. "Never lost my bearings before."
"It's only three miles from Sharp's, anyway," said one of the company. The snow was now driving thick and fast, and they moved almost blindly in an envelopment of grey darkness. No trees were visible three feet away, and the horses picked the path out merely by instinct.
"Anyone got a dry match?" called out a voice.
"A match?" another replied. "What the deuce! Who the dickens wants to smoke in this?"
"All right, old chap. Have one. You want cheering up." The speaker had come abreast of the second man as he spoke, and a light flashed for a moment.
"No, thank you—not me."
"Is that Frank back there?" called a woman's voice from the front of the darkness.
"By your leave, mistress!" shouted the smoker, in a gay voice.
"I thought you were with Jenkins. Come here!"
He obeyed, and found a party of three at a stand on the verge of a descent.
"At your service, Mrs. Bledsoe," he said cheerfully.
"Frank, do you know which is the way from here?"
"Straight down!" said the cheery voice.
"Don't be absurd!" said the lady petulantly. "Don't you see we don't know? We've lost the track, and it's all open moorland here."
"I thought you said Sharp's Farm——" He was snapped up.
"Oh, I've heard enough of that from the Master."
"Oh, come, Mrs. Bledsoe, I didn't reproach you," remonstrated Sievwright. "I lost my bearings myself. We're all in the same quandary. If you don't know, we'd better chance it. Anyhow, the direction can't be far out."
The party resumed its way, but the snow came thicker, minding the eyes and making the murk a deeper riddle. Soaked and dispirited, they got down to the flat land and entered a lane.
"I say, this ain't the bridge!" shouted a voice which reached Sievwright.
"Well, I didn't say it was," he said, adding grimly: "We can't bother about bridges now."
"We must have missed it by some miles," observed Frank, reining in.
The Master stared into the gloom. "That's the oast house by Shotting. We'd better get across there, I want a change badly."
The flakes were not falling so thickly now, and a sort of shimmer lay on the landscape. They could discern each other as rude blurred outlines, and behind, a confused moving, changing mass of shadow witnessed to the presence of the hounds under their escort. The lane ran out upon an. open piece of ground.
"Shotting Ford," pronounced Sievwright.
"Now we shan't be long!" ejaculated Frank, and begun to hum a music-hall tune.
"Hulloa! What's that?" said the third man.
"Where? What?" Mrs. Bledsoe asked, staring.
"By Jove, it's a kid," said Frank, staring with her. "What's an unfortunate kid doing here in this weather?"
He moved his horse forward and swung off it, and the others also drew nearer. It was a child, bare-headed, meagrely clad, a child of four, it seemed to Mrs. Bledsoe. "What's your name?" inquired Frank.
But there was no answer. The cold was biting. Frank drew his scarf from his neck and placed it round the, child. "Here, youngster, put your hands in my pockets. They're frozen," he said. "Where do you come from?"
"Want father." The words came slowly and as if with an effort.
"Looking for his father, poor little chap," explained Frank.
"Ask him where he lives," suggested Mrs. Bledsoe. Frank repeated the question, but there was no answer, merely the reiterated statement: "Want father."
"He's strayed from one of the gipsy camps," said the third man, Elliott.
"Perhaps he's out of the village somewhere," said Mrs. Bledsoe. "Do you recognise him, Captain Sievwright?"
"Can't see for nuts," said the Master. "Here, Jenkins, come and see if you can make out whose this kid is."
The huntsman approached, marshalling his hounds, and peered into the gloom. "Don't think he belongs to the village, sir," he said at last. "He may do. There are so many children. But I don't remember seeing him."
"All I know is that I'm perishing," said the second lady, Lady Lataine, peevishly. "Let's get on."
"We can't leave him here," said Frank and, suddenly stooping, seized the child in his strong arms and so mounted to the saddle.
"All right—straight away, then," said the Master, turning his horse for the river.
The huntsman disappeared with his pack into the night, and there was a sound of splashing wafted to them. The Master's horse paused, backed, and then, resolving that the water was all right, plunged into the stream. The others followed. The water was not deep here at the ford, for the river spread out rather shallowly, and barely reached the girths. Frank did not trouble to gather up his knees, but let the water roll up to his calves as he held the child before him on the saddle. The child was silent, neither called for his father now, nor made any protest, nor showed any fear. Frank thought he was staring at the water as if fascinated. The cavalcade attained the further bank and proceeded on the way to Elhurst. At the Grange the hounds turned off to their kennels, and the tired party dismounted and, handing over their horses to various grooms, entered the house.
The house-party was not large. It included, besides the host and Mrs. Sievwright and her sister, those of the hunting contingent, Miss Mitchell-Dene and Charles Forrester. It was the latter who crossed the big hall as they entered. Lady Lataine cross and wet and very sorry for herself.
Forrester had a book in his hand, and was a slight, lean, rather dark figure in the leaping firelight.
"Safe back?" he said smilingly, and then: "Who's this, if you please?"
Frank held the child in his arms, and now set him down.
"Waif and stray," he said, his pleasant face beaming. "What's to be done with this pretty thing, Sievwright?"
It was probable that Sievwright had forgotten the child. "Oh, give him to the servants," he said; and, as he did so, Miss Mitchell-Dene came on the scene. "What a pretty child!" she exclaimed. "Whose is he?"
"This deponent knoweth not," said Frank, smiling. The man and the girl exchanged glances; they were fond of each other in the way in which modern Society allows people to be, with unadmitted intimacy, so to speak. Sievwright rang a bell.
"This must be one of the villagers' children," he said to the respectful housekeeper. "The poor kid's wet and tired. Better dry him and feed him, and so on. Let them make inquiries."
"Good-bye, little kid, good-bye, good-bye!" sang Frank. "We'll find father. Goodness, I feel I could eat an ox, or part of it, nicely prepared."
"I have no doubt you will, in due time," said Miss Mitchell-Dene. "What are you reading?" She seized the arm of Charles Forrester and peered at the back of the book.
"'Lives of the Saints,'" he replied, laughing. "Funny book to read in this house, isn't it? I wonder where Dick got hold of it?"
He was a cousin of Sievwright, and considered "clever," "rather satirical, don't you know."
"Do you suppose we're all sinners here?" asked Frank cheerily.
"I never gave you a thought," said Forrester lightly, "though, come to think of it, I have been reading about a sort of ancestor of yours."
The party in the hall dispersed, the hunters to their respective rooms. Miss Mitchell-Dene stood looking at the huge wood fire. "What's the exact difference between saints and sinners?" she asked.
"The precise difference," said Forrester, "between any two colours that grade into each other. If there's blue and green, what's yellow?"
"The happy medium?" said she.
"Humph! It might be very bilious, according as you used too many sheep or goats."
"I don't think I understand all that," said the girl, still staring at the fire, before which she spread out her hands. "Am I a goat because I like a good time?"
"No," he said promptly. "But what is a good time?"
She laughed. "Theatres, balls, bridge—ask me another."
"Why should I ask you anything? I don't know myself," he said. "But I'm pretty sure all our definitions need revision."
"Don't say that thing about life being tolerable but for its pleasures," she begged.
"No, I won't," he promised. "It's not true. And, in any case, we've got to define pleasures."
"Which,' said Miss Mitchell-Dene, as she moved off, "brings us exactly back to where we were,"
He stood watching her till she disappeared, and gave ever so slight a lift of his shoulders,
"Which means," he said to himself, "that the average sensual man is good enough, but somehow doesn't manifest." He sighed, for Miss Mitchell-Dene had an effect on him. He was sensitive to many influences, and beauty among them. He was by way of being an authority, a refuge in that cousin's house, for Mrs. Sievwright was linnet-headed; and the housekeeper, meeting him on the staircase, consulted him.
"The child won't eat, sir, so I've had him put to bed. The poor thing's over-tired and cold."
Charles Forrester recognised the feminine wisdom, and offered courteous praise, as was his wont. It was a trait which had made him liked in life.
When, some time later, he entered the billiard-room, he found Frank and Elliott, not, however, engaged in a game, but lolling contentedly near the fire, and there he learned of the day's run. He was no sportsman himself, and found a difficulty in balancing himself on the edge of that grave seriousness which belongs to the class. He simulated sympathy, and opened his book. An interval of peace had fallen. Frank, immaculately groomed and dressed, smoked a cigarette luxuriously. Elliott puffed at a cigar. To them enter Mrs. Sievwright, pretty, fitful and flighty, and with neither human blood nor harm in her—only vanity and obedience.
"Tell me all about it," she said graciously. "Dick's dour and grumpy and silent."
"Tired," suggested Elliott.
It was Frank who told the story, with a young enthusiasm only faintly dimmed by his physical weariness. "What became of the kid, by the way?" he asked, as he finished.
"Kid? Oh, yes, Johnson told me something about a child," said Mrs. Sievwright. "You found it wandering somewhere." She rose languidly. "Oh, Ella"—this was to Lady Lataine, who entered—"not too tired, I hope?"
"If I make any mistakes—revokes—at bridge to-night, the Recording Angel must blot them out," said Lady Lataine languorously.
"What the Recording Angel will probably have to blot out," said Charles Forrester mildly, "is the remarks of your partner."
"No one coming over, I suppose, this blessed night?" said Lady Lataine.
"Unless the Sothebys no one. I asked them to dine, but they had a doubt of some sort. I don't think they'll come, because they're mortally afraid of their new 'shuvver.'"
"The 'shuvver' is the modern cook, a tyrant," said Forrester, putting his finger in his book.
"All servants are the same," said Mrs. Sievwright. "They were bothering me about some child—oh, yes, you spoke of it, Charles—a gipsy brat."
"It wasn't a gipsy," said Frank suddenly. "It was a pretty fair kid. I don't much take to those dark things—overseas alien business. This was a blue-eyed kid—a village child, I should say—regular Saxon."
"There are a great many," murmured Mrs. Sievwright.
Upstairs her husband had taken his bath, shaved, and dressed for dinner. He yawned without restraint as he came out of his room, and was going along the broad landing with the Stuart pictures when he noticed a light in a room which seemed to him out of the usual. He pushed the door open wider and entered. There was a night-light burning on the table, and the room was in the faint, misty illumination of this. He wondered why he had come there, and also why the light was burning. The blinds of the windows were drawn; the light fell softly, quite unobtrusively, upon the bed. … Quite suddenly there came to him a memory. This had been Geordie's room, Geordie who was dead—was it ten years or eleven? There was a room opening out of it in which the nurse had slept. He remembered that quite well. Geordie! Geordie had died of—— As the thought passed through his mind, he faced the bed. Was it Geordie who stirred the pillow in the faint light, rubbing his cheeks? Could it be Geordie who stirred and sighed?
He remembered the child by the river. Some indiscriminating ape had put it here.
"Well?" he said mildly, staring at it as it lifted its head from the pillow in fright. He thought he saw the child's face move with fear, and it seemed to him that the lips framed one word "Father," but he didn't know. As a matter of fact, he felt that, for him, a typical and hardened fox-hunter, he was rather overwrought, and he wondered why, and was angry.
"Why the devil did they put the kid here?" he asked of himself, as he made his way downstairs.
He threw off his thoughts as he entered the dining-room, where the lights and the blaze of fire made a cheerful glow. The house-party was already assembled, save for Lady Lataine, who came in with a bustle a little later, and was querulous. The exhaustion of the hunt bore down the gaiety of the table, only Frank discovering any elasticity. He, with Miss Mitchell-Dene and Forrester, bore the brunt of the talk, though Mrs. Sievwright intervened occasionally. The rest was—hunting.
"If you hadn't followed that blessed Ringwood," proclaimed Elliott, "we'd have had a better run by Frostman's."
"That was Carter's fault," said Sievwright. "He's getting too old, I believe. He swears by Ringwood."
"It was a nice spin along the flat lands," said Mrs. Bledsoe.
Frank was not concerned with the run. He was between Mrs. Bledsoe and Miss Mitchell-Dene, and Forrester talked across the table to him, gently ironic.
"Of course, the main thing in hunting, shooting, fishing, and all the rest of it, is the scenery," he said, gingerly handling the savoury on his plate.
"You're sneering," said Frank, flashing up to the encounter. "But, upon my soul, I do enjoy it. When I fish, there's the feeling of the stream, the play of the shadows, the long lush meadows——"
"What a rhapsodist is here!" interjected Forrester.
"It's a fact. I'm not so keen on the sport as you think."
"Miss Mitchell-Dene?" Forrester appealed for support.
"I'm no sportswoman," she said. "I don't like worms."
Frank went off into laughter; it tickled him to think that anyone imagined that you fished with worms. He would as soon have cut off his hand or shot a fox.
"What's this?" said Sievwright suddenly, as the servant deposited a plate in front of him. "Good Heavens!"
"Oh, don't spoil my little fun!" pleaded his wife from the further end of the table. "You know it's Christmas Eve. They're only crackers."
"Help us!" said Elliott.
"No, help me," said Miss Mitchell-Dene. "Give me one, please."
"Do you know, I'd clean forgotten about Christmas," said Frank, as he pulled one with her.
Lady Lataine peevishly pushed Forrester's proffered cracker aside, and demanded dessert. Someone was asking Sievwright a question.
"Just one cigar, and then bridge," the host announced. "We must remember the season, and go slow," he added, smiling, as if he had made an excellent joke.
"Halloa!" said Frank suddenly, staring towards the door, which was ajar. "What the—why, it's the kid!"
The whole table turned eyes, and there, for certain, was the child. Clad in night-robes, with soft curly hair and wide, inquiring eyes which showed no fear, only wonder, he surveyed the company. The uncomfortable feeling he had experienced upstairs returned to trouble Sievwright. Who had brought the kid down? But it was Frank who solved the mystery.
"He's looking for father still," he said, and beckoned. "Come here, youngster. Poor little chap!"
The child approached him without hesitation and put out a small hand, which the man took in his big one. He lifted the child to his knee and reached out for some grapes. Mrs. Bledsoe, a good-natured woman of outdoor tastes, pushed a cracker towards him. The child seemed to shrink from this proffered gift, but accepted the grapes.
"Bolted out of his bed," said Elliott, as if the solution of a great problem had just come to him.
"We'd better send to see if any child's missing from the village," said Mrs. Sievwright. "Parkyns," she added to the servant behind her chair, "just see that someone goes down to find out."
The ladies departed on the top of this instruction, and the men sipped coffee and smoked the allotted cigar. Miss Mitchell-Dene had carried off the waif into the drawing-room, where he sat solemnly on the sofa close to her, with eyes wide open on his strange surroundings. He slipped off the sofa and shyly sought Frank when the men entered, sitting by his new friend when the card sets were made. Ever and anon Frank put out a hand, carelessly tender, and patted the child's head.
"I make it hearts. Well, younker, what do you think of it all? Having none, partner? Bless his little head! The other way, if you please."
At another table Lady Lataine plaintively bewailed her luck.
"I want a mascot," she said. "Captain Sievwright, send me the boy. I must have a mascot."
"Go to the pretty lady," said Frank ingratiatingly, and indicated the destination.
The child shrank in obvious reluctance, but finally obeyed the gentle pressure. Lady Lataine had pulled a chair up to her, and now seated the child upon it. "There," she said, "wish me good luck. Say, 'Lucky lady!'"
"He's no gipsy," said Frank from across the room.
"He'll do as well. I always must have a mascot, and I left my china pig behind," said Lady Lataine querulously.
The games went on, and presently Sievwright, who was dummy, got up.
"Isn't it appallingly warm?" he asked. "It's these new registers, Kitty. Look here, we'd better—— Oh, I'll open this window down there. It will let in a breath."
The room was long and spacious, but the hot-air apparatus had raised the temperature to an uncomfortable height. Sievwright walked down to the furthest window and threw it open. It was a French window, and opened on a covered way. Beyond was the night and darkness. Sievwright came back.
"It's a lot better outside now," he said. "Snow's stopped, and the fog's taken off. How many tricks? Four? That makes——" He sat down and registered on his card.
Half an hour later Forrester entered the room, a book under his arm, and smilingly surveyed the players. At Lady Lataine's table they were reckoning the gains and losses.
"Fortunate?" he asked idly.
She beamed. "Yes, my mascot——" She looked round. "Where is he? He brought me luck. I was losing till then."
"Where is who?" asked Forrester.
"The gipsy."
"It's no gipsy," called out Frank. "Send him over here. Come along, kid."
"He's not here," said Lady Lataine.
"He's gone to bed. Did you tell the servants to take him?" asked Sievwright.
"No," said his wife, who was trying to add up distractedly.
"Where is he? Where are you, boy?" Frank rose and stalked, a big fresh figure in the room.
Lady Lataine was counting her gains; Mrs. Sievwright was yawning. Miss Mitchell-Dene rose and joined him.
"Did anyone see him go?" inquired Frank. "Lady Lataine, you had him."
"I—no, I don't know what became of him," said that lady indifferently. "I suppose one of the maids took him."
"He was sitting by you. You asked for him," persisted the young man.
"Is the child missing?" asked Mrs. Bledsoe, who had been talking of something else with her host.
"Gone! Yes." Frank looked about him with a vague sense of discomfort.
Forrester went to the open French window at the further end of the room.
"There are footmarks here," he said quickly. "Bring a light, someone."
Several of the party drew to the window, and Frank flared a petrol match-box. The light fell on the residue of unmelted snow on the verandah, and there were the marks of small unslippered feet.
"He's gone out," said Miss Mitchell-Dene, in bewilderment.
"You picked him up over the river?" said Charles Forrester interrogatively, "It was Christopherson, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Frank. "I carried him over. I wonder where the poor kid——"
"He's gone to look for his father," put in Mrs. Bledsoe. "That would explain it. It was the only thing he said."
Charles Forrester stepped back into the room suddenly and took up his book. "Didn't I say I had been reading about an ancestor, Frank?" he asked, in a curious voice.
"What's that, old chap?"
"Christopher. This is the 'Lives of the Saints.' You remember the story of Christopheros?"
Frank stared. "You mean the man who—— Oh, what rot!" He turned away almost irritably.
"It's Christmas Eve," murmured Miss Mitchell-Dene.
Mrs. Bledsoe looked at her in a puzzled way.
"We must find the kid," she heard Frank say. "Sievwright, get some of your servants out."
He had gone out into the verandah as he was, without hat or overcoat, but the others hurriedly made preparations for the search. The snow was mostly gone beyond the precincts of the verandah, and all traces of the small feet vanished. A lantern in the hands of someone at the French window drew Frank's voice from the distance.
"Try the path along by the bowling-green, some of you. I'm going the orchard way."
The party moved forward and split into two sections, beating the bounds of the garden on that side of the house. Meanwhile, some of the servants were exploring other parts. Forrester, holding a lantern, found himself with Miss Mitchell-Dene and Elliott; Sievwright and others, with another lantern, had gone in another direction. The snow had disappeared, but the fog was settling down again fast.
At the wicket-gate which gave access to the park Forrester hesitated. Was it possible the child had come all that way? Yet he did not know what to do save to go on.
"Wasn't there something over there?" Miss Mitchell-Dene asked.
"Where?" he asked in his turn, but the vague question sufficed to decide him. The three emerged into the foggy park, the lantern with its halo of luminous mist swinging in the leader's hand. They wandered in the open spaces of the park fruitlessly.
"I don't see what the mischief we can do," said Elliott hopelessly. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack." Forrester hesitated. Miss Mitchell-Dene was clad lightly, though she had put a warm wrap about her.
"We must go on," she said firmly, and added in a tremulous voice: "There's the river."
The fret of the water was audible now, and they knew where they must be. The river ran for some distance through the grounds of Elhurst. They followed the bank now for two or three hundred yards, and then came out on a drive which crossed the stream by a bridge to the main gates of the park.
"He might have wandered down the drive," suggested Miss Mitchell-Dene.
"We may as well try there as any other way. They would know at the lodge if he'd been," said Forrester.
But the lodge-keeper had no news, had seen no one, and the gates were shut.
"He's in the grounds somewhere," said Forrester. "That's clear. Let's try back and follow the river down farther."
They retraced their steps and struck off down the stream again, having added the gatekeeper as a recruit to their strength. Here the river ran in open country, not wide, but swift, and here and there with rising ground covered with trees. At the top of one of these ascents Forrester paused.
"Didn't you hear something?" he asked.
"I thought I heard a sort of cry," said Elliott. They all listened.
"It's voices," said Miss Mitchell-Dene.
"It must be the other party. They appear to be down yonder," said Forrester.
They began to descend, and the lodge-keeper murmured something in Forrester's ears. "Look out here," said the latter. "We've got to be careful. There's a steep bit of bank, and the river swirls under it."
The parties, if they could judge by sounds, seemed to be converging.
"I know the track they're following," said Forrester. "It goes down by the river to the boat-house."
Unconsciously they hastened their steps. "Back, please, sir!" called out the lodge-keeper suddenly.
Forrester came to a pause and swung his lantern. They could see below a grey swirl of water.
"Ugly!" commented Elliott. "Good Heavens, supposing——"
It was Miss Mitchell-Dene who interrupted with a cry. "There's a footmark! Look!"
Forrester lowered the lantern. "It is," he said—"on the verge!"
There was a momentary silence, and then Forrester moved.
"It may not have gone over," he said rather brokenly.
"It might be any footmark," said Elliott.
"So it might—of course." The remark of the plain, unimaginative man seemed to restore their confidence. They went on, and now the lights of the other party were flashing ahead. Forrester hailed them, and was answered.
"Found him?"
"No. Any sign?"
"No!"
The river broadened towards the weir, over which the waste water poured with a roar, a roar that drowned now all sounds save that of a great shout which rose from the advanced party. Forrester's party quickened their pace, and the two commingled on the bank.
"There! There!" Meadows was crying. "Don't you see?"
One of the servants stirred the rough, lashing water with a pole aimlessly.
"What is it? Oh, what is it?" asked Miss Mitchell-Dene.
"He sees something," answered back Forrester.
"What is it? What is it?" she repeated. She was standing on the marge of the water distracted.
"It's a body—a man's," said one of the servants.
"Nonsense!" said Sievwright. "It's rubbish brought down by the river and caught there. What man?"
Suddenly Miss Mitchell-Dene's voice was heard demanding: "Where's Mr. Christopherson? Where's Mr. Christopherson?"
"Is Frank here?" asked Forrester.
Sievwright answered in the negative.
"We haven't seen him. He's probably searching at the back of the park."
"He's there! He's there!" cried the girl, pointing. "Oh, bring him out! He's there!"
"It's only some rubbish caught——" began Sievwright, and broke off. It seemed to him as if the rubbish moved.
Captain Sievwright, M.F.H., was a dull person, of no parts to speak of, but he was a soldier and a man accustomed to decisive action. Item: he did not know fear.
"Give me that," he said, and snatched the pole from the servant's hands. He stepped without haste upon the masonry which projected into the water, and here opened in a sluice to allow the held water to collect for the navigation of boats, crossed it, and, seizing the wooden rail which ran across the weir, supported himself on the submerged structure which made the water fall. He was swallowed breast-high, but by means of the pole kept his balance, until he reached the breach which the torrent of waters had made in the bed of the structure. A body held up by the railings bobbed and moved in the rush.
He shouted back orders which the roar of the water seemed to overpower. Then, holding tight to his support, he pulled at an arm of the body. To his amazement, something came away, something that had been resting on the body above the water. It was a child!
He turned and shouted again, but already the lodge-keeper, who also kept the waters, was half-way to him. When the latter had arrived, he handed over the child.
"Get to shore and let the boat down on us. There's more here."
He pulled again at the body against the weir, and managed to hold the head out of the torrent, but it was only when his arms were aching past endurance that the boat reached him. A light was flashed on the body from a lantern.
"It is Frank," said Sievwright.
"Is he gone?" asked Forrester, horror-struck, but Sievwright had set to work like a man of action.
Christopherson was laid upon the turf pending the arrival of the motor-car which had been sent for. Sievwright was still at work, though he was himself dripping from his waist downwards. Elliott had the rescued child, wrapped in an overcoat; Miss Mitchell-Dene knelt on the wet grass, unconscious of everything save of the life that flickered on the pallid face, as if reluctant to return.
"They must have gone over where we saw," Elliott was saying, in a low voice.
"The child must have gone over, and Frank followed," said Forrester, in the same tone.
"He seems to have kept the child above water somehow, even after he succumbed himself," said Elliott.
"Thank God!" said Sievwright suddenly, with a sigh, and ceased his work.
"He's come round!" cried Forrester.
"I wish someone had some brandy," said Sievwright. "I could do with some myself."
Forrester almost hysterically clapped him on the back. The hum of the motor was audible.
Miss Mitchell-Dene, still on her knees, was now nearer to the prostrate figure. The lips twitched; she had one of the hands in hers, chafing it softly, and she stared at the awakening face. She did not hear the motor stop, nor the voices talking. Someone leant down on the other side and applied a flask to Christopherson's mouth, then rose. Dimly she heard the words from somewhere—
"The kid's all right. Father missed him—drove over from Saxton distracted. We must get them into the car."
Frank's eyes opened, and a woman's face was close above him.
"Sylvia!" he said weakly. "Where's the kid?" And then: "Is that you, dearest?"
Miss Mitchell-Dene sobbed aloud, but it was a sob of joy and something more incommunicable.
Copyright, 1913, by H. B. Marriott Watson, in the United States of America.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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