The Distracted Preacher (6 page)

Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by; but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined in his horse, and said something to his companion which neither Stockdale nor Lizzy could hear. Its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses' heads they cautiously retraced their steps. When they were again opposite Mrs. Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did the same.

Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings, naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks came positively into contact. They went on listening, as if they did not know of the singular circumstance which had happened to their faces, and the pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse of time.

They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced slowly along. When they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both stopped on the instant.

“Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,” said the second officer. “Shall we knock at the door?”

“Well, no,” said Latimer. “Maybe this is only a trick to put us off the scent. They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their hiding-place. I have known such things before.”

“Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this way,” said the other.

“Yes,” said Latimer, musingly. “Unless 'tis all done to tole us the wrong way. I have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word, and come the first thing in the morning with more hands. I know they have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl's light. We will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, John; and if all is quiet, we will do as I
say.”

They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction. This way the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away.

“What will you do?” said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.

She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamed of than done. “Oh, nothing,” she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under her disappointment at his manner. “We often have such storms as this. You would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are. Fancy riding o' horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get off, in case some of our fellows should burst out upon 'em, and tie them up to the gate-post, as they have done before now. Good-night, Mr. Stockdale.”

She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers.

Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday. As soon as the gray light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects in his bedroom, he arose, dressed himself, and went down-stairs into the road.

The village was already astir. Several of the carriers had heard the well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing in the dark that night, and had already communicated with one another and Owlett on the subject. The only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those tubs which had been left under the church gallery stairs, and after a short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a double hedge bordering the adjoining field. However, before anything could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard coming down the lane from the highway.

“D
—
— it, here they be,” said Owlett, who, having already drawn the hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill door covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in the shaking walls around him.

The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual work, and when the excise officers and the formidable body of men they had hired reached the village cross, between the mill and Mrs. Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place beginning its morning labors.

“Now,” said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all, “what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here place. We have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't light upon 'em and get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night. First we will try the fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into the chimmers, and then to the ricks and stables, and so creep round. You have nothing but your noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day if you never did in your lives before.”

Then the search began. Owlett, during the early part, watched from his mill window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self-possession. A farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer and his myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a question. Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some question or other on the consequences to her of the tubs being found.

“The consequences,” she said, quietly, “are simply that I shall lose 'em. As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me personally.”

“But you have some in the orchard?”

“Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others. So it will be hard to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.”

There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day. All was done methodically, and mostly on hands and knees. At different hours of the day they had different plans. From daybreak to breakfast-time the officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be supposed to be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on the following night. Among the places tested a
nd examined were:

Hollow trees. Cupboards. Culverts.

Potato-graves. Clock-cases. Hedge-rows.

Fuel-houses. Chimney-flues. Fagot-ricks.

Bedrooms. Rain-water butts. Haystacks.

Apple-lofts. Pigsties.
Coppers and ovens.

After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigor, taking a new line; that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirits, owing to its oozing between the staves. They now sniffed at

Smock-frocks. Smiths' and
shoemakers' aprons.

Old shirts and waistcoats. Knee-naps and hedging-gloves.

Coats and hats. Tarpaulins.

Breeches and leggings. Market-cloaks.

Women's shawls and gowns. Scarecrows.

And, as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:

Horse-ponds. Mixens. Sinks in yards.

Stable-drains. Wet ditches. Road-scrapings.

Cinder-heaps. Cesspools. Back-door gutters.

But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the original telltale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house, which even yet had not passed off.

“I'll tell ye what it is, men,” said Latimer, about three o'clock in the afternoon, “we must begin over again. Find them tubs I will.”

The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their noses, as if they had had almost enough of it; for the quantity of bad air which had passed into each one's nostril had rendered it nearly as insensible as a flue. However, after a moment's hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day.

By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. Owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the wheelwright's shop was silent.

“Where the divil are the folk gone?” said Latimer, waking up to the fact of their absence, and looking round. “I'll have 'em up for this! Why don't they come and help us? There's not a man about the place but the Methodist parson, and he's an old woman. I demand assistance in the King's name!”

“We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,” said his lieutenant.

“Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,” said Latimer, who changed his moods at a moment's notice. “But there's great cause of suspicion in this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll bear it in mind. Now we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see what we can find there.”

Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden gate, over which he had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the villagers to keep so completely out of the way. He himself, like the excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have become of them. Some laborers were of necessity engaged in distant fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone off for the day. He went in to Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing, and said, “Lizzy, where are the men?”

Lizzy laughed. “Where they mostly are when they are run so hard as this.” She cast her eyes to heaven. “Up there,” she said.

Stockdale looked up. “What—on the top of the church tower?” he asked, seeing the direction of her glance.

“Yes.”

“Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,” said he, gravely. “I have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.”

Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time. “Will you go and tell our folk?” she said. “They ought to be let know.” Seeing his conscience struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, “No, never mind, I'll go myself.”

She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the church-yard wall at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the orchard. Stockdale could do no less than follow her. By the time that she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered together.

Nether-Moynton church- tower was, as in many villages, without a turret, and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers' gallery, and thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the bells to a hole in the roof. When Lizzy and Stockdale reached the gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for the bell-ropes appeared. The ladder was gone.

“There's no getting up,” said Stockdale.

“Oh yes, there is,” said she. “There's an eye looking at us at this moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.”

And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was seen descending against the whitewashed wall. When it touched the bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, “If you'll go up, I'll follow.”

The young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the Stockdale blood for some generations. He eyed them uneasily, and looked round for Lizzy. Owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder. “What, be you really one of us?”
said the miller.

“It seems so,” said Stockdale, sadly.

“He's not,” said Lizzy, who overheard. “He's neither for nor against us. He'll do us no harm.”

She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage, which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky appeared, and into the open air. Owlett remained behind for a moment, to pull up the lower ladder.

“Keep down your heads,” said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the flat.

Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet. Stockdale did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crab-like object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disk in the centre of him. Some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher's figure arose among them.

“What, Mr. Stockdale?” said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.

“I'd as lief that it hadn't been,” said Jim Clarke. “If the pa'son should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the better for we, seeing how a do hate chapel members. He'd never buy a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got t
his side o' Warm'll.”

“Where is the pa'son?” said Lizzy.

“In his house, to be sure, that he may see nothing of what's going on—where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.”

“Well, he has brought some news,” said Lizzy. “They are going to search the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?”

“Yes,” said her cousin Owlett. “That's what we've been talking o', and we have settled our line. Well, be dazed!”

The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers, having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest was growing. They drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground.

“Oh, my tubs!” said Lizzy, faintly, as she peered through the parapet at them.

“They have got 'em, a b'lieve,” said Owlett.

The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to their feet and went towards the church-yard wall. At the same time those of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived by the smugglers cried aloud, “Here be some of 'em at last.”

The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether “some of 'em” meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the church-yard from their hiding-place under the gallery stairs.

“They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the rest,” said Lizzy, hopelessly. The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing by them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard.

The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies became painfully intense. Only about thirty tubs had been secreted in the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night's operations. The excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they were determined to find before nightfall. They spread themselves out round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round every apple-tree in the enclosure. The young tree in the middle again led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same results as the first.

When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they set to work.

“Are they really buried there?” said the minister, for the grass was so green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been disturbed. The smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand two on each side of the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it. The apple-tree now showed itself to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each of the four sides. Under the site of the tree a square hole was revealed, and an exciseman went and looked down.