THE WITNESS

I

I was sitting over my fire in my hut in Penanga Creek, Wyoming, when the idea came to me—weakly, dreamily, at first, but later on strongly and vividly, that I must go home. It was, as I confusedly made it, seven years since I left Europe. I felt the thing that had driven me forth less keenly, and I realized that in seven years things must have quieted down a bit. Sally, too, being of a cheerful, easy-going make, would have forgotten what had happened on that one night, since in the nature of the case there could have been no discovery, no scandal.

No one could have known anything about it, no one had witnessed her act except Roger, my dog, who now lay so quietly, numb with advancing age, between my feet in front of the fire. Roger had been only a year old on that short summer night, a clumsy, flopping puppy that followed me unsteadily, swaggering from side to side, down the garden path of the old haunted manor house where Sally James lived. It was flagged with broad white stones, and the gate of it opened straight on to the road that led to Durham, to Darlington, and to the other ends of the earth, where I am now.

I ran away, like a coward, and yet not a coward, for I loved Sally James and I knew too much. I turned at the gate, and I gazed back at the windows of the house with their close-drawn blinds. I thought they looked like eyelids let down over anxious dreams. I saw the one window in the oldest part of the house where Sally, half dressed, was peeping through the blind, annoyed, yet uncomplaining at my departure. She knew men; she thought I was just going to put my head under the pump, and freshen my aching brain and my eyes that had looked on so much since they closed in sleep the night before. Then after a walk over the common, with my dog at my heels, I should return to her, stay with her through the long years to come, and profit by her crime. She had rid me of a nuisance. She did not realize—how could she, being hard Sally James?—that I could not bear the thought of seeing her face again. She was so careless of other people’s feelings that she knew less of what I felt than the silly young dog who slunk at my heels—or the pert robin that perched on the cheek of the gate-post. The robin, with its head on one side, seemed to stare at me and leer horribly as I closed the gate behind me, and went out into the world for ever. I never meant to see Sally again, I never meant to write or receive a letter; I never meant to look at a newspaper again; I never meant to know if she were tried for murder or not. I only knew that I did not mean to chance having to bear evidence against her.

There was very little likelihood of that. Mrs. James, the bouncing, jolly widow and my secret love, had saved money left her by her late husband and had managed to buy the freehold of Dewlap Hall, an old manor house that had seen better days. It had been one of the homes of the Conyers family, but it was now little more than a forlorn, dejected farmhouse, standing alone in a couple of acres about three miles out of Durham. It looked even a better place than it was. Once you were inside you saw that its ruin was only a question of time. It was slowly crumbling, festering, powdering away. Half the rooms were unsafe, the walls of the others were shored up, partitioned off, reduced to a fourth of their original size. One floor was taken bodily away—I have been told, to lay the ghost. The sharp, jagged rafters sagged downwards from the sides. The floor of this room was cobbled, it had lancet windows: people said it was the old chapel. Sally used the place as a wash-house; it opened out of her kitchen, which was the old and only hall of the first house. That, Mr. Wilson the vicar had told us, was built in the time of Edward II. Of course the house was haunted. A grey lady. Sally’s bedroom, above, must have been taken off the whole top of the hall, the floor was very bad, and though originally it must have been a handsome-sized, airy and pleasant room in spite of its low ceiling, the late owner had mistrusted the eastern portion of it so much that he had walled it off with boards and some concrete, calmly reducing the best bedroom to a cell about ten feet square.

It was big enough for two people, for Sally and me, drunk with love. I believe Sally and I would have made love if we had been fastened in a barrel studded with nails, and rolled down to the sea. But not room enough for three.

On that night, Sally and I, absorbed in each other, had not heard the heavy drunkard’s footfall of my wife on the creaking steps of the staircase that led up from the house place below, and the sound of the door of the room where we were, being slowly pushed open. The heavy bolt that should by rights have gone across it, was lying on the wicker chair by the bed. Sally, in her wild confidence in the impossibility of molestation in this lonely part of the country, had omitted to run it into the thole holes on either side of the lintels, as usual. When you did that you made the chamber into a real castle of strength, but she had forgotten all but me.

And poor mad Mary, my wife, stood like the ghost of Dewlap Hall, and watched us. Sally, half dazed, may have thought that she was the ghost.…

Anyway, she struck out with the heavy iron bar that lay ready to her hand. She was strong. Hardly another woman could have wielded it. My dog Roger looked up from where he slept, crouched on my coat at the foot of the bed on Sally’s packing-box.…

The iron bar was immensely weighty, my poor old wife fell like a log. Roger turned up his eyes.… I said, “Down, Roger!” and Roger lay down. Though a mere puppy, he was well trained.

Sally dropped the bar, with a loud clang on the floor. There was nobody below to hear it. It lay there, till seeing my eyes fixed on it, she picked it up easily and replaced it on the chair without even looking at it. But there was no blood or even hairs on it, I could have told her, for I had got hold of Mary by that time, and felt her, and I was perfectly sure that she had been stunned—killed outright. So far as I could see, the skin was not even broken. Her clumsy straw hat was of course smashed, battered in, and her very thick black hair lay like a mat over the crown of her head.

Sally asked me if she were dead, and I answered, yes, stone dead. Sally shrugged her shoulders, as who should say, It’s fate. Then without blinking, she put a petticoat on over her nightgown, and drew the strings of it tightly round her waist till I should have thought they would have cut her, but I expect she didn’t feel much at that particular moment. At least, I didn’t. I kept my eyes on her all the time; I thought it might prevent me from going mad. And Sally was sure to know what to do. It was her murder.…

It was a very warm night, and getting on for two o’clock, I should have thought, but no light pierced through the pieces of red gingham that Sally had hung up and gathered into a curtain for the window.

I watched Sally. She came up to me and took hold of Mary’s feet, and then dropped them again after I had taken the corpse by the shoulders. She stood a moment, a bit mazed, then she thought of the bar and went to it where it lay on the chair by the bedside. She lifted it, and examined its iron surface.…

“Give it to me,” I said. I stupidly thought of burning it.

“Nonsense!” Sally said, quite sharply, wiping it on her nightgown and replacing it on the chair. “Let it stay there where it always lies. Old Betty is used to the sight of it.”

She was wise. She returned to me and my burden. She took hold of Mary’s feet again, and didn’t drop them this time, but tied a towel round her ankles, thus binding them firmly together. Then, both of us breathing heavily, we got the body down the stairs. I went first. I could not see Mary’s face, but I saw Sally’s, and her lips were red, and tightly primmed. Roger, clumsily trying to pass us and our burden on the narrow flight of steps, got under our feet and nearly threw us down, and she unclosed her lips to swear at him. If she had not spoken, I believe I should have dropped.

We laid Mary on the stone-flagged kitchen floor, while Sally fumbled with the latch of the wash-house. There was a door out of that into the back yard, and thence into a little orchard, and out of that into the wood which stretched away towards Finchale Priory at the back of the house to the north. It was conveniently full of old abandoned pit shafts. I knew that well enough. But it was not until we gained the door of the wash-house that it occurred to me what Sally meant to do, and had meant to do from the moment we first lifted Mary to bring her downstairs.

There was a little more light now, but still it was not light enough to see, and I hoped it would not be until we got into the shelter of the woods. Sally held the feet, as before. She swung a lantern by a string from her teeth, she had refused to let me carry it. Sally had not much faith in me at the best of times, and now when so much depended on it, I could see that she meant to see to everything herself. Roger followed us; he was very humble and submissive since Sally had spoken to him so roughly.

She swore again, but not at him, for he kept out of her way. It was when the long brambles caught the hem of her nightgown that hung below the petticoat. Her eyes flashed a little now and then in the light of the swinging lantern.…

“I can hardly walk, I’ve got the bloody hem of my shift so wet,” she said, roughly.

“Can you manage?” I asked, speaking very faint. She had said “bloody”!

“Yes. Good thing it’s dew, not blood, after all!” she reassured me. “Don’t talk. I’ve no breath for talking. My word! I sweat, and no mistake!”

I didn’t want to talk. I was thinking of Mary, slung between us, dead as dead. And the last time I saw her she was dead drunk in the streets of Cardiff, reeling about, carrying on her trade. There was no need, that was the shame and disgrace. I was earning good wages at Neath as a colliery man, and gave her her fair share. But she had always taken too much and never been respectable, not even when I married her. They say those two things go together, and luckily there were no children. As soon as I found out what she was up to, I left her, deserted her, people would say, and drifted to Durham. That was full two years ago.

How did she find out that I had come to Durham, and was working at the Elvet pit? I never wrote to her once. How did she know I was living with Sally James in her house three miles out of Durham? How had she tracked me? I could not tell, then, and I don’t know now!

I was wondering, wondering, and the undergrowth grew thick and the nut boughs lashed my cheek in the dark. I stumbled a little as we got along with that between us, and I forgot to keep step with Sally, and she swore at me for an awkward fool that was giving her, a weak woman, all the work to do.

We came at last to the old pit shaft Sally and I knew of, for it had been one of our trysting places in her husband’s lifetime. Most of these disused shafts are walled round with brick, but this one wasn’t, for some reason or other. It was carelessly staked round with wattle, waiting to be done properly, I suppose. A drunken man could easily fall in and no one be any the wiser. For a pit shaft is so deep that you can see the stars in the daylight.

Mary must have walked all the way from Cardiff. It was the first time I felt sorry for her. I had been till then so angry with her for coming ferreting and spying, that if you had asked me, I should have said I was glad she had got her deserts. But I could not help seeing the worn soles of her shoes as we heaved her over the edge of the hole, and they were fairly walked through. I felt sorry for her then.

* * * * * * *

Mary was gone, without sticking or any awkwardness, and Sally breathed hard. She put out her hand and fondled Roger.

“Good dog!” she said. “He never barked. He won’t tell tales of us, will he, pet?”

Roger licked her hand, as an answer to her question. He was even at that age a wonderfully bright, intelligent dog.

Then Sally stooped, and tried to pick the long bramble trail out of the hem of her nightgown. It resisted—it was hopelessly entangled.

“Stand on it,” she said, “while I walk on a bit. One can always get rid of followers that way.”

She alluded to the old superstition that a girl who attracts the wild wood tendrils will always have plenty of sweethearts. Her white feet were quite bare.… I never knew a hardier woman than Sally. She looked down into the shaft once, though of course there was nothing to see, it was too dark and deep down; then she turned round sharp and decided.…

“We had best get back to bed now,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a good piece of night left, and I’m sure we both need a rest.”

I caught her up in my arms, and carried her home, it was only a little bit of a way, no distance at all, though coming out it had seemed so terribly long. She liked being carried. Once she put up her mouth and kissed me.

I took her in and set her down in the middle of the house place. She tottered a little, like a china ornament when you have been shifting it. She turned to go upstairs again. I could not manage it.

“Sally,” I said, “I think I’ll go and get a wash.”

“Do,” she said, “and you can draw yourself some cider. There’s plenty in the barrel in the corner there.”

I watched her ascend the stairs, rather heavily. Then I whistled my dog. The door of the house stood open, the dawn was just breaking. I latched it carefully behind me, and went away down the garden path. I looked back once—only once. Then I took my resolve definitely. I have never seen her since.

* * * * * * *

I secured a passage out West, and we sailed, my poor dog and I, the very next day. And in my panic I have never looked at a paper from that day to this. I don’t know whether there was an inquiry or not, or whether any suspicion fell on Sally; I should say not, she is too clever. Of one thing I am quite sure; the body was never found. They never are when they are lost like that. I have an idea too that my wife Mary was never even missed in Cardiff—who cares when prostitutes die or disappear? If, as was probable, no one had chanced to see her approach Dewlap Hall in the early hours of the morning, then there was absolutely no witness of Sally’s crime except myself and my dog Roger.

Yet, the thought that plagued me all through that night passes through my mind, and worries me still. I had deserted Mary—I had not seen nor communicated with her or any of my old friends in and near Cardiff—I am a Welshman—for three years!

So how did she know where to find me? Did she settle to visit all the great mining centres in turn? And did she draw Durham early in the game, and when she got to Durham, how did she get wind of my living at Dewlap with Sally James?

My thoughts, for the last seven years, have not been pleasant, but they are all the company I have had. I have worked hard here, I have even had a bit of luck and been able to lay by a little, but I have hardly spoken to a single soul. The last man who spent a night in my cabin was a taciturn Japanese who had less conversation than even Roger.

It is killing me. That is why two nights ago I took up my pen and wrote to Sally. Mrs. James, Dewlap Hall, near Durham, England. I must see her again. And to-day I have managed somehow or other to mail the letter. Now I wait.

* * * * * * *

I waited a good month. Then there came an answer, an answer I had ridden in for to Blizzardville every other day all through the time, speaking to no one except the clerk at the window of the post office—an uncommon dull and slow dog he was.

She wrote—

“You wretch! What a surprise to hear from you! Have you returned to your senses? I congratulate you. Your letter seems to mean that you have, and I don’t mind saying how glad I am! Oh! George, how could you walk off like that, and I lying there expecting you to come back after you had had a wash and a drink to buck you up. Men always feel these things so much more than women, at the time. As for me, you’d be surprised to hear it, but sometimes at nights I feel as much remorse as you would have me. Only then when the good daylight comes in at the pane I feel so different, one would not believe it was the same woman. Morning thoughts always are more cheerful. You see, I can’t forgive her for coming to dig me and you out in our happiness. She had nothing more to do with you. She drank, she sold herself, she got what she deserved, even if it was me that gave it to her. I saw it all as I lifted that great bar. She came meddling, and like all meddlesome fools, she got what for. If you had considered it yourself for one moment you never would have left me like that. But now you have thought it over, and you’ve thought better of it, and you are coming back to me! Come, only come! All is serene, as I daresay you know. Nobody bothered. William Dysart fooled about me a little when you left the field free, but I treated him with a high hand and I am shot of him except for a lowering look he gives me over the top of his pew, in Church on Sunday. They say he is my enemy, but even he can’t see to the bottom of a pit shaft, and there’s no evidence. I am respected in the place, and I can marry any one I please, and when I please. Shan’t it be you, George? Aren’t you and I bound by the memory of that night and what I did to get you? Come. Your own wicked, level-headed Sally.

“P.S.—I suppose the dog Roger, who was a puppy then, has died a natural death? Poor old dear! I was jealous of that dog, I always felt you liked him nearly as well as you liked me. Peace be to his bones.”

Roger looked up at me, as I looked down his way when I came to that last piece all about him. I believe I read it aloud softly. I am in the habit of talking to Roger. He knows perfectly well what one says to him. I stroked him. “Dead? Not a bit of it, old dog!” I said. “We are all alive and kicking, aren’t we? Very well preserved, eyes a little bleary perhaps, not many teeth in our head, but those sound, and that’s half the battle.”

Roger fawned on me. He is a quiet, taciturn creature, like his master, and I verily believe the sound of his own voice has got to scare him almost as much as mine does me.

“You’ll come to England with me, old dog, won’t you? You and me’ll never be parted; she must take us both for better or worse, eh?”

Roger’s tail wagged. He said nothing, but of course he understood.

I could not have left him, even if I had wanted to, to die alone in a strange country. Besides, he knows all about me. He saw it all. I can still see him looking pensively down into the pit shaft, after.… He is my only confidant, for of course I never let on to any one, I could never risk giving Sally away. But a dog! Yes, I am glad he knows.

I could not get ready to leave for about a week, and before I started I got another letter from Sally. It must have been written not much more than a day after the first letter, and there seemed no particular reason why she should ever have written it. It was rather incoherent. The thought of our meeting again must have troubled her, must have a little turned her head. She mixed up all sorts of things in her letter, and mentioned Roger again three or four times, in connection with William Dysart, who she seems to fancy has got his knife into her. A despised lover, but still—— I began to fear that the sight of my dog would distress her, remind her of that awful night, when suddenly and without thought or premeditation she up and did a sin for me!

What was I to do? It was but woman’s nonsense at the best, and I could not leave my faithful beast to pine and starve because of a woman’s whim! I consoled myself with the reflection that a hard, sensible woman such as Sally had proved herself to be, would not allow any mere fancy to affect her for long. She would force herself to get over it, and ignore it as she had the other. I settled it the way I wanted to and took Roger with me.

I made one tiresome discovery on the way home. I was pretty deaf, and could hear very ill unless the speaker addressed himself especially to me, and general conversation not at all. This saddened me. Even a slight deafness makes a man such a nuisance, and I thought it might put Sally off, or even set her wilful mightiness against me. Sally was never very patient at the best of times. You see I thought of everything in relation to her. Her crime, and her heartlessness and want of feeling with regard to it, seemed not to affect my appreciation of her in any way. Indeed, I admired her devil-may-carishness because it was on the whole the most decent way for her to behave. I should have hated her to whine and snivel.…

* * * * * * *

I walked out from Durham one fine Sunday morning in May, Roger trotting at my heels. I had asked no questions about Sally and her circumstances. I knew from her letter that she was well, and moreover I experienced some difficulty in framing questions, or indeed in getting into conversation at all. I do not believe I spoke more than two consecutive sentences all the way back, and those I mumbled in my beard, for all the world as if I were tongue-tied. No one bothered about me, I expect I was singularly unattractive, and for the most part I was left severely alone. I had lost all convivial habits, I did not care to see or hear anything. I never looked at a paper, my one idea was to see Sally again.

Roger was not so unsociable. Indeed, my trouble with him was that he was the reverse. He seemed to be continually getting into conversations, and eventually into fights, with other dogs. One dog, a sandy, weedy terrier, lame of one leg, that we met as soon as we got out at Durham station, he seemed, after having fought handsomely with, to take a great fancy to, and the wretched lame cur chose to follow us all the way out to Dewlap Hall. It was disturbing, and I should have preferred to have kept my faithful dog entirely to myself at a moment like this. I was going to meet the woman I loved again after all these years. And only Roger knew what had been.

It was Sunday morning, and I heard bells ringing at the different churches all the way out. Sally was standing in the clear morning light, at the low door of her house close to the monthly rose-bush which stood as high as she did. There was but one rose on it. She wore a pink cotton dress. She had grown a little stouter. She held her hand straight across her forehead, against the sun which came into her eyes, and made her frown—or was it the sight of me? For indeed, her black eyebrows were cruelly drawn down as Roger and I and Roger’s friend came up the flagged path. But all she said was, as she took her hand away from her face and laid it in mine—

“Come in.”

She pulled me inside, and shut the door in Roger’s face. He set up a whine.

“Poor Roger!” I said in spite of myself, and my wish not to annoy her. “Don’t you remember him?”

“Yes, but why did you bring the wretched creature here? I thought he was dead. I understood you to say so.…”

She stood there, quaking, quivering with anger. I had never seen Sally so unmanned.…

“Never mind the dog, Sally,—kiss me.”

She kissed me, then she said thoughtfully—

“Perhaps, on the whole I had better have him in?”

She opened the door, and drove away the stranger dog. Roger she seized, hauling him in by the collar. She then carefully bolted the door with one hand, sticking to Roger with the other.

“Have you got a chain?”

“What for, Sally?”

“To chain him up. I can’t have him loose. He’s been talking to that mongrel of Dysart’s—I know the malicious beast—and when dogs get talking together—now——”

“Talking! My dear Sally!”

“Oh, you know what I mean. It was William Dysart who directed Mary here that night, or rather morning. He’s longing to get his knife into me—or you.”

“But was there an inquiry? I didn’t read any of the papers, I was so afraid of what I might see there… you understand?”

She looked at me narrowly. Then she tossed her head.

“Silly fellow, there was nothing to make you uneasy. There was not a word of gossip. No one knew. There was one woman less on the streets of Cardiff, that’s all.”

“But you said William Dysart directed her here?”

“Yes, that came out, in a roundabout way, but he didn’t know who she was, or that she didn’t just come here and go straight back again where she came from. If only you had taken my hint?”

“What hint?”

“About Roger.”

“You do puzzle me, Sally.… You only said you supposed he was dead. Well, he isn’t, that’s all, and mighty glad I am of it. And he isn’t used to being tied up, and I’m not going to put upon the old dog now.”

“I can’t help it. He doesn’t go free in my house! We must talk it over. Meantime.…”

She left me abruptly—Sally never dawdled, not even over a murder. Trailing Roger helplessly by the collar, she went into the wash-house next door. I followed her grumbling a little, but still quite her humble slave. She made his collar more secure and then tied him to the copper. Then she reached up to a high shelf, and gave him a handsome plateful of bones and a pat on the head that had more of monition than of kindness in it. Roger looked up at me. He seemed to understand the situation better than I did. “Keep in with her, don’t irritate her!” he seemed to say. He shivered and seemed cold.

“Tell him to be a good dog and behave himself,” she said to me, “and he shall be loosed to-morrow, if I can feel quite sure of him.… Things are changed a bit, George, since you were here, and it is easy to see you have not kept pace with them. We must brush you up, and bring you up to date.…”

She was very nervous. I followed her out of the wash-house, closing the door behind me, as she bade me, over her shoulder. In the living-room, she turned and faced me.

She was a very beautiful woman, was Sally James. Her white teeth showed keen, as her short upper lip was drawn up from them. It made her look fine, but a bit cruel. She was not a very big woman, but stately, majestic even, at times, though she was only a farmer’s widow and daughter. Just now, as she stood there, her arms at her sides, her broad breast, covered with pink print, was like a queen’s. She was holding herself in readiness for my first embrace, and I longed for it too, and yet—I distrusted her.… She was without principle, a figure of shifting sand. She would always do exactly as she liked, and at the moment when she liked.… And she hated my dog.

I invented excuses for her.…

“It is all association,” I thought, as I hung back. “She is not so heartless as she seems. The dog was in the room when it happened, and by the shaft when we heaved Her over. He reminds her.… She has some feeling.…”

My distrust turned all at once to tenderness, and I sat down on the settle and took her in my arms. She was very soft and yielding, and she sat meekly on my knee and kissed me passionately again and again. Then I kissed her back just the same. The tall clock ticked as it did on The Night… only louder.…

There did not seem to be a soul about. I asked Sally if she had no servant to help her.

“I’ve a woman—old Betty—do you remember her?—comes to help me all the week through, but she stays away on Sundays. The farm hands sleep nearly a quarter of a mile away. You’ll stop to-night, George?”

I said I would. In my heart I wondered if her room was still the same, and if I could stand it!

* * * * * * *

II

A movement in the room awoke me. I opened my eyes slowly, and in the grey light I put out my hand and missed Sally. She had left my side.

I put some clothes on and went down the little steep single stairs, lit only by one dirty, cobwebby window. The scanty twilight, for that was all it was as yet, slid in and on to the white lintels, cracked and seamed with age—I never liked the dawn, when people die. The moon was paling quietly in the sky. The morning star still lingered there. At the corner where the stairs turned sharply, I looked down at my feet and remembered the job we had to get Mary past it! Drops of sweat broke out on my forehead just as they had done then. That and the dawn! I was very nervous. It was nearly the same as that other night.

Sally was not in the house place. I stood—turning on my heels—and wondered where she was. I made no doubt that she was walking in her sleep—that seeing me had brought back all the sensations of that dreadful night, and that she was repeating them. Perhaps she had remembered the light on the lintel, the turn of the stair too? … What I feared was that she had gone wandering along the same dreary path through the wood, as far as the shaft. And then, when she got there, suppose her remorse was too much for her and she were mad enough to throw herself over! … Such things have happened—I had seen The Bells and Macbeth. Sally was rather like Lady Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth, strong-minded as she was, rued her deed, and walked in her sleep, and rubbed her hands. Sally had no blood to think about—only dew on the hem of her nightgown that time.… You couldn’t tell blood from dew at night.…

I heard a click—something like the sound made by one earthenware pan rubbing against another, in the wash-house.… I had maligned Sally in my thoughts. She had merely gone downstairs to feed Roger! The last remark she had made on going to bed was that he looked weakly, and on his last legs, and should by rights be put away before he suffered pain. Dogs die so hard, she had said. I opened the door that led into the old stone-paved chapel Sally used as a wash-house, and stood the beer-casks in.

Sally, in her plain nightgown, was standing there barefoot on the cobbled stones. She looked a bit cranky. Her black hair hung partly down her back, and in elf locks, that were curls overnight, in her eyes. She had a great quantity of hair, and out of vanity she never took it all down when she went to bed, but half arranged it with pins and coloured ribbons. Her arm was raised to a high shelf whence she had taken Roger’s provender earlier in the day. The movement made the fronts of her nightgown gape, and show her breast.

She started when I came in, and dropped her arm guiltily.

“Go away, go away!” she screamed, and put her hand behind her back. “Go away, and let me finish the job!”

“What job, in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “at this hour of night? We saw to the dog—no need to feed him again!”

“Feed him, you idiot! … Poison him, more likely—anything to get him out of the way!”

I went up to her and laid my hand on her arm.

“I do believe the sight of Roger, who saw you murder Mary, has put you clean out of your wits, Sally, my dear.”

“And what about you and your wits, bringing the beast here——!”

She rushed at poor Roger, who squatted at the extreme length of his cord, staring at her calmly, boldly, as if inviting her to stick him with the knife she brandished. He was never like any other dog. He did not plunge or bark. I saved him, I took the knife out of her hand, and flung it into a meal-tub close by.

“Fool, fool!” she yelled, but I put my hand over her mouth, and forced her back on the tub, so that she sat on the knife. I was so sure she was going mad that it made me calm and strong, and I tried to soothe her and speak gently to her, as one does to an invalid.

“What do you want to kill my poor old dog for, Sally?”

“I must. I must. He’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous without a sound tooth in his head?”

“He has a tongue in his head——”

She looked at me narrowly, dragging down the outside corners of her eyelids like a bulldog. Then she pulled the fronts of her nightdress to, and tried to speak reasonably. She succeeded more or less, but it was a great effort to her.

“Don’t you know what has happened here while you have been away sulking at the other end of the world?”

I said nothing on purpose, so as not to put her back up. She stood staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I was so long, she began to shake in the cold.… And Sally never could keep quiet for long. Her temper broke out and she shouted at me.

“Don’t look so stupid, George! … God, it sends me mad!”

“Dear, try and tell me quietly.” I sat down on an empty barrel. “Come here. Sit on my knee——”

She waved me away. She moistened her lips. “Don’t treat me like a child or a madwoman, George. It is serious, sober earnest. I am telling you facts—not lies. The police—damn them!—have got a new weapon, and they use it for all it is worth.…”

She wrung her hands and walked up and down.

“Oh, to think that all this time we have made pets of these wretched animals, and trusted them—I had a pet dog once—I put it away because it watched me, though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Yes, we used to let them go about with us, and see all we did, and listen to all we said! Who minded talking secrets with an animal in the room, or doing anything one liked in a whole farmyard of beasts—then? We didn’t know that dog of yours was lying at the foot of the bed when Mary was done for: I never even thought of him! We actually let him go with us to the edge of the shaft and see us throw her in! God, what fools we were!”

“But what can a dog do, you silly darling?”

“He can get us hanged! Get us both hanged! Why, your beast there—the very moment he got into England he must have learnt his power; he must have blabbed our whole story, and to that animal of Dysart’s, too, the very last person——!”

I tried to soothe her.

“Sally, my dear, it’s awfully cold here! You’re shivering. Do let us get back to bed!”

I said that, but indeed I was getting to be afraid of her, in bed or out of it.

She took no notice of me, but went on—

“You never looked at a paper, you tell me, and yet they were full of it two years ago—the wonderful new discovery. Since then I’ve never known a moment’s peace. My life has been hell. You may thank your stars you were out of it and had left me to bear the whole brunt of it.”

“For goodness’ sake explain!” I said crossly.

She came quite close to me and whispered, “The police! It’s a new dodge of the police. I hate ’em and their filthy methods! They get hold of animals—dogs preferred, because they’re more intelligent—and shut them down there in cellars, behind locked doors, and then they torture them, rack them.… George, can you bear the idea of Roger tortured, racked,—kept without water for a week! Oh, if you had heard, as I have, scores of times, only I’ve run away and said nothing because of my guilty conscience—if you’d heard the pitiful howls and whines at the back of the police station there, and knew that some poor helpless beast was being made to betray and give evidence——”

“But I don’t see how a dog, or any animal indeed, could let on to what it knew even if it tried,” I said, as grave as a judge, to pacify her.

“Oh, that’s a mere matter of detail. The police have got a code—they manage to communicate with the beasts. They count the barks——”

“Ha! ha!” I laughed.

“Don’t dare to laugh, you ignorant fool. Have you never heard of those spiritualist affairs? The spirits rap, and the medium tells you what they are saying. Well, the dog barks—it comes to the same thing——”

She sighed deeply and seemed relieved. It was now quite day. Her candle flared. She was waiting for me to speak. I was thinking of what would be the most soothing thing to say.… It would not come. I was at my wits’ end. The only thing I could think of was to get her back to bed and send for a doctor.

I moved slightly in my indecision. She caught my hand. Hers was very hot.

“George, what are you going to do? I’ve explained clearly, haven’t I?”

“Quite.” I had now fixed on a plan of action.

“And now, Sally darling,” I said softly, “just you get back to bed, and I’ll settle Roger, and then I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea.”

That plan failed. She screamed, and beat the air with her hands.

“Settle him? Not you. It takes a man to do that—or a woman like me! No, I know you. You want me to go quietly, while you untie the dog, and let him go free to get us hanged—me, at any rate. I murdered Mary—you only looked on. And your dog. What’ll you get? I shall swing for it. He’s sure to have told Dysart’s dog, and the police’ll get wind of it—Dysart’ll take care of that. He’s only waiting—has been these ten years. And then they can howk Mary up—what’s left of her—and the damned dog’ll tell them who put her there.”

“Do you suppose Roger would betray us?” I said, humouring her. She was crying now, violently, against my heart.

“But, George—under torture—there is no knowing what he might do. Is there, Roger?”

She left me, contemptuously, and bending down a little, spoke to Roger as if he were a human being. That gave me a turn, and I felt very queer. She seemed so sure of herself, and her tale. Roger appeared to listen. He barked three times… then four times… then more. I lost count. But Sally didn’t, apparently. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown, tossed her head back and cried triumphantly—

“There, he says I had better warn you! He can’t be quite sure—he’s not so young as he was—his power of endurance is weakened! That’s what he says, as well as he can—to me who understand him.… Did you notice,” she continued, “how Dysart’s dog limps? Well, that’s because—every one knows it, though it’s supposed to be a secret—the police examined him—tormented, I call it—a year ago, in connection with a case of arson. Dysart’s ricks were set on fire——” she chuckled.

“Who was accused?”

“Me.”

“And did you——”

“That’s not the point. But Dysart’s dog was got to admit that he had seen one of my men loitering about at an awkward time—the time when it happened, in fact. The police couldn’t make anything of his evidence—it was too scanty, luckily; but all the same, he’s gone lame ever since. I hate the police as I hate sin.… Brutes they are! … Roger, good dog, tell me how did you learn the code in this short time?”

Roger barked gently, a little chain of barks.

“From Dysart’s dog, he says. It’s quite simple. Well, George, look here—no, I’m not cold when I’m interested—I’ll go on getting it from Roger, and perhaps I’ll be able to convince you that for his own sake, Roger had better be put out of the way. He wishes it.…”

“I am convinced,” I said. I was convinced that she was off her head on this particular point, and that a good rest would set her right. I put my arm round her, and tried to kiss her and lead her away. But she pushed me off.

“Go and sit over there. Don’t worry me. I want all my wits about me now, and once you see the danger—if you love me you won’t set the life of an old toothless, worn-out dog against mine, for that’s what it comes to.”

“I do love you, Sally.… Now, Roger, stand and deliver. Answer the lady.”

There is no good fighting hallucinations, it is best to humour them. Any doctor would have agreed with me that it was useless to argue with a woman so terribly excited as Sally was. There she stood, barefooted on the stone floor, in the light circle that the candle made, waving her arms and casting shadows of awful length and shape. The black jagged ends of the rafters of the broken flooring over her head framed her in spikes, as they sagged and drooped towards the middle of the room where she was. Nice home-coming for a man after all those years! … I wished, then—how I wished!—I had stayed in Wyoming with my faithful Roger, and only seen Sally as I remembered her, plucky, resolute and sensible, instead of the all-to-pieces madwoman remorse had made of her.

But she was determined to go through with the mad farce. She stooped, tossed back her hair and fixed Roger with her eyes. He met them as dogs do without flinching or turning away. Poor dear old Roger was so faithful and so old, I did wish she would leave him alone. But no—

“Roger,” she said solemnly, “did Dysart’s dog warn you of the state of things here, and of what might happen to you?”

A lot of little orderly barks answered her. Though Roger always did bark when you spoke to him in a certain domineering tone, it was fairly horrible.

Sally turned to me, and her voice was lifted with pride.

“He says yes, that he is fully informed. Moreover, Dysart’s dog has told him that his master has had suspicions of you ever since a certain tramp woman he met on the Witton-Gilbert road was so keen on finding her way to you. William Dysart told her she would probably find you in bed with me, blast and curse him! I am glad I burnt five of his ricks!”

“Come, come, Sally, does my dog really say all that?” I mocked her.

“He says that and a lot more. That Dysart went straight to the police this morning after seeing you and your dog walk across the market-place—now, then!”

“Damn it all, that’s where Roger picked up the cur first,” I called out, for I own this struck me. And the dog’s manner was disquieting. All this was exciting and very bad for him. He shivered and whined very low.

“Roger, Roger, old man!” I caressed him and talked to him as if he was human and sensible, as indeed he was, but only as dogs—the best of them—are. “Don’t take on so! What is it? What’s the matter?”

“He’ll tell you fast enough,” Sally said, grinning. She went up to him, too, and passed her hands over his back. “Come, tell us all about it, good dog.”

I couldn’t bear to see her lay her Judas hand on him. I shouted, “Don’t you touch my dog, you——” I couldn’t find a word bad enough for her—not even one of the worst; all my love for her had gone, melted away.

“All right!” she answered carelessly, desisting.

So we both stood at an equal distance from Roger, who barked incessantly for about five minutes. I thought I noticed gaps between the groups of barks, as it were, but even now I cannot be quite sure. Sally had got me into the same state as the dog, we were both beside ourselves—fairly bewitched, I think.

Now Sally translated, in a level voice. Her quiet was more awful than her bluster.

“He says, ‘Master, save me from the torture. I am old, I have not many months to live. Shoot me first. I may not be able to stop myself from betraying you—and her. Shoot me, in mercy! Shoot me!’ ”

“Is that so, Roger?” I asked him. The spell wrought on me so that I began to believe it. “Do you want me to kill you?”

He barked—yes, he barked horribly.

Then I turned on Sally, and she held up her head and looked me with insolence in the face, and the dog began to plunge and strain on the cord, barking furiously all the time.

“You devil,” I yelled, “you are taking me in! This is all a plan got up to make me put away my faithful old dog!”

“Look at your dog!” she said, calmly. “He has more sense than you. Do you know what he is trying to do? He’s trying to commit suicide—he says it’s his only chance, if you won’t shoot him. You coward! Afraid to put him out of his misery and help him to get out of the way before he’s forced to betray you! Go and get your gun! Kill him, man—or let me.”

I came out of my maze just in time. I saw Sally whip the knife out from under her and go for Roger with it. The dog had nearly succeeded in strangling himself—he had come to make gurgling noises in his throat.… But I was all there, now.…

“Don’t you do it, old dog!” I up and shouted. “I’ll settle her, as she settled Mary!”

* * * * * * *

And that is why I am sitting here in Durham gaol waiting to be hanged, and a good riddance too. I don’t care to live.… Poor Roger did manage to commit suicide. He knew.