The League of the Leopard

"I'm thinking I have ye noo!" a gruff voice exclaimed. "Ye sorrowful wastrel, stealing a puir man's fish!"

Thomas Chatterton stood upright, knee-deep in the river, with an exclamation; and Dane, knowing there was much deeper water close behind him, sprang to his feet. That the irascible iron-master would show fight if necessary, he felt certain, and equally so that a portly elderly gentleman would make a poor match for a brawny laborer. Hardly had he got to his feet, however, than the keeper, sliding down the bank, dropped silently into the river, and disappeared as if by magic, while, as Dane wondered what had startled him, another voice rang out.

"Run straight in on the alder while I head him off from the firs!" it directed; and a whistle was followed by the sound of trampling feet.

Somebody came smashing through the undergrowth, and Dane was never quite certain as to the cause for what happened next, though he surmised that Chatterton's dread of becoming a laughing-stock to his enemy proved momentarily stronger than his reason. In any case, he must have endeavored to follow the keeper's lead, and lost his footing, for a side swing of the stream swept him out from shore, while Dane, realizing that an elderly gentleman in heavy boots and leggings was hardly likely to make much head against a flooded river, plunged from the bank in the flattest dive he could compass, though horribly afraid that he might strike his head against a submerged stone. It was a good plunge, for he rose almost in mid-stream, and heard a great splashing and panting close before him. A few moments later, he had Chatterton by the shoulder, and braced himself for a struggle.

Chatterton, though driving sideways down the stream, could apparently swim a little, and did not appear unduly alarmed. Indeed, Dane had cause for believing he feared nothing except ridicule; but he was very heavy, and panted stentoriously, while muddy froth beat into the younger man's eyes and nostrils, and the rebound, which surged in a whirling eddy from a central rock, swept them down together toward the white race between the boulders at the tail of the pool. Dane had no intention of being hammered against them if it could be avoided, and did his utmost, thrusting with one hand on Chatterton's shoulder and swimming on his side. Still, the boulders swept up-stream past them, the larches flitted by, and though they drew clear of the fastest rush, it seemed impossible that they could make a landing in time to escape the rapid. Chatterton was apparently swallowing water, and choking badly now.

"For heaven's sake, make a last effort, sir!" spluttered Dane; and the iron-master splashed furiously.

A strip of shingle grew nearer, but they would hardly have reached it had not a man floundered in almost shoulder-deep and clutched them as they passed. All three went down together, Chatterton undermost; but when Dane's head broke the surface, a hand was twined in his hair, and a half-choked voice said:

"You are in wading distance, man. Get up and walk!"

Dane felt sliding shingle beneath him, and tightening his grip on Chatterton he struggled for a foothold; and finally they reeled, breathless, dazed, and dripping, out among the boulders. Then somebody turned back the slide of a darkened lantern, and the half-drowned Chatterton gasped, for it was evident that his rescuer was Carsluith Maxwell, the son of his enemy. Maxwell stared at Chatterton, and the iron-master gaped at him; but while blank astonishment was stamped on both their faces, it was Maxwell who recovered his senses first.

"Robertson, hail Jim to run over to The Larches, and say that Mr. Chatterton, who fell into the river trying to capture a poacher, is coming home with me to change his clothes," he ordered, and then turned toward the dripping pair. "It was very plucky of you, sir, and you were only a few seconds too late. I thought you would secure the depredator. It is two miles round by the footbridge, and you hardly look fit for the walk, so you are coming to Culmeny with me. There is really no use protesting."

Thomas Chatterton did not look capable of much exertion, but he hesitated.

"It is very kind of you, but your father and I, unfortunately – "

Maxwell laughed.

"I believe you had some trifling difference; but this is a Christian country, and the reason given quite insufficient for letting you freeze to death. Mr. Dane, I presume? You will help me to persuade your host."

Chatterton, although exhausted, yielded dubiously, and it was not long before the pair shed their dripping garments beside a blazing fire in Culmeny, and struggled into the dry ones provided, both sets being of average size. Dane, however, was tall and long of limb; Chatterton was short and broad, and when his toilet was finished, he stood up half-choked, with every button straining about him.

"This is worse than a strait waistcoat, Hilton," he fumed; "and I'd rather forfeit five pounds than go down and meet them as I am. By the way, I believe I never thanked you; but I will not forget our swim. But tell me how you came to turn up so opportunely."

Chatterton betrayed some anxiety in the last words, but Dane managed to frame an answer which reassured him as he surveyed himself in a glass and hoped the Misses Maxwell would not put in an appearance. The wet hair plastered down his forehead showed a washed-out straw color against the darkened skin. His brown wrists and ankles projected ridiculously from the borrowed garments, and somebody's slippers would not cover more than a portion of his feet.

"We are neither of us particularly prepossessing at first sight, but I suppose we must make the best of it; Maxwell asked us to come down when we were ready," he said.

They went down, Chatterton fuming, Dane struggling with a desire to laugh; and two men rose to meet them when they entered a long, low-ceilinged room. That meeting was fraught with far-reaching consequences, and Dane could afterward recall it vividly. The old place of Culmeny was an ancient and somewhat decrepit edifice, owned for many generations by the Maxwells, and the wainscot of the room was dark with age. Quaintly embroidered curtains were drawn across one end of it; there were few pictures, and these old; while the whole place wore a somber air, almost intensified by the light of the wax candles on the great uncovered table, which supported a steaming bowl. This, Dane noticed, was of oak hooped with tarnished silver. It was, however, the two men who fixed his attention. The elder, a spare gray-haired man with a white moustache, came forward holding out his hand.

"I must congratulate you upon your escape, Mr. Chatterton," he said. "I am glad that Carsluith had sense enough to bring you home with him; and I can recommend a ladleful of this mixture as a preventative against a chill, while regretting that, because the fires were low, we could not send you a dose earlier. The customs of Culmeny are not altogether what they used to be."

The pair formed a striking contrast when Chatterton turned toward his host, glass in hand. The one was softly spoken, spare to gauntness, and characterized by a subtle air of distinction; the other, short, florid, abrupt in speech, and more often aggressive than dignified in manner. Then, because Chatterton was also a man of impulse, who cared for neither place nor tradition when anything stirred him, as his host's welcome evidently did, he bowed to Brandram Maxwell with more grace than Dane deemed him capable of.

"Here's to our better acquaintance, sir; and my best thanks," he said. "I'm a plain, self-taught man, and may have blundered in enforcing what I thought my rights. If so, I regret it."

What Brandram Maxwell answered Dane did not remember, but he expressed it very neatly; and while the feud was patched up, his son smiled curiously at the younger man. He was like his father, but taller in stature, dark in color of eyes and hair, and slightly olive-tinted in complexion, while his movements suggested a wiry suppleness. Dane surmised that he was of reserved, if not slightly sardonic, disposition.

The bowl of punch was emptied with every sign of amity; and when it was finished Thomas Chatterton, who had absorbed the major portion and declared that he had never tasted anything better, said: "I hope we shall see much more of each other in future, and, as an earnest of the wish, I will expect you shortly at The Larches, where Mrs. Chatterton will thank you for your kindness better than I can."

While Brandram Maxwell started some topic of conversation with his elder guest, his son, to whom Dane had mentioned the affair of the Englishman in South America, drew him aside.

"Hyslop and I were once good friends, and I consider myself your debtor for what you did for him," he said. "Did he tell you much about his wanderings, or that he and I came near successfully exploiting a Mexican mine?"

"No," said Dane. "He told me very little. What went wrong with the mine?"

Maxwell laughed.

"The unexpected happened. It generally does when one awaits the consummation of an ingenious scheme. I am especially sorry Hyslop has gone."

Dane longed to ascertain whether his new friend suspected any other explanation than the one he had seized upon for Chatterton's plunge into the river, and endeavored to do so, without success; for even when he afterward learned to know and trust him well, he never found it easy to glean more from Carsluith Maxwell than he wished to tell. An accident, however, favored him, and he thought more of the man for his reticence when, as the master of Culmeny was exhibiting some new artificial minnows in his gun-room, he heard his son, who had slipped away, say to somebody in the darkness beneath the open window:

"You remember the pheasants' eggs incident, Kevan? You need not repeat your explanations, because I have no intention of raking it up, and merely wish to suggest that you find means of preventing your comrades from talking too much about what happened to-night. When a gentleman of Mr. Chatterton's years allows his excitement to overcome him to such an extent that he follows a poacher into a flooded river, he naturally would not like his adventures made public property."

"I'm a wee bit puzzled, sir," answered an invisible person; and Maxwell's voice rose faintly through the sound of retreating footsteps:

"I am not puzzled in the least; and that ought to be sufficient. You are sure you understand my wishes?"

He came in a few moments later to inform his guests that the dog-cart was waiting.

As they drove home, Chatterton said sententiously:

"We all make mistakes at times, Hilton; and that was most excellent punch. For instance, when one comes to know him, Maxwell is what might be termed a very good fellow. Hard up like the rest of them, of course; land and buildings, as everybody knows, burdened to the hilt, but – I suppose it was born in him – he bears the stamp, and his son wears it too. You and I are different, you know, though travel has done a good deal for you. I have handled a good many men in my time, and I like that fellow's looks. He would be a very bad kind to tackle when the devil that smiles through his black eyes wakes up; and I think he'd stand by the man who played him fair through the damnedest kind of luck."

Dane, who fully endorsed this opinion, was afterward to discover that Thomas Chatterton was no bad judge of his fellow-men.

"They are neither of the type one associates with this part of the country," he commented.

"No," said Chatterton. "They were, I understand, always an adventurous family, and some of them who took part in the wars there in the old days intermarried with the Spaniards then holding the Low Countries. A strain of that kind takes a long time to work out, you know."

Chatterton's fishing was not without results, for in spite of, or perhaps because of, their different character and experience, it was the commencement of a friendship between himself and Maxwell of Culmeny. The iron-master had hewn his own way to fortune, and, being troubled by no petty diffidence, was, if anything, overfond of recounting has earlier struggles. The wild blood of the old moss-troopers still pulsed in the veins of the Maxwells, and the impoverished gentleman, who listened with interest, sighed as he remembered the sordid monotony of his own career, during which he had, by dint of painful economy, somewhat lightened the burden with which his inheritance had been saddled by the recklessness of his forbears.

Carsluith Maxwell took even more kindly to his new acquaintances; and there sprang up between himself and Dane a comradeship which was to stand a bitter test, while, as summer merged into autumn, he would sometimes wonder at himself. He said nothing about his African venture, and spent much time considering old rent books and the cost of moss-land reclamation schemes. The rest he spent shooting with Dane, or lounging at The Larches, if possible in Lilian Chatterton's vicinity; but, although he could rouse himself to temporary brilliancy, Maxwell was usually oversilent in feminine society, and Dane felt no jealousy. The latter rested content in the meantime with the knowledge that Lilian found a mild pleasure in his company; and only Mrs. Chatterton felt any misgivings respecting future possibilities. Being a wise woman, she kept her suspicions to herself until they became certainties, when one day Miss Margaret Maxwell, perhaps not wholly by accident, gave her a significant hint.

"I hear that your brother has undertaken an extensive drainage scheme," said the elder lady.

"We are hopeful that he will settle down at last," responded Margaret Maxwell. "My father's health is failing, and he has long desired his son's company; but Carsluith was always ambitious, and used to say he would never vegetate in poverty at Culmeny. Of late, however, we have been pleased to see that he is taking an almost suspicious interest in the improvement of the estate, and is now investing the money he made in Mexico in the reclamation of Langside Moss. As Carsluith seldom does anything without a reason, his sudden change of program puzzles us."

Mrs. Chatterton fancied she could supply the reason, but she made no comment. Lilian, she decided, had a right to choose for herself, and might make a worse selection than a Maxwell of Culmeny.

In the meantime, Dane still awaited his foreign commission, and might have waited indefinitely, but that once again a poacher played a part in the shaping of his destiny. There were plenty of them in that neighborhood; while rogue, and clown, and commonplace individual of average honesty usually outnumber either the saints or heroes in life's comedy. The poachers were netting the Culmeny partridges, and Dane promised to assist his comrade in an attempt to capture them.

CHAPTER IV

THE POACHER

It was a chilly night when Dane crouched in very damp clover beside a straggling hedge, waiting for the poachers, and wishing he had been wise enough to remain at home. Rain had fallen throughout the day, and now heavy clouds drifted overhead, while a chilly breeze shook an eery sighing out of the firs behind him. The moon was seldom visible, but a subdued luminescence filtered through, and he could just see Maxwell crouching in a neighboring ditch which was not wholly dry.

"What are you meditating upon, Hilton?" Maxwell asked.

"I was just thinking what a fool I was to come at all, and that it is almost time I went home again. When a man has had tropical fever it is his own fault if he suffers from indulgence in amusements of this description."

"I am not entirely comfortable either," Maxwell said dryly. "My boots are full of water, and my hair is thick with sand; but I dare say both of us have had worse experiences. If those fellows don't come in the next ten minutes I'll turn back with you."

Neither said anything further for a space. The firs moaned behind them, the dampness chilled them through, and the odor of wet clover was in their nostrils. When, instead of ten minutes, nearly half an hour had passed, there was a low whistle from a hidden keeper, and Dane could dimly see several indistinct figures in the adjoining meadow.

"Kevan and the constable should head them off," whispered Maxwell. "I'll race you for the first prisoner, Hilton!"

It was characteristic of Maxwell that he had worked an opening ready in the hedge, and slipped through it, while Dane hurled himself crashing upon the thorns. He broke through them, somehow, and noticed very little as he raced across the dripping aftermath except that two men strove to drag something over the opposite hedge. Before he could reach it, Maxwell had separated from him, and because the moon shone down through a rift in the clouds, he saw him clear the hedge in a flying bound. The next moment he had his hand on the collar of one man brought up by the thorns. Dane saw his face for an instant, and then, when the other kicked him savagely on the knee, he shifted his hand to his throat, and was doing his best to choke the fight out of him when he heard footsteps behind him, and something descended heavily upon his head. He fell with a violence that shook the remaining senses out of him, and lay vacantly listening to the sound of running feet and hoarse shouts which grew fainter in the distance, until Maxwell, returning, shook him by the arm. It was dark again now, for the moon had vanished, and a thin drizzle was falling. Dane's head ached intolerably, and a warm trickle ran into one of his eyes.

"Are you badly hurt, Hilton?" asked Maxwell, stooping and holding out a flask.

"No," Dane answered dubiously, as, gripping his comrade's hand, he staggered to his feet. "Mine is a pretty thick cranium, but somebody did their best to test its solidity with the butt of a gun. Did you get them?"

"We did not." Maxwell, who seldom showed what he felt, evinced no chagrin. "The constable managed to stick fast in the one gap in the second hedge; but we got their net, and, although I don't wish to trouble you if you are not fit, if you could describe the fellow you grappled with, we should know where to find him."

Dane did so to the best of his ability.

"It's young Jim Johnstone!" the keeper exclaimed; "an' after this we should grip him trying to slip off by the night train. I'm minding Mr. Black told me he'd e'en be sitting up in case yon rascals killed onybody, an' ye needed authority. He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, an' this is a clear case o' unlawful woundin'."

"Start at once with that fool of a policeman!" said Maxwell. "Now, Hilton, if you can manage to walk as far as the road, I will drive you home."

He held out his arm, but grew tired long before they reached his trap: Dane was no featherweight, and he leaned upon him heavily. When Maxwell helped his comrade down before The Larches there were lights in the lower windows, though it was very late, and its owner stood upon the steps awaiting them.

"I could not sleep until I heard whether you had caught the rascals," he began. "But what's this? Have they hurt you, Hilton?"

"Not much, sir," answered Dane.

Seeing Mrs. Chatterton in the hall, he shook off Maxwell's arm, and attempted to enter it unassisted to prove his assertion. The attempt, however, was a distinct failure. He tripped upon a mat, reeled forward drunkenly, and, clutching at the nearest chair, sank into it, presenting a sufficiently surprising spectacle, for his collar, as he subsequently found, was burst, while there were generous rents in his garments, and the red trickle flowed faster down his face. Then there followed confusion, for Mrs. Chatterton was a gentle but easily disconcerted lady, and her husband addicted to over-vigorous action. So, while the one proceeded in search of bandages, and, not finding them, returned to ask useless questions and, in spite of his feeble protests, pour cold water over Dane's injured head, Chatterton smote a gong and hurled confused orders at the startled servants. This lasted until a dainty figure came swiftly down the stairway, and chaos was reduced to order when Lilian took control with a firm hand.

"Don't trouble him with questions, Aunty, but get some brandy, quick!" she said. "Uncle, please do not make any more useless noise, but ask one of these foolish women to bring hot water. Annie, bring me the arnica, and the first piece of clean linen you can find. Now, Hilton, you are not hurt very badly, are you?"

She bent down, with the light of a big hanging lamp upon her, and, forgetting the faintness and pain, which was considerable, Dane felt his heart bound within him. In spite of her swift orderliness, the girl's eyes were anxious as well as very pitiful, and there was a tension in her voice.

"No," he replied, as carelessly as he could, for all his pulses were throbbing. "I am just a little dizzy, and shall be better presently. I am chiefly ashamed of making such a scene, Lily."

It did the man good to see the relief in his attendant's face. Miss Chatterton flushed a little under his gaze and became once more strictly practical.

"The wound is worse than you suppose," she said, with a slight but perceptible shiver. "Take a mouthful of this brandy, and I will fix a dressing. Aunty, hold the bandage, and give me the scissors!"

She did all very cleverly, then slipped away; and ten minutes later Dane was glad to bid Chatterton and his wife good-night. His head still throbbed painfully – for the trigger-guard which struck his forehead had bitten deep – and, having seen what pleased him greatly, he desired to be alone to think.

When he had gone, Mrs. Chatterton looked at her husband.

"Did it strike you as significant that Lily should come down at a few moments' notice dressed just as she left us?" she asked.

"Am I quite a fool?" said Chatterton, and then added in oracular fashion: "Hilton Dane will make his mark some day; and it was his father's roll which started me on the way to prosperity."

As it happened, Lilian Chatterton had also food for reflection, and sat long by an open window looking out into the night. There was no doubt, she admitted, that she found Hilton Dane's society congenial. His swift deference to all her wishes pleased her; and as he had intimated that he desired nothing more than her friendship, there was no reason why it should not be granted him. Under different circumstances the girl fancied that her interest might have carried her farther; but Thomas Chatterton's thinly veiled command was a fatal barrier. Even then she frowned, remembering the summary manner in which he had purposed to dispose of her as though she were a chattel. Nevertheless, she had been badly startled by the sight of the wounded man; and the fact remained that when her eyes first rested upon him she grew almost faint with a sudden and wholly unexplainable fear. Lilian wondered, with a crimsoning of her face, whether she had betrayed the relief she certainly experienced on discovering that his injuries were not serious; and then she closed the window with somewhat unnecessary violence.

The next sun had not long risen when Dane went out shakily into the freshness of the morning. His brain had refused duty during the preceding night, and there were questions to be grappled with. Hilton Dane possessed a long patience, but, although a chivalrous person, he was not a fool. He shrank from the thought of allowing the iron-master's ward to be forced into a union with him, even if that were possible – about which, however, knowing the young lady's character, he was very doubtful. Also, he was at present a comparatively poor man, and though he believed there was a moderate fortune in his invention, he saw that some time must elapse before he could realize it. Abusing his host's interference fervently, he decided that because the continual effort to keep silence was wearing his resolution down, it would be well to avoid further temptation by leaving The Larches.

He had just arrived at this decision when Chatterton came upon him.

"You do not look at all fit, Hilton," said the elder man. "The cut on your forehead would, of course, account for that; but it has struck me lately that something is troubling you. I refrain on principle from prying into other folks' affairs; but, considering the time I have known you, if you have any difficulty, I think you might confide it to me."

Dane understood what lay behind this, and he felt that it was the last thing under the circumstances he would think of doing.